Petty revenge no answer in Mark Coyne case

Calling for Mark Coyne to be sacked from the ARLC is an example of the small-minded thinking that continues to afflict the NRL and why it will never be the big game it should be.

Digital artwork for Daily Telegraph

The hunt for Mark Coyne’s scalp shapes like a revenge killing.

The players got the big stick for poor ­behaviour so now Coyne, an Australian Rugby League commissioner and supposedly immune from bouts of poor behaviour, has to get his too.

Simple minds need only simple solutions. They don’t want their thirst for quick justice confused by anything like reason or logic. So anything less than Coyne flailed and bleeding is a double standard to them. Good grief. Calling for Coyne to be sacked from the Commission is an example of the small-minded thinking that continues to afflict the NRL and why it will never be the big game it should be.

How can the game ever hope to be big when so many small-minded people, jealous and insecure, are involved in its running? If there is a sadness to this all it is that such thinking is too simple, even for the NRL. There are darker forces at work.

More NRL coverage

Future: Coyne will ‘hand in resignation’ if asked to by ARLC

Comment: Why sacking Mark Coyne would damage the game

Apology: Coyne breaks silence on ‘embarrassing’ Singapore arrest

Kent v Sterlo: Channel 9’s ageing commentary misses mark

It takes only a quick look to understand that holding Coyne to the same standards as the players were over the summer is like taking a shotgun to a ­butterfly. Coyne is being held up alongside sexual assault charges, the Bulldogs pleading guilty to obscene exposure, the Penrith sex tapes, pub brawls, domestic violence, indecent assault and common assault, which trashed the NRL’s summer. Coyne pleaded guilty to abusing a public servant.

Digital artwork for Daily Telegraph

Coyne was in a Singapore taxi heading to his hotel from the night races on June 2. He believed the cab driver was taking the long route, which would not have been the first time a back-seat drunk suspected it, sparking a tremendous argument.

The cabbie called the police.

The problem was resolved by the time police arrived. The cabbie made no complaint.

Police then asked Coyne for his passport, which was in his hotel room safe, where foreign affairs officials recommend all Australians should stow their passports. So all Coyne could show was his NSW driver’s ­licence. The police arrested him on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. Singapore is filled with illegals from Java and Indonesia and elsewhere and, this Australian, he was getting no special treatment.

That’s when Coyne became indignant. Drunken and not making a whole lot of sense, his intention seemed to be nothing more than to insult. That’s where the catalogue of quotes being used to condemn him all stem from. Coyne’s insults were delivered from the back of the paddy wagon, “at the vicinity of 76 Orchard Road and en route to Tanglin Divisional Headquarters”, according to the police charge sheet.

They were the ravings of a drunk in the back of a paddy wagon, annoyed that he was being arrested on ridiculous charges. Aside from the abuse at police — considered an Australian past-time in certain parts — Coyne did nothing else wrong.

Mark Coyne arrives in Sydney with wife Annie by his side. Picture: Toby Zerna

Another criticism being voiced to sack Coyne is the “cover-up” — that he did not tell the ARL Commission until last Tuesday even though he was arrested on June 2. There are two good reasons why he did not. Another part of Singaporean law is that police will appoint an investigator after an arrest and that the police generally consider it bad manners if you appoint a lawyer or speak publicly before a charge is laid.

He had solid reasons not to tell anyone. Under such ­circumstances, I would not have told the NRL either. How could you trust them to keep a secret with what is happening in there?

Coyne is viewed with suspicion inside League Central.

He is the latest appointment to a board that has been rattled awake after essentially performing in a slumber until recent years. After the ARL Commission was formed in 2012, it essentially operated as a mutual support society between chairman John Grant and chief executive Todd Greenberg.

Together they ruled until it fell apart at the first tremor of trouble. The clubs drove it.

Approaching the end of 2017, the clubs were negotiating their licences and were unhappy with the Commission’s performance.

Accountability had long been missing. The clubs were sick that Greenberg and Grant had burnt through the $1 billion in broadcast funding, but for all that money spent, did not have to show one asset, had less people watching the game, had less people playing the game and had no money in the bank.

So what was the money spent on? The question has still not been suitably answered.

Afraid for the future, that this was a Commission without accountability, the clubs wanted change. Most notably club representation on the Commission, and they nearly got it.

The clubs rallied to sack Grant and he was saved only after he promised to fund them to 130 per cent above the salary cap. It was so extraordinarily generous Grant nearly lost a hand as the clubs snatched it up.

Greenberg, fighting to regain popularity, and now at odds with Grant, saw his road to remake himself came through the players. Everybody loves the players. Maybe if the players said they love him, the fans might as well.

Greenberg doubled down Grant’s generosity by offering the players too high a salary cap, meaning that even though the game is far better funded in this broadcast cycle, a $2 billion deal, the grassroots are no better off.

The players have all the money and are spending it all.

Coyne forms part of the new, bold Commission. He joins chairman Peter Beattie, Racing NSW boss Peter V’landys and Foxtel and former Channel 9 consultant Amanda Laing. They brought new life to the Commission through the simple act of accountability.

Mark Coyne forms part of the new, bold Commission.

For the first time Greenberg heard the question ‘why?’ — why spend that? Why do we need that? Why can’t we do this? Coyne is direct and firm. Sacking him would fracture the new influence. A defence for Coyne is not because he is a good man, a generalisation easy to throw out and so easy to dismiss. But he is the right man, and there’s the difference.

Coyne has always operated a class above the average.

Nobody inside the NRL has been around long enough to remember when Coyne retired from St George Illawarra at the end of 1998 and the Dragons gave him a testimonial.

He is not the only man to be given that. The NRL tossed in a whole game for Cameron Smith and Johnathan Thurston and made sure they got their accolades while the players got theirs, a percentage of each ­ticket sold going to charity, you might recall. When Coyne had his testimonial they raised $135,000 over the night. Coyne thanked everybody and then gave the whole lot to a children’s charity. And this is the man we want to run out of the game.

Originally published as Petty revenge no answer in Mark Coyne case