It’s not right that Andrew Fifita should put a shadow over the Kangaroos

MIKE COLMAN: It’s a sad day when the biggest headline about the Kangaroos squad isn’t about those selected, but the one ignorant thug that won’t be joining them.

DID you hear the Kangaroos side for the Four Nations? Andrew Fifita isn’t in it.

It’s a sad day when the biggest headline about the naming of a national rugby league squad isn’t about the fact that seven deserving players have been handed a green and gold jersey for the first time, but the fact that one ignorant thug won’t be joining them.

Since when does the boss of a major sport open up a team announcement with a statement about who has been left out because of appalling anti-social behaviour, rather than who has been chosen for outstanding performance?

This wasn’t former ARL boss Ken Arthurson telling the media that Test captain Wally Lewis had failed a fitness test before the 1990 Kangaroo tour, or announcing four years earlier that vice-captain Wayne Pearce had done the same.

FIFITA’S KANGAROOS SNUB

It was Todd Greenberg breaking the news that Fifita had been overlooked because of the latest in a growing list of atrocities that do nothing but bring dishonour to the game that pays his bills.

Road rage; standing over a junior referee with his equally thuggish brother and threatening to bash him; consorting with criminals; using his position as an NRL player to promote his support for a convicted killer, take your pick. Any one of them could have made Fifita a questionable ambassador for Australian rugby league. As a body of work, surely his non-selection was a no-brainer.

Yet still it was deemed to require explanation because, incredibly, some people just don’t get it. For good measure Greenberg also threw in an excuse for the non-consideration of Semi Radradra.

Surely that didn’t have to be spelled out either. The question wasn’t over why Radradra missed out on the Kangaroo squad for the UK; it was how he was chosen for the Prime Minister’s XIII that played PNG in Port Moresby two and a half weeks ago.

Including a player facing three charges of assaulting his ex-partner in a team for a goodwill tour of a country where violence against women has been described as reaching “pandemic levels” by Australian Federal Police … were they serious?

Thank goodness sanity prevailed when the selection criteria was drawn up for the national team. Hopefully it won’t be a one-off and hopefully one day league bosses won’t have to explain their position, because it will be ingrained.

The future of the game depends on it.

As ARL Commission chairman John Grant said in an interview before the grand final, the theory that rugby league is strong enough to withstand the threats from within that erode its image and retard its ability to attract new supporters, is a fallacy.

Quite simply, Grant said, the game must stop “shooting itself in the foot”.

Not that everyone can accept that. As Kangaroo coach Mal Meninga and his selectors sat down to pick the latest squad, it was a case of “damned if they do, damned if they don’t.”

Choose Fifita and they would be accused of putting on-field success ahead of off-field morality. Leave him out and there would be those who would point to his grand final performance as proof he should have been first man on the plane.

And so it proved, with no shortage of online bloggers claiming that Fifita deserved a place ahead of those who were chosen, because all that matters is what is on the scoreboard at fulltime.

Which is one way to look at it. Another is to say that regardless of what happens in the Four Nations the Kangaroos had their biggest win for years the moment Todd Greenberg stood up and said the words, “I want to advise you about the position the NRL has taken on two players …”

Originally published as It’s not right that Andrew Fifita should put a shadow over the Kangaroos