Paul Kent: The NRL surrendered to political correctness this week

Four weeks for a noun? Paul Kent tackles the NRL, not for punishing players, but for getting punishments so wrong.

As always seems to happen, just when you go and find yourself in a mood to sit at the keyboard and write inspirational prose about all manner of things, waxing poetic over the Cronulla resurgence, breaking down Millie Boyle’s dance moves or taking out a geometry set to assess the latest Roosters defensive techniques, the NRL goes and acts like political puffcakes and ruins it for everybody.

This week’s actions are of an organisation that runs a game but does not necessarily understand the game it runs. Certainly not the people who support it.

Marcelo Montoya got suspended for four weeks for an offensive insult. Anthony Milford remains sidelined for who knows how long, the game heaping punishment on top of punishment on Milford as head office is off checking its approval ratings.

Some hoped that when Todd Greenberg was moved on, soon after his bid to have the NRL come out with a statement publicly supporting climate change was thwarted, that the game learned its lesson and was going to steer clear of political correctness once and for all.

But alas, it all came a-buster this week.

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Marcelo Montoya (C) copped four weeks for a homophobic slur. Picture NRL Photos

The NRL got political again and immediately alienated half its audience. Not because they punished the players but because they got the punishments so wrong.

It was as if they were appeasing the hysterics.

The punishment for Marcelo Montoya and the ongoing treatment of Anthony Milford shows a game that has lost touch with its roots and is now driven by exterior perceptions.

Few see any true justice in the NRL’s reasoning, which means most of us lose.

Let’s get this clear, Montoya was dreadfully wrong when he called Cowboy Kyle Feldt a “f…..” last week. Completely and utterly.

Nobody condones what he said and nobody will try to defend any part of it. Not even Montoya.

But there are mitigating circumstances.

He said the insult was driven, basically, by the motive to get Feldt off his game without too much thought about its true impact.

“I used the word to get under his skin or to just upset him,” he said. “It wasn’t used to refer to his sexuality at all.”

Yet immediately, in their chance to prosecute their argument, the social warriors went to the worst case scenario, their usual position.

And the NRL reacted with the harshest penalty ever delivered for a noun.

Nobody can remember anybody ever being suspended for four games for a verbal insult in the past.

If punishment is there as a preventive, why was no player warned they would now miss games for verbal insults? What does the game stand for now? Can the NRL answer that, without drifting into woke political answers?

Certainly the statement after Montoya’s suspension suggested it can’t. It was box-ticking.

As criticism spread, nobody cared much for history or mitigating circumstances because when it comes to social justice, and achieving the end result they recklessly pursue, mitigating facts don’t matter.

The validity of the punishment – and again, nobody condoned Montoya’s homophobic slur – was immediately lost in the argument over penalty.

Any message the game hoped to send was swamped in the argument about penalty. The punishment was way out of perspective, well above what it should be.

And the worry is it was not a mistake, but an indication of the new, woke NRL.

The same with Milford.

His three assault charges were dismissed this week at the first chance the court got. Tossed to the kerb.

He did plead guilty to wilful damage and public nuisance for drunkenly throwing a rubbish bin into a taxi, which the court decided was worth no more than a good behaviour bond.

Also, by the time Milford stood in court he had already lost $150,000 in wages given he has not been paid since November, and so far he has missed six games of footy.

Anthony Milford has been shunned by the NRL. Picture: Brad Fleet

By any standard, that is already significant penalty for a man not guilty of the charges that prevented him playing.

Yet only now has the Integrity Unit got involved, despite the NRL having the CCTV that helped dismiss him of the charges since last year.

And it appears certain the NRL intends to impose further sanctions after Newcastle lodged a contract on Friday because, when you edit the video, as will happen, they believe it could be hard to defend what people see.

Again, mitigating facts, which the court used to dismiss the case against Milford, mean nothing for an NRL trying to appease the political activists.

Few in the NRL have the stomach for it these days, where arguments are won and lost in 140 characters or less.

It seems irrelevant that the courts, which demand a standard of proof much higher than the NRL Integrity Unit, said not guilty.

And it is also disingenuous for the NRL to say it is holding players to a greater standard by sending the message through sterner punishment.

It is simply not true.

Behind the scenes, left-wing lobby groups are bullying NRL sponsors, threatening to publicly boycott their products if the sponsors do not pressure the NRL into behaving as they deem fit.

In one respect, it is understandable; the NRL is trying to protect its revenue by pleasing the sponsors, more important now more than ever following the recent Covid pandemic. Tens of millions of dollars are at stake.

Telstra recently re-signed as the game’s major sponsor and included clauses that allowed the company to take money back if players misbehave and damage the game.

But it is a slippery slope when you surrender control to unseen enemies, with agendas beyond the growth and support of the game.

It will come as no great surprise that not everyone loves the game like we do.

If the game is not its own master, what does it become?

Or are we already seeing that?

Originally published as Paul Kent: The NRL surrendered to political correctness this week