The lack of action on Andrew Fifita and Josh Dugan’s stupidity hurts rugby league

THE stupidity of Andrew Fifita and Josh Dugan damages he NRL, as does the tepid response from those in the league offices writes PAUL KENT.

NRL rugby league Dugan Fifita

LET this be rugby league’s epitaph: “You know you have made it when c … hate ya.”

They were muttered this week’s by the game’s poet laureate, Andrew Fifita.

Fifita was talking about fans hating him, about last year’s game against Melbourne when he was going back on the field after an interchange and he walked past fans booing him in the first row and he knocked all their beers over.

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“Next shout’s on me,” he said, laughing away.

Ah, fun guy. That’ll bring the fans in.

This was in Fifita’s regular appearance on the Halfcast Podcast, where he had already gone on record with his thoughts on Phil Rothfield, who occupies these pages.

“A complete f … wit,” he said.

Fifita has never been shy of shooting from the lip. AAP Image/Brendon Thorne.

Fifita’s epitaph was endorsed by Josh Dugan sitting beside him and then the lack of action from the game’s two most powerful people, ARL Commission chairman Peter Beattie and NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg.

Asked directly about the learned comments towards Rothfield, Beattie said: “There’s a message for everyone in rugby league and that is you have to be careful with what you say and be respectful.”

That was it from Beattie. A generic statement that contradicts itself.

Greenberg agreed wholeheartedly.

“What I’m pleased about today is the Sharks jumped on that early and they have handled it as I would have expected them to do so.”

Sadly, we all expected it.

Cronulla did nothing more than give Fifita a warning letter. Confetti for his next party.

He has not even had to apologise.

Instead, he plays this weekend against Newcastle.

The stupidity of the two players costs the game dearly. Picture: Brett Costello.

That it comes after screaming towards his coach Shane Flanagan “f … you c …” after his try-scoring celebration last Saturday makes it more incredible.

How would Craig Bellamy, the game’s best coach, have reacted after such a spray?

Bellamy once disciplined Josh Addo-Carr for a post-try celebration, saying it was not how it was done in Melbourne.

Flanagan probably counts himself lucky he didn’t have a beer sitting in front of him.

But this is rugby league.

Greenberg, who achieves the nearly impossible by appearing more a politician than Beattie, doubled down his error by shifting from praising Cronulla’s lack of action to talk specifically about Fifita.

“It’s a very good reminder for players that despite what would seem an innocuous comment here or there, or an interview that you might not think is going to go somewhere, in the modern age any comment that a rugby league players make he has to take full account for.”

There are several troubling aspects from that.

It was a toothless response from Beattie and Greenberg. Photo by Matt King/Getty Images.

Greenberg, the game’s leader, believes the comments were “innocuous”.

He said Fifita has to take “full account” for it, which so far amounts to a warning letter from his club who are desperate for him to remain happy for the rest of the season because they have a premiership to win and can’t distract themselves with trifling concerns like offending most of their rugby league audience.

The most severe punishment out of headquarters, it seems, is a cauliflower ear.

When accused the NRL of being “c …” in a tweet four years ago then chief executive Dave Smith fined him $50,0000, later reduced to $35,000 after Gallen appealed on condition he was under duress.

It showed the game held a standard in acceptable behaviour.

Every administration up until this one has understood the importance of selling the best version of yourself to the sporting community.

Otherwise you die.

Sadly, the NRL knows all this but does not have the courage to make the decision when it is needed.

Fifita made a fool of himself Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)

Greenberg recently took possession of the NRL’s annual secret audit into the rugby league media which counts how many “positive” stories are written by each journalist against how many “negative” stories.

That is how important the perception is to them. It outranks performance.

It’s important to know this. It shows how much the NRL prepares for criticism and manipulates their coverage.

What the NRL fails to realise or fails to care about is it eventually becomes self-fulfilling, anyway, as the positive men will increasingly write positive stories because one feeds the other.

And if we continue travelling merrily along this way the game will soon find itself in inescapable trouble. It is already losing ground, the reason for the audit in the first place.

The concern for fans is the game pays thousands for this secret information, and operates towards it, while at the same time ignoring foul language from two of its most high profile players, on a public podcast, which does untold damage to the game.

Already more than 23,000 people have watched Fifita drop F-bombs and C-bombs throughout the podcast.

Like it or not rugby league is a public game that is almost entirely funded by public reputation.

Broadcasters pay $2 billion to win ratings. Sponsors pay millions to associate with a club’s, and by proxy its players, positive image.

Fans buy tickets and memberships to be associated with a club that says something about them in their community. They wear merchandise for this reason.

Cronulla is currently looking for a new major sponsor. How many lost interest this week we will never be known.

Any manner of jobs, even mine, have expected standards of behaviour.

Just last month Fox Sports presenter Greg Thomson hosted a charity lunch and downed one too many drinks before exploding in a litany of abuse on stage.

Someone in the audience was so offended they recorded it.

Thomson stood himself down immediately when the video emerged. Three days later he apologised and quit when it was clear his future was untenable.

Thomson did not have the profile of Fifita but his employer understood the hypocrisy of having him in a public position that required certain standards.

Greenberg must work harder to change perceptions of the game. Photo by Matt King/Getty Images.

The game is covertly trying to reshape its reputation as a working class game — they won’t say a game for boofheads — which, it privately believes, is causing the NRL to fall behind other codes.

The NRL is trying to sell itself as more educated and intelligent in order to attract a part of the sporting community occupied by AFL and rugby union.

And yet when Fifita dives right into the hole the NRL is trying to dig itself out of, shovel in hand, we get nothing but empty phrases from the bosses.

Accountability is invisible in the NRL. They are nothing but words on a press statement.

Earlier this week the Telegraph’s fan survey asked fans if they believed Beattie and Greenberg were doing a good job leading rugby league in Australia.

A massive 81 per cent said no.

And we wonder why.

Some have tried to defend Fifita’s statement as free speech.

No sporting code in the world would try to sell that as an acceptable explanation to excuse Fifita’s behaviour during last week’s game or in his podcast.

Class and common decency are dead. The epitaph is being written.

****

LANCE Thompson was one of the original wonderkids.

He was playing first grade when he was still a schoolboy but, unlike most who make that great leap, Thompson came through in the forwards.

Life was a bit tougher there but Thompson fitted in quickly.

Thompson was marked early on as a player of enormous talent and went on to become one of the mainstays at St George and later St George Illawarra and Cronulla.

Some years back I was in a pub when Thommo walked over. He leased the restaurant in the pub and was in the kitchen cooking when he came out to say g’day.

Thompson was rugby league to the core. Pic Brett Costello.

He was always an easy guy to talk to and while he admitted at times to struggling find a new life after he retired from football he said he liked working in the kitchen and he stayed with that right up until his shock death on Friday.

We talked for a while tat night, he kept asking if we were hungry and we kept telling him we were just having a beer, when finally he had to get back to the kitchen.

Shortly after a cooked meat platter arrived, as high as your elbow, on the house.

It seems almost an irrelevant memory among the hundreds of tributes revealed yesterday.

But that’s the sort of man he was.

He had an old-school awareness of who he was and what he stood for, a left over from a time when men were three dimensional characters and not these cartoon figures like so many are nowadays.

He knew that generous and tough were not mutually exclusive.

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Originally published as The lack of action on Andrew Fifita and Josh Dugan’s stupidity hurts rugby league