How rugby league players wasted $500,000 to try stop NRL ‘stand down’ policy

Jarryd Hayne outside court in Sydney after being found guilty of sexual assault

Alleged rapists should not be allowed to play football but try telling that to the Rugby League Players Association.

The RLPA will now have to pay $500,000 – the legal cost of a failed bid in arbitration to have the game’s revolutionary ‘no-fault stand-down policy’ destroyed.

It is $500,000 which could have gone elsewhere in the game rather than being squandered in arbitration on lawyers – there are the growing women’s game, juniors and so many corners of the competition desperate for this cash in these harsh times.

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“There’s country rugby league clubs that are shutting down and that’s where the money could have gone,” one high-ranking observer told The Australian. “What a waste of resources.”

Instead the RLPA tried to bin a policy which has saved the game millions upon millions of dollars in corporate sponsorship. It’s a policy which rescued the $15 million Telstra sponsorship. This policy basically stopped the players having their pay cut but some of these high-ranking footballers just don’t seem to get that fact. The players union’s mangled, ignorant attitude towards women led them to fight the policy.

They believed they hadn’t been consulted properly on the stand-down rule and so they took it up to the NRL.

But they lost this fight last month.

It was a massive moment of vindication for chair Peter V’landys and NRL chief Andrew Abdo but especially for the former chair Peter Beattie.

They are the men who have all helped implement, fought for and kept this policy – all while players such as Dragons star Jack de Belin, who is fighting sexual assault allegations, and the RLPA have tried to tear it down. It is commissioner Beattie in particular who drove the rule, and the former Queensland premier faced fierce backlash for it.

In February 2019, Beattie was stunned by a legal letter in which de Belin had drafted an apology for the then ARLC chairman to read out publicly.

Beattie never did. He has continued to determinedly campaign for the policy to stay.

Last month an independent ­arbiter ruled the NRL was within its rights to bring in the rule, which sees players automatically stood down should they face charges that would result in prison sentences of 11 years or more.

Under the policy, the NRL CEO can also use his discretion to stand down players if the crime involves women or children.

The decision by the independent arbiter in favour of the NRL was so comprehensive the code was awarded costs. It sounded the end of de Belin’s hopes of playing NRL again before his trial on sexual assault charges next month. De Belin had already fought in the Federal Court to play and that move was overturned as well.

And on Monday it was announced that Jarryd Hayne had been found guilty of two counts of sexual assault.

The incident involving Hayne was reported to police when the woman’s brother-in-law found out and contacted a journalist for advice. The brother-in-law then spoke to the NRL Integrity Unit, which referred it to sex crimes detectives.

When the Hayne decision was handed down on Monday, there was some sentiment at Rugby League Central that the court’s decision had sent a message that matters like these would finally be taken seriously. That the victim “was believed”. That the days of players thinking they could get away with things when they are grey were over.

There have now been 29 cases involving 59 professional AFL and NRL footballers and only one conviction – Jarryd Hayne. The judge said jail was “inevitable”. Hayne says he will appeal.

It’s no wonder an attitude of women being “mad, bad or sad” has pervaded football codes when the allegations have been made against footballers – and they have never been believed or, in some cases, the complainants were paid off. Others have struggled in courtrooms against the weight of a top silk.

With the NRL’s stand-down policy is in place, they’ve shown respect towards ‘the victim’ for the first time.

In rugby league it has now finally been accepted that it is disrespectful having footballers chase around a ball while up on sexual assault charges, regardless of what happens later in court.

The AFL still thinks differently. In the AFL they are letting Jordan De Goey, who the Victorian Police have charged with sexual assault, play on.

The AFL don’t feel a stand-down policy is for them.

Meanwhile, the NRL, after a number of torrid off-field incidents, has acted quickly and boldly when a crisis has hit. They’ve fought for a policy which is helping shift attitudes and a degrading culture. The NRL has shown much more foresight and initiative than many other workplaces in this current moment.