NRL appeals committee must evolve or dissolve

After this week, you may be forgiven for thinking that the NRL is OK with their players having sex with schoolgirls. It’s not.

Former justice of the High Court, Ian Callinan.

After the events this week, you may be forgiven for thinking that the NRL is OK with their players having sex with schoolgirls. It’s not.

The NRL back in April ripped up the contracts of two players for doing so, however, the NRL appeals committee this week saw their actions differently and overturned the decision to sack Bulldogs pair Jayden Okundbor and Corey Harawira-Naera. A decision that left many in the game gutted.

The appeals committee is independent of the NRL, but unfortunately for the organisation it bears its name.

For due process an appeals committee must be independent but what values was it upholding in this decision? Not the NRL‘s and certainly not society’s.

The body is currently led by chairman Ian Callinan QC, 82, ex-Kangaroos skipper Max Krilich, 69 and former dual international and NSW sports minister Michael Cleary, 80.

Their decision to allow Okunbor and Harawira-Naera (who admitted to having sex with schoolgirls at their team hotel on a pre-season camp) to play again is a ruling not of this time.

Okunbor, who last summer met a girl at a club-organised school visit in Port Macquarie and later invited her back to the team hotel, will be free to play in Round 15. Harawira-Naera, who also had consensual sex with a schoolgirl, will be allowed to play in two weeks. The conduct of the players was not illegal.

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The committee’s decision this week is a reminder that the game has evolved beyond a small three-person panel, of mostly ex-footballers, making such decisions in rugby league.

It’s time for this NRL appeals committee to be reviewed and for it to either evolve or dissolve.

Back in 2015 this committee also overturned Todd Carney’s expulsion when a photograph emerged of him doing ‘the bubbler’ (attempting to urinate in his own mouth for those not in the know).

On that occasion, the Callinan-led committee ruled the Cronulla Sharks failed to allow the 28-year-old due process before tearing up his contract.

The latest decision goes against the grain of where the game has been boldly heading in tidying up its off-field image.

Last year the NRL implemented the no-fault stand-down policy, a hard line, world leading and uniform policy that acts on allegations of violence against women.

The first female chair of Wests Tigers Marina Go, who strongly supported the stand-down policy when it was implemented, said there were corners of the game that could be improved.

“The NRL has made a lot of progress with how it deals with off-field behaviour particularly with regards to the treatment of women and the stand-down policy is a great example of that,” Go told The Australian. “But there is clearly more that needs to be done.”

After a summer of hell in 2019 involving a litany of off-field incidents, it was no surprise that back in April the NRL administration came down hard on the Bulldogs pair when it emerged they had sexual relations with two schoolgirls. Then CEO Todd Greenberg said the players were facing sanctions that would “send a message to every single player in our game”.

Whether they like it or not, the appeals committee this week sent a very different one.

Already other clubs are hunting the players’ signatures. Rumours are flying that one of the players does not want to stay at the club because of the way he was “treated”. Which seems outrageous in itself considering their actions cost the club a major $2 million sponsorship.

While the appeals committee agreed with the NRL in “confirming” the seriousness of the players breaches – the appeals committee “varied the NRL’s determination to cancel each player’s registration and imposed alternate sanctions”. There were fines as well as match suspensions; $22,500 for Okunbor and $15,000 for Harawira-Naera.

We have reached an age on these issues where fines and match suspensions just don’t cut it.

Callinan is a distinguished former justice of the High Court. Under the constitution he had to retire from his post when he turned 70. In federal parliament in 1977 at the time when that change to the constitution was passed it was argued that such a move would allow for “the appointment of younger judges”, helping to ”contemporise the courts”.

The NRL appeals committee could do with such a measure.