Rugby Australia finds Israel Folau issue difficult to tackle

The Wallaby’s controversial views has created a perfect storm of a crisis for the game of rugby union.

In the wake of Sandpapergate, I wrote last weekend that all sports had been given a sharp reminder of the need to truly live their values and standards.

It didn’t take long for Rugby Australia to be confronted by that very test, when Israel Folau caused them no end of hell this week.

Folau’s comments in response to a question on Instagram on Tuesday that said God’s plan for gay people was eternal damnation “unless they repent of their sins and turn to God” were in keeping with his private beliefs.

They were, however, also in ­direct contravention of stated Rugby Australia policy.

What to do?

In many ways, this is a perfect storm of a crisis for the game. While every state supported the same sex marriage plebiscite, it was rugby’s heartland state, NSW, which supported it the least, just 57.8 per cent to 42.2: 2,374,363 for, 1,736,838 against.

It was not 50-50 but certainly there was and is a sizeable minority that, while far from matching the voices coming from the left that are tearing Folau down, would have been quietly cheering him on.

And the quietest section of that silent minority would surely be the Polynesian community, for which Folau is starting to emerge as an unofficial spokesman.

As a community, it is deeply religious and overwhelmingly conservative and nothing that Folau lodged on social media would in any way have contradicted that viewpoint. Now consider, for a moment, how sizeable a demographic the islander community is within the body of rugby supporters. The damage of an insult would be incalculable.

But this is not a black and white issue and any attempt to portray it as such is simply baying to the mob. Qantas, Australian rugby’s major sponsor, was so outraged by what Folau put out that it wrote to Rugby Australia expressing its concerns. Asics, rugby’s official outfitter, is understood to be ­annoyed as well.

These are not organisations that Rugby Australia can blithely ignore.

If Qantas was to withdraw its multimillion-dollar sponsorship (there is no threat to do so) rugby would be devastated.

Sponsors like the national airline are thin on the ground and are almost impossible to replace on a like-for-like basis.

Rugby programs would be slashed at every level, including at the grassroots. It would hurt the game from under sevens all the way through to the Wallabies. And Folau, a Rugby Australia employee, needs to be told this.

There is a lot of tap-dancing going on because Folau’s contract is up for negotiation and everyone is conscious that there is a Rugby World Cup to win next year.

But this is the difficult part of living one’s values.

Of course, rugby wants Folau to re-sign. He is not Australia’s highest-paid rugby player for no reason. But it cannot be prepared to compromise its values in order to get his signature on a contract.

If Raelene Castle is faced with a choice between keeping Folau or compromising her standards or Rugby Australia’s, I hope she will wish him well in rugby league.

It was just 3½ years ago that Rugby Australia, as the Australian Rugby Union, issued David ­Pocock with a formal written warning after finding him in breach of its code of conduct for being arrested for chaining himself to digging equipment to protest against a large open-cut mine in northern NSW.

In a statement released at the time, the Brumbies said that though they were aware of “David’s passion and concern for environmental issues”, he clearly had breached the code of conduct and “put the Brumbies in a difficult situation”.

It may well be that Pocock would not have chained himself to the digging machines had he thought things through but I doubt it. Much as I suspect that Folau felt fully justified in replying to that internet question precisely as he did.

Yet RA has its own inclusion policy which condemns homophobia and homophobic comments and in 2015 fined a Waratahs player, Jacques Potgieter, $20,000 under the code of conduct for calling a Brumbies player a “faggot”. Who was it that complained to the referee about the slur? Pocock.

In many ways, this issue has become the equivalent of the NFL’s anthem protest in the US.

In choosing to protest against police brutality and racial inequality in America, many players — black and white — have gone down on one knee during the playing of The Star Spangled Banner.

Some have praised them for their actions; others, Donald Trump unsurprisingly being one of them, want them sacked for being unpatriotic. In the meantime, the US is being divided, as is American football. This has the potential to have a similar impact on rugby.

RA’s response has been to decide to discuss the situation with Folau, which presumably will happen early next week given that the Test fullback is rehabing a troublesome hamstring injury which is expected to keep him off the field for four weeks.

In many respects, this sounds like a weasel of a solution. It’s a ­device for keeping the crisis from escalating and if talks achieve the outcome of limiting Folau’s use of social media, that would be no bad thing.

Yet, as unsatisfactory as the response might be, I can’t fault it.

On one level, Folau has done nothing wrong. If he was to be censured for paraphrasing the Old Testament, it would be the darkest of Australian rugby’s many dark hours of late. The issues of freedom of speech and freedom of religion are very much part of this.

On the other hand, however, he has jeopardised the future support of the code, not just financially ­(although there are surely limits to how many times one should antagonise Alan Joyce) but by alienating both sides of that 57.8-42.2 divide.

But there was at least one bright spot in all of this. A former New Zealand immigration minister said Folau might be banned from entering the country because of his bigotry against homosexuals.

If he’s picked for the Wallabies, he’ll be going, and if our dear cousins across the ditch choose not to admit him, that would effectively constitute a refusal to play the Test.

In which case, Australia could claim the Bledisloe Cup on forfeit.

Might be our only way of getting our hands on that damned bit of silverware.