The online trolls are unfair on Diamond
Rugby has values, good ones, including respect and sportsmanship, but it seems they no longer extend to some of the game’s fans. A trawl through the supporters’ forums is pretty dispiriting, with some semi-pro trolls temporarily easing off on Saracens, and giving Sale and Steve Diamond both barrels.
Diamond gave an interview to BT Sports, and spoke frankly about the timeline of the Covid outbreak. He was asked specifically about the rumours of players partying in Manchester after their Premiership Cup victory over Harlequins, and answered directly that it hadn’t happened.
Had he been vague about the way events unfolded then I could understand people not being satisfied by his explanations, but he wasn’t, so deserves to be believed. However, it wasn’t good enough for some of the keyboard warriors.
Sale faced a hugely important game for the club, so it’s obvious that they would do everything they could to scrape together a team for their match against Worcester. But that didn’t stop some turning on Sale and Diamond.
When asked whether more positive test results would prevent them fulfilling the fixture, Diamond didn’t waffle or prevaricate, he simply said it probably would, and in the end that’s what transpired.
Until someone proves otherwise, we should accept Diamond’s account of what happened – he’s adamant Sale followed the protocols.
However, online you can read people saying that they simply don’t believe a word of it, and doing it in the most unpleasant way. We’ve reached a stage where some supporters will support whatever their club does or says, and denigrate anything said by their latest pet hates!
This online viciousness is happening more and more: we used to rightly moan in a superior tone about the extreme partisanship among football supporters, but rugby is heading down the same road, and it’s not good.
After TV presenter Caroline Flack’s suicide there was a period when people picked up on a quote of hers, ‘In a world where you can be anything, be kind’, and for a short time that became a slogan that was being quoted – maybe it’s time more people took it to heart, and perhaps simply wished the players who have contracted this scary disease best wishes for a swift and full recovery.
While I stand by my long-held view that the Premiership is the best league in world rugby, I don’t think the way it’s run measures up to that. Compare what happens on the pitch with the administration of the Premiership, and the old phrase ‘lions led by donkeys’ comes to mind.
The ins and outs of the multiple positive tests at Sale Sharks, and the ramifications of those, aren’t really the main points – there’s a pandemic and this was always likely to happen to some club at some time. What mattered most was how the league’s administrators would cope with the crisis, and they bungled it badly.
Having announced that there was no space in the calendar for replays, they announced a replay, blaming the local public health authorities for not insisting the game be called off.
PRL had adequate time during lockdown to plan for the restart and what was the entirely predictable possibility that an outbreak of the virus would prevent a team being able to fulfil a fixture. They came up with the regulation that affected teams would forfeit the game with a 20-0 win handed to their opposition. Sale said they had 23 fit players, but there was clearly a serious Covid problem within the club, and PRL should have followed their own protocol and awarded a 20-0 win to Worcester. Instead they prevaricated.
PRL then put up their rugby director, and former Sale Sharks player and operations manager, Phil Winstanley, for an interview with BT Sports. From a PR perspective was that a smart move? PRL’s CEO should have spotted that someone with no previous involvement with Sale would have been a better choice, and all they did was give their critics another stick with which to beat them! If this was a one-off blunder then people would be more forgiving, but it’s just another in a long line of mishaps.
For years we had a salary cap that everyone believed was being abused, but PRL weren’t able to lay a finger on any club, and then there were the infamous ‘no breach’ settlements which made their then CEO, Mark McCafferty, a laughing stock.
Earlier this year we had the fiasco surrounding the temporary salary cap cuts which persuaded no-one that the Premiership was taking the financial crisis seriously, and the current CEO, Darren Childs, spent lockdown doing an excellent impression of the Invisible Man!
The players and fans deserve better from PRL, and it’s time they smartened up their act.
“We should accept Diamond’s account, he’s adamant Sale followed the protocols”