CRASH TACKLE:
They’re elevated to godlike status and adored by millions, but why do we keep hearing stories about our famous footballers disgracing themselves and their codes in ever more shocking ways? Susan Chenery investigates.
rugby league stars behaving badly
The Friday night lights, the glory. The roar of the crowd as the muscular footballers take to the pitch, carrying the hopes of millions of fans. Powerful elite athletes in their prime; gladiators, courageous, masculinity in motion. Pumped up to peak physical performance they enthral, they dodge and weave, and see how they run. Under the television lights they assume a godlike presence.
“The crowd is willing you on to do things that are physically impossible when there are no crowds, things outside the realm of your normal skills,” says former AFL triple premiership player Jason Akermanis. “You get that adrenaline surge; they are only cheering that loudly because you have done something truly amazing. That is the beauty of playing in front of big crowds – you feel unbelievable.”
They are rich and famous, their posters are on bedroom walls across the country and their names are spoken with reverence. They are the privileged few.
“I’ve got about 50,000 pets named after me,” says Jason ruefully. “Now I am a lot older, people come up to me and say that the dog that was named after me died, but it was a beautiful dog, and now they have got another dog called Aker 2.”
But then comes a different kind of headline – when the shining hero falls, shows himself to be sordid, and the gloss is gone.
Over the past summer, footballers have paraded in front of the cameras for all the wrong reasons. Disgraced, on their way in and out of court, accused of sexual assault, rape, drink-driving, domestic violence, obscene behaviour, vicious assault. Day after day, week after week, sex tapes or photos emerge of footballers drunk and disorderly, bringing the beloved sport into disrepute, driving away sponsors and disillusioning fans. Nobody wants to name their dog after these guys.
“When I have got my kids watching Friday night footy, I just don’t want them to be watching footballers out there who have histories of domestic violence and violence against women,” says Sunday Telegraph sports columnist Jessica Halloran. “I don’t think that is too much to ask.”
Last summer’s horror stretch is not a new story – it is not even the worst story. In 2004, Australia made international news when 20 rugby league and Australian rules footballers were accused of at least eight incidents of gang rape and sexual assault, exposing the seedy underbelly, the murky and macho culture of football clubs – and the attempts to cover it up.
Fifteen years later, there should be no excuses. Now the NRL is spending
$8 million a year on player education in an attempt to instil cultural change in young men who have the world at their feet. But says Jessica, “it’s not working.”
Hyper-masculine male contact sports are full of highly aggressive, competitive sportsmen who are trained to take risks and conquer. “It is almost legitimised tribal warfare,” sports psychologist
Jeff Bond has said.
“They expect you to live like a priest all week and fight like the devil on the weekend,” said 2005 Brownlow Medallist Ben Cousins in a documentary, Such Is Life, which aired in 2010 and detailed his drug addiction. Ben is currently on bail facing 14 charges, 12 of which relate to breaching a family restraining order.
St. George Illawarra prop James Graham recently suggested the NRL attracts a personality type that is drawn to the sport’s aggression. Certainly, more than a few players have come from difficult, troubled backgrounds in what is known as the working man’s sport.
“I would like to see a clinical psychologist in all football clubs,” says Jessica, “to help them with all different issues.”
NRL veteran Luke Lewis has written about the extreme domestic violence that he grew up with and the trauma that he experienced as a result. He has gone on to become a White Ribbon ambassador and to speak openly about the importance of breaking the domestic violence cycle. He is not alone.
Jason Akermanis grew up with a single mother in a “rough-and-tumble environment that wasn’t always great”. He says: “It’s rare to see somebody from a great family with wealthy parents in the AFL, because the thing that eliminates them is they don’t have grit, they don’t have the motivation to get out of where they come from. Kids from tough backgrounds know how to stand up for themselves in fights, they’re street-smart and perceptive with people.” And they do need to be tough. “Guys playing footy have just as many collisions as people who go through certain levels of car accidents – whiplash, sore neck, sore back. Within a week, we come back and play another game of football, and run around for another 14 to 20 games. That shows the expectations and mental strength it takes to keep going.”
Add to this the adulation, being pampered, the glitz and glamour, and “more money than most people will see in a lifetime – hundreds and thousands of dollars,” says Marina Go, who recently resigned as chairwoman of Wests Tigers, and you can see why a young man could feel that everything is golden, that he is invincible and untouchable. “The whole thing compounds,” says Marina.
And says Jason, “just because you’re good at Aussie Rules football doesn’t
mean you’re always the best person in the world, but you know that, like it or not, you are going to be judged to a much higher standard.”
“A lot is demanded of a professional athlete, both on the field and off the field, but I think, when you are looking at a professional athlete, you are looking at a whole person. Because what happens off the field is linked up with what happens on the field,” says Professor Catharine Lumby who has, over 15 years, advised the NRL on cultural change and education programs for players.
Young footballers are conspicuous, in a high-pressure environment, pursued by women, given free drinks all night in clubs. In a momentary lapse of judgement a lucrative career can be thrown away, a young woman damaged, a member of the public injured. All of it will be filmed on phone cameras.
“Going out drinking,” recalls Jason Akermanis, “was always fraught with danger. Not just with members of the opposite sex, but also from members of the public who had a couple of beers under their belt. I find that, with rugby league guys, they have their individual problems and when they start drinking it just exacerbates the problem that they have. ”
But Marina Go, along with other women who work with the sport, is taking a hard line, no longer prepared to put up with excuses, or what Jessica Halloran calls “entitled behaviour”.
“As soon as you put on a jumper and walk onto a football field in prime time,” says Jessica,“you are automatically a role model. We have had something like six footballers running around the NRL last year who had either pleaded guilty to or were found guilty of domestic violence. That is not okay. It comes back to how women are being respected and the attitudes to women in the footy club. Where are the boundaries?”
Marina agrees.“Little boys and girls look up to these men. No man should behave like this; there is no excuse. There should be no apology for them. There should be no doubt this is not acceptable. They can’t play the game they love so much if they behave like this.”
While no-one is concerned about consensual sex, with sex tapes, Marina says, “the NRL is in a whole next world of pain. The issue for us is why there is such a lack of respect towards women from some of the players. The problem is when there are violent acts or acts denigrating women. That is the stuff that
has come to light. The accusations of sexual assault and the lack of respect – that is the stuff we care about. ”
According to a report by the ABC, sex tapes of NRL players are being shared almost daily on WhatsApp, not by the footballers, but by the friends they sent them to. Even if the sex was consensual, there may have been no consent by the women involved to film and share them. And it is the treatment of the women in the tapes that is most disturbing. A woman being choked; a woman being called a “f...ing ratbag” while her head is pushed into a man’s groin; a man eating a hamburger while a woman performs a sexual act; two men rest their feet on a woman’s head while she is performing oral sex on a man.
Penrith Panthers player Tyrone May, 22, filmed a sexual act with a woman at Coffs Harbour in February last year as well as with another woman at Kingswood in western Sydney in May. The sex was consensual but the women claim they were unaware they were being filmed.
When they became aware that the tapes were circulating on the internet without their permission, the women complained to the police and Tyrone May was charged under revenge porn
laws and stood down until his case is heard this May. Tyrone said he thinks someone from another club leaked the footage and the Panthers issued a statement saying May will “vigorously deny” the charges when he faces court.
Says Catharine: “In Australian sport and even elite university colleges, there’s been a culture of male bonding over some toxic rituals – sharing stories and images of sex with women, men sharing a woman like a football – which are seen as conquests.” Men who train as a team, play as a team and have sex as a team.
In her work with the NRL, Catharine has undertaken major research projects, implementing the Respectful Relationships program that has been in place since 2005 and is constantly evaluated.
“The NRL is really on the front foot with this. They factor in players’ backgrounds and the education process starts well before they hit the NRL – they get a lot of support. It is not that they don’t know what the right thing to do is, it is that a few of them don’t care. My attitude is, if they don’t get it, get out. If you don’t want to be a role model, don’t play NRL and your life won’t be under scrutiny. Once you’ve had your opportunity to reflect on the sort of
situations you’ll be in and the peer pressures, if you’re stupid enough to go out and sink 20 schooners and do some of this stuff, in this day and age it will come out.”
Says Jessica: “I think there are too many dinosaurs roaming football clubs. Then you get these cultures that develop that don’t change, and a deep underlying disrespect of women.”
Marina believes that leadership from senior players,“who are good men, combats that pack mentality of peer pressure that is toxic. Boys coming through in the group are looking to the older ones, so you want good peer pressure from good-quality men.”
A significant problem has been the lack of consistency of punishment across the codes and clubs.
“We [Wests Tigers] do believe that if a player has done something that is contrary to our values and culture, we get rid of them straight away,” says Marina. “That is not consistent across the game. Some clubs are harder on this and some clubs are still wrapping their arms around them if they are a good player. I believe that, for too long, clubs have forgiven them and they haven’t been called out for bad behaviour.”
It’s more difficult when the player is supremely gifted. A sacked player can just move to another club. Matthew Lodge was convicted of domestic violence against his partner Charlene Saliba. He was sacked by Wests Tigers after a drunken rampage in New York where he threatened a German tourist, Carolin Dekeyser at 4am, saying, “Do you think you’re going to die? This is the night you’re going to die.” Frantically ringing strangers’ doorbells, Carolin woke up Ruth Fowler, Joseph Cartright and their then nine-year-old son. When Joseph let her into the foyer, Matt followed and put Joseph in a headlock, repeatedly punching him in the face, then locked him out of his apartment and smashed furniture as Ruth and their son cowered in the bathroom.
Police arrested him at gunpoint and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour reckless assault charge. The traumatised family moved out of their home of 20 years.
Ruth and Joseph told Fairfax they were “stunned” when after a two-year period of counselling and rehabilitation, Matthew was admitted back into the game and now plays for Brisbane Broncos. And when the Broncos beat Wests →
Tigers, says Marina, “people in our club say, why did we have to get rid of him? It’s still very much a boys’ club.”
Marina applauded when Ben Barba was sacked in February by the North Queensland Cowboys after he was filmed on CCTV throwing rocks at his partner in a casino and then banned by the NRL. “It is quite controversial, there are people in the game really angry that the Cowboys ruined his career.” He’s driving a truck now.
In an effort to clean up football’s image, in February ARL Commissioner Peter Beattie, and NRL CEO Todd Greenberg announced a “no-fault stand down” for players charged with serious criminal offences. If a player is charged with an offence that carries a maximum penalty of less than 11 years behind bars, club CEOs will have the power to stand a player down where the alleged offence involves women or children. Peter noted that if they did not take a strong stand, “we won’t have a game”.
“That is massive,” says Jessica Halloran. “It is world leading, that is a big deal, fantastic.”
There was a lot at stake. People were turning away from the sport, whose total consolidated revenue for the 2018 season was $499.9 million, with a $46 million profit on the back of broadcast sponsorship and digital revenue.
“This is a game that is bleeding money and finding it hard to sign sponsors,” says Jessica. “You’ve got to the point where people are saying, ‘I am leaving the game, I have had enough,’ and sponsors are threatening to pull out,” says Marina. “We had sponsors saying, ‘We really like your club but we don’t like rugby league, even if the incident was not in our club. So you end up missing out on money.”
The new policy was immediately legally challenged by St. George Dragons player, Jack de Belin, who has been charged with aggravated sexual assault. At a time when his wife was heavily pregnant with their child, a young woman told police she met de Belin, 28, and his friend Callan Sinclair, at a nightclub in Wollongong. Thinking she was accompanying them to another nightclub they went instead to De Belin’s cousin’s apartment. In police documents tendered to Wollongong Local Court, the woman said while she was in the bathroom, de Belin allegedly walked in naked. She walked out and de Belin had a shower. Coming out of the bathroom, de Belin allegedly forcibly removed her clothes and then with his hand around her throat, raped her, inviting his friend to “come have a go”. The pair then allegedly engaged in joint rape, often with his hand on the crying woman’s throat, making it hard for her to breathe. When Sinclair tired, it’s alleged de Belin kept raping her. She allegedly continued on to another nightclub with the men, but left to go to Wollongong Hospital, where she was found to have injuries to her legs, neck, lower abdomen and shoulder.
Currently before the courts, both de Belin and Sinclair have pleaded not guilty. “I am innocent and will vigorously defend the charge against me,” de Belin said in a statement via the St. George Illawarra Dragons.
“There should be an automatic stand down for people on rape or domestic violence charges. I just don’t think they should be allowed back,” says Jessica. “But I am happy for my son to play rugby league now because there is this line in the sand.”
“Sydney Swans has this No D*ckheads policy,” says Sam Mostyn, who joined the club’s board in 2017 after more than a decade serving as a Commissioner with the AFL. “They call each other on being d*ckheads. They never allow a player to go out partying without someone sober with them. A lot of consideration is given to these things by good sporting organisations who appreciate the risk of having large groups of young men built to be incredible sportsmen and community leaders, and very wealthy.”
And the ones who make mistakes and do stupid unthinking things, are a small percentage in a big headline. “The majority of our footballers are kind, considerate and passionate for the game,” says Todd Greenberg.