At its annual golf day several years ago, a leading NRL club invited players, sponsors, coterie members, officials and sundry media types along to farewell the recently completed season.
But this was a golf day with a peculiarly rugby league twist: topless models handed out cans of beer to the golfers; on one hole, women dressed only in bikinis bent over and put teepegs in the turf, while standing astride players who had been instructed to lie on their backs on the ground.
It’s unlikely the golfers were expecting that sort of hospitality, or view, when they turned up to the event. It did, after all, involve one of Australia’s leading sporting clubs, and was being held at a top-notch resort course. And, of course, this was the 21st century.
Even by rugby league standards, the “entertainment” was considered by many to be overdoing the concept of looking after your sponsors. The club’s marketing people, the brains behind the idea of topless models and bikini-clad caddies, were told in no uncertain terms that they should ditch the soft porn and come up with something more appropriate for the following year.
The story is told in light of the Matthew Johns-group sex saga, when he and several other Cronulla players had sex with a 19-year-old woman at a Christchurch hotel in 2002, which has once again trained the spotlight on rugby league, and its very idiosyncratic, working man’s culture.
While the rest of the sporting world has moved, at differing speeds, with the times, league is starring in its very own episode of Life On Mars, stuck in a time-warp from 35 years ago.
Perhaps that is not surprising. League could well be the toughest sport of all to play. It is brutal, almost gladiatorial, and requires of its combatants enormous courage. It follows then, that the players who make it to the elite level are very tough, macho, unreconstructed blokes. That’s not to say they’re all blockheads, because they’re not, but neither do many of them get manicures, have their poodles shampooed or their kaftans dry-cleaned. Nor do they have a hissy-fit when they can’t find their blowdryer.
Roy Masters, the former NRL coach and now Fairfax sportswriter, says league players exist in that “golden triangle” where they have celebrity status, a lot of money and too much time on their hands. In his 2006 book, Bad Boys, Masters writes frankly about how group sex was a way to create closer bonds between teammates.
As well as bringing into focus that culture, the Johns affair also raises questions about the sometimes murky relationship between sportswriters and their sport.
According to The Australian yesterday, Channel Nine News sports reporter Danny Weidler has admitted he has known about the Johns story for years “but didn’t consider reporting it”.
The logical assumption is that the TV newshound did not want to rock the boat at Nine by outing one of his network colleagues and, presumably, mates. Weidler does pieces for Nine’s Footy Show, of which Johns (aka Reg Reagan) is the star. Either that, or Weidler’s news judgment needs a major recalibration.
This is how the symbiotic relationship sometimes works between sports reporter and athlete. It’s not just “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”, but “I’ll protect your back if you give me some good stories in return”.
Those journalists who upset this delicate ecosystem by being hyper-critical of players can expect to be cold-shouldered, or worse.
In 1990, the American sports reporter Lisa Olsen, while covering the football beat for the Boston Herald, was sexually harassed by New England Patriots football players in the team’s locker room. Olson sued the National Football League and the players involved were punished, but she became such a pariah in Boston — her tyres were slashed, she received hate mail and death threats and was the victim of burglaries — that she wasn’t just frozen out, she was driven out — of town.
Olson was eventually transferred to Sydney by the Boston Herald’s then owner, News Corporation, where she worked for The Daily Telegraph and then the Sydney Morning Herald.
So who else knew about the Christchurch gang-bang? Just Weidler? The incident gives rise to suspicions out there in readerland that journalism is not the fearless trade its practitioners would love to have us believe. That it is sometimes a closed shop, where contacts are protected, deals are done and truth in reporting is just an abstract concept spoken about in journalism school lecture theatres.
Charles Happell is a former sports editor at The Age
Charles I really liked your article except for the following. Please rethink what you have said here…
” That’s not to say they’re all blockheads, because they’re not, ”
– ” but neither do many of them get manicures, have their poodles shampooed or their kaftans dry-cleaned. Nor do they have a hissy-fit when they can’t find their blowdryer.”
I can assure you neither of those two descriptions are worthy of a real man.
But how are you to know that , you are only a man.
Hear! Hear! The spin implicitly condones the behaviour of these very immature young men, encouraging the worst excesses, and worst of all it entrenches these behaviours in young immature minds. Without the spin, media minders, and legal protection this behaviour would have been nipped in the bud and everyone would have benefited. There is too much money involved in rugby league to enable the truth to be told. A big thanks to you Charlie for maintaining standards in journalism, and thanks to our national broadcaster for the Four Corners because no commercial TV channel would have the balls to stand up against the advertising dollars, the media minders, and the legal teams. The spin doctors have hijacked the fourth estate, once the guardians of our free speech and democracy.
Um, so this is a piece criticising sports writers’ code of silence which coyly fails to name the club involved in the bastardry it uses an an example of this *confused*
It’s nice to have it confirmed, more or less officially, that footie players are a bunch of wankers.
I wish people would stop referring to this disgraceful situation as engaging in “group sex”?I’ve never engaged in this myself, but I’d have thought it means equal numbers of males and females. The debasing activity in NZ was a gang of misogynists engaging in an unequal power activity – perhaps 6-12 ‘with’ one woman. It’s a disgrace, and any attempt at lightening the situation by some idiot trying to be funny; so called ‘sports writer/s’ only makes the situation worse.
Too many people still miss the whole point. How males interact with girls/women is ‘taught’ before birth, by the waiting parents perception of the roles of boys and girls. For too long, there’s been an unhealthy boys club attitude to girls and women – it must stop, and it must stop now! I haven’t listened/watched a game of Rugby League since the disgraceful situation caused by the Bulldogs – and I don’t intend changing that practice any time soon! The ‘boys club’ attitude is beyond my comprehension, it defies any deserving degree of respect. Matthew Johns had to be almost ‘operated on’ before he even acknowledged the pain of “Clare”? I’m not convinced that his so-called mates who were also in that room ascertained, that “Clare” was in agreement with what was happening to her, or going to. Did each one of them ask her permission?
The laws in NSW are pretty clear – any person engaging in a sexual encounter MUST be 100% sure of consent; and it must be sought if and when anything changes,eg extra male participants. It must also be sought before different activites are engaged in. If the woman is drunk or in shock or ?? then all activity must CEASE! And, putting her in a cab and saying, ‘thanks for that’ is repugnant, and won’t cut it with me, or thankfully the laws of this state.
Matthew Johns was not a kid – he was supposedly a 30 year old man. There’s no excuses, ever. Those so-called ‘mates’ of his are just low life – in every sense! And Matthew, your greatest crime wasn’t being unfaithful to your wife – in the scheme of things, that doesn’t even count. This is not a ‘family matter’? This insults every woman in this country! You failed to recognise this, as do your ‘mates’? The NRL could start changeing things by stopping the use of scantilly clad ‘cheer leaders’. And as for that supposed “senior NRL player” who proudly boasted that this behaviour would continue – he should be forced to show his face, and then sacked – immediately! Start getting the message fellows- it must stop! I’ve had a gutful of the lot of them! Animals have too much self respect to behave in this manner! I’m not convinced, that we won’t be visiting this issue again – probably too many times! Anybody who makes ‘breaks’ for them should resign too!