A century ago, Australian sporting teams left players out of tours to England because they were not the right type of chap. They might be a risk of passing the port the wrong way, blowing their noses too loudly, or otherwise embarrassing the colonials in front of their hosts. Or they might be Irish Catholics. Or they might not "fit in". No official explanation was given, thanks to the convenient cloak of selection-room confidentiality, but everyone heard the rumours and held a theory. Lines in the sand were drawn about off-field behaviour. Omissions were never purely on the basis of form or ability. You were either in or out of the clique.
We scoff at those archaic ways – it was cricket that first imposed ye olde noe dickheades rule – but has much changed? Sporting cultures see Western Bulldogs Bob Murphy and Luke Beveridge start their pre-season minutes after the end of the AFL grand final in a fierce competition of I-can-be-a-better-bloke-than-you, no-you-can't-I'm-a-better-bloke, and think, We want a piece of that. They see the mystique of the All Blacks' nexus of "cultural values" and results, and benchmark against it. They make a cult of nurturing "the person" as opposed to "the player". As with anything founded on good intentions and appeal to corporate sponsors, in practice it leaves a morass of hypocrisy, selective amnesia, cover-ups and secret codes that ultimately boil down to the rights of the dominant clique and the rule of "if you didn't get caught, you did nothing wrong".
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Fifita and Radradra left out of Kangaroos
CEO Todd Greenberg says the NRL recommended Semi Radradra and Andrew Fifita be left out of a Kangaroos squad featuring seven debutants.
When a line in the sand must be drawn, an illusionist is required. This week it was the NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg performing the honours.
Fifita is not picked, first, because of his support for the coward punch killer Kieran Loveridge. "While that may not have been illegal," Greenberg said, "it was in poor taste in the extreme." Furthermore, Fifita was suspended last year "for abusing a junior match official, and has been involved in other off-field incidents." So the Fifita rap sheet is: (1) acting in bad taste; (2) something for which he has already served a punishment; and (3) unspecified rumours.
At least he did not say Fifita was omitted on form, which is what they used to maintain in the old days – Keith Miller's infamous omission from the 1949 South African cricket tour comes to mind – but there is a broad consensus that Fifita was denied the Clive Churchill Medal in the grand final for character reasons. In the Sharks' win, Fifita made nine more runs, 11 more tackles, one more line break and seven more tackle breaks than the eminently worthy but not best on ground Luke Lewis. Fifita gained 56 more metres, without counting the kilometres more he ran across-field in search of Blake Green or Cooper Cronk to run at. He conceded no penalties and missed no tackles. And he scored that try.
So: stupidity and bad taste, past misdeeds and unspecified rumours mean you are eligible to play in the NRL and win a premiership but ineligible to make a speech or go to England.
The contortions around Semi Radradra's omission were from the cruel-to-be-kind department. The NRL, Greenberg said, "will always give its players the presumption of innocence". Or at least it did last week, when Radradra was selected to tour Papua New Guinea with the Prime Minister's XIII. But now, with upcoming domestic violence charges, "we don't want either him or the team to be distracted by this case, and we think that Semi should devote all his time and energy to this very important legal matter". So it's for Semi's good that he's been left out. Then, as per the usual method, the hall monitors, Mal Meninga, Johnathan Thurston, Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk, stepped up to voice support for their own opinions.
So who is the right type of chap to represent Australia? Fifita and Radradra are not fit and proper to join such upstanding gentlemen as Blake Ferguson, who has been convicted for indecent assault (something for which he has already served a punishment), spat on patrons at a music festival, been sacked by two clubs, and been subject to more unspecified rumours than Kim Kardashian. These right types include chaps who have been accused of assault, players whose behaviour has seen them sacked by multiple clubs, players who will break the rules and commit dog acts to win a game. All of these gentlemen do deserve to tour, not because of their moral character but because they are the best rugby league players in the land. And so do Fifita and Radradra, unless they are found guilty of criminal acts. The presumption of innocence applies to all those other Kangaroo representatives; why not to these two?
![Don't prejudge: Semi Radradra deserves to tour unless he is found guilty of a criminal offence.](/web/20161010025609im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/p/y/m/v/t/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grwr7a.png/1475811220667.jpg)
Let's be real. There is no "culture" without double standards. As Aaron Smith's mid-week bathroom assignation shows, even a culture as fabled as the All Blacks' is inevitably built on hypocrisy. We can applaud Meninga's aim to rebuild a Kangaroo culture, but question why that culture is so weak that it cannot exert its influence to improve Fifita's attitude. Why is there such fear of one bad apple spoiling the barrel? Why can't this Kangaroo team – many of whom have matured and earnt redemption for past misdeeds – take Fifita and Radradra under their wing and help redeem them too? Isn't this what a strong team culture does? Are we talking about individuals whose proven behaviour is so far beyond the pale that they can't be helped to grow up, or about a clique that simply doesn't like them and doesn't want to let them in?
The Kangaroo bans, it has been made clear, have been driven from within the senior playing group. It's been left to the administrators to draw the line in the sand. Lines in the sand are convenient; they can so easily be rubbed out and redrawn somewhere else. Sometimes they go in circles. Those early cricketers used to try to imitate an ideal of the English gentleman. Decades later, in looser times, the "system", as it was known, was a larrikins' club encouraging young men to play up. Nowadays, the "system" is puritanical, exerting peer pressure to do the right thing, complete recovery and get to bed early. Standards of acceptable behaviour change as society changes; but what endures is the everlasting influence of the ruling clique.
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