With every career choice, comes sacrfices. If you want to be a doctor you accept, you accept you're going to spend most of your early twenties studying. If you're a police officer, you accept there's some chance you're going to get shot at.
Professional athletes accept that they need to look after their bodies and that comes with rigorous training but also dietary intake. In sports where the difference between winning and losing can come down to miniscule percentages, the most successful professional athletes look for every edge they can get.
Except, not so much in Rugby League.
In many ways, Rugby League is a sport that has failed to properly leap the chasm behind its amateur past and it's supposedly professional present. Clearly, alcohol consumption is deeply ingrained in the culture of the game and you only have to listen to the heroes of the past talk about their drinking habits to know just how deeply that runs. In a game where team mates have to put their bodies through pain and suffering in the name of the collective, drinking sessions have been synonomous with team bonding and unity.
So no-one is going to begrudge your A Grade Rugby League players going out and hitting their local pub after a tough game of footy. It's part of the charm and experience of the amateur game.
But those A Grade footballers aren't earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Those A Grade footballers aren't on national television as role models to millions of impressionable kids.
As far as sacrfices go, I wold have thought giving up alcohol - at the very least during the playing season - is a relatively small sacrifice for professional footballers to make. Many will leave the game with injuries they will carry with them forever, and that extends to things like the risk of early on-set dementia. Those are sacrifices that would make me think twice about choosing to become a professional footballer.
But giving up the grog during a professional playing career. That's not a biggie.
Quite frankly, it stuns me that professional Rugby League clubs allow their players to drink at all, particularly when they are in training.
You won't find a dietary professional anywhere in the world that would suggest alcohol does anything but impede an athlete's muscle recovery, growth and energy.
And that's not even to get started on the behavioural issues, related to drinking. Do you believe there have been any behavioural issues in the game, where alcohol hasn't been a factor?
I get that Rugby League players are young men in the prime of their lives. And that it would be tough to see their mates going out and having a good time on the grog. But surely, that's the choice you make when you choose to pursue the life of a professional athlete. It's not a normal life. There are sacrifices, and to my mind, that just has to be one of them. But there are also countless perks and thousands of blokes that would be willing to trade places in a second, if they had what NRL players have.
The code can hardly claim to be a professional sport until it has the expectation that its ambassadors - the players - treat their bodies like most other professional athletes do.
Even more so, until Rugby League administrators take this kind of stance, they have to be ultimately held responsible. I'm sick of Rugby League CEOs and officials bemoaning the code's behavioural problems when there is such a clear and obvious course of action that will remedy most of the problem, but for whatever reason they have to date been unwilling to take. Rugby League players are men who should know better, but don't. Rugby League's leaders are men who do know better, but still don't.
Comments
I don't know if alcohol should really be banned because a small percentage go stupid when they drink. Also, the more rules you introduce, the more rules there are to break and the more issues arise.
I'd like to think we can get the players to a stage where they take full responsibility for their actions and aren't looking to the game to tell them what they can and can't do. We've seen playing groups agree to lay off the drink during the season, but that's a decision generally made by the team as a collective.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find another sport where drinking is banned. Footballers in England and Europe are famous for their partying and they're paid NRL salaries every week.
For mine, it's got to be a decision the players make. They're out there busting their backsides for 10 months of the year. You ban drinking and I think you end up with a lot of resentment from the playing group as their private lives are essentially being invaded by their employer.
I've read JT's autobiography and plenty of times he wrote about being on the drink. But the scenario that led him to easing up and reducing his partying was him turning up hungover to QLD training and the entire team ignoring him before Mal Meninga threatened to dump him from the Origin side for life. It was a decision JT came to after realising how much of an idiot he'd been.
The other approach is we invest more money into sports science and basically make it difficult for players to justify drinking. If they can see the impact drinking has on their performance they make the decision themselves.
I'd also like to add that if the NRL were to do this, they'd have to ban all alcohol advertising and sponsorships. You can't ban the playing group from drinking and then accept money from breweries and distilleries.
>I think you'd be hard pressed to find another sport where drinking is banned.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a sport who hasn't managed to get through an offseason for near on a decade without arrests, women bashing, drugs, alcohol, sex and rape scandals to so many of the codes stars.
Is alcohol the only root cause? No. Do we need a MASSIVE culture change in the code? Yes. And the only way to change culture is for a series of change agents (those with influence from administration to those on the ground) to set and enforce hard boundaries.
Habits need to be broken. What was the one commonality between basically all of the events we've had? Alcohol. The social lubricant that lowers inhibition and dulls critical thinking.
And if the players want to get angry at someone when they want to enjoy a beer at the end of a week and can't because there's a strictly enforced alcohol ban - they can get angry... At the handful of morons who have made our game a laughing stock by their inability to make reasonable decisions. This is their fault. So now because of a few all must suffer.
That will change the culture. Instead of clapping their mates on and filming them when they're acting like drunken idiots, they'll stop them because they know it's only going to make their lives worse if they don't.
And if they don't want to give up the drink for a few years? All good! Go back to park footy. Oh, yeah, and forgo your 200k plus salary. Forgo that privilege that 99.99% of the country don't get afforded. Then go and act the fool and get arrested in obscurity until your heart is content. No one will bat an eyelid.
But you can't have it both ways. You're either a professional elite athlete on big bucks and willing to take the sacrifices that come with it, or you're not.
We are the laughing stock of the sporting community. I am starting to feel genuinely ashamed of a lot of the code. That's such a sad feeling.
As for alcohol companies sponsoring the NRL and clubs. I don't love it, but it's a separate argument. Players don't have to exclusively use their sponsors products. The sponsors are there to target fans, not players. And it's quite okay for players and fans to live by different boundaries.
Maybe you should look at the NFL? They've had players arrested and convicted of murder, had players charged with manslaughter, domestic violence, drug use, drug possession, possession of a weapon.
Alcohol advertising is definitely tied to this. You can't separate them. How on one hand, can the NRL accept alcohol sponsorships and on the other hand ban their players from consuming the sponsor's product? Alcohol sponsorships are on the grounds, jerseys and shorts. It doesn't make sense to ban the players but say "You can't drink VB, but can you run around in a jersey with their logo on it so we can sell it?"
The NFL also has a massive and hugely documented culture problem: http://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/49ers-vikings-fan-fight-nfl...
The NFL is also dealing with dropping ticket sales and viewership numbers year on year where other sports grow and thrive. The NFL also has no idea how to address it's culture problem - any progressive moves are seen as an affront to their considerable right wing fan base. There are similarities...
On the alcohol sponsorship, I agree that it's hypocritical of the NRL to accept sponsorships whilst also banning drink from their players. But we're in a chicken and egg scenario here and something has to change. Sponsorships are vital to the current business model. But they'll change and adapt.
When cricket ruled out cigarette sponsorships it was going to be the end of the game, no longer viable. The sky was falling. And then it didn't.
Im all for banning alcohol sponsorship, but I don't want it tied to an alcohol ban for players otherwise neither side will move. The more pressing issue is the player behaviour, address that first. The issues are related, but they're not tied at the hip.
I have to agree that it really needs to be the player to make a decision to want the best from their limited time at the top. There is certainly nothing wrong with having ONE drink after the game, but being professional players they need to think about everything that goes into their mouth. Everything they consume that is detrimental to their bodies directly affects their livelihood. They need to accept this and make the correct decisions. It would be the same if they ate junk food every day - before long they would find themselves in reserve grade and probably not offered another contract.
And that is not even taking into consideration the damage they are doing to their brand, and the possibilities for additional income post NRL career. It really is a simple choice for players, but I don't know that the clubs and NRL are doing enough to make sure the players know what they are doing. In the end though if you can't be professional 24/7 earning upwards of half a million dollars a year, then you probably don't deserve that amount of money.
Not everyone is cut out for the responsibility of money and power. Multiply that by many factors when they're young people who don't have the weight of life's experience on their shoulders yet.
This much money this young can really corrupt some individuals. I dare say people who don't respond well to the environment would be better off removed from it. Hayne demonstrated very early on he simply didn't have the emotional maturity to deal with the spotlight he was thrust into, and look how that ended. I can't help but think how he would've turned out if he was removed from the excess when he was first found to be not coping.
I think that decision has to be left up to the individual, rather than being mandated from above. Let's remember also that alcohol companies are still heavily involved in sponsoring the game, the game makes a ton of money from sponsorship and the sale of grog, it's a bit hard to tell young men they can't then drink at all in season.
My issue is when we as fans throw the whole playing group out because of the actions of the few. I've been appalled at some of the over the top reactions to Peni's standing down on the various Eels Facebook fan forums. One guy claiming the whole team is rotten and need to have all their contracts torn up. That is just a lazy slap in the face to the vast majority of our team that don't do stupid things on the drink.
>I think that decision has to be left up to the individual, rather than being mandated from above.
How's that working for us lately? We've tried treating them like logical responsible adults and the reputation of the game is in tatters. Time for a different approach.
The reason for the strength of the fans reactions is because they're bloody fed up. A minority will always have the power to screw stuff for the majority, so we have to make sure our minority hold themselves to much higher standards or are rubbed out of the game. Self regulation hasn't worked, sacrificial lambs (eg Carney) haven't worked, the NRL needs top down zero tolerance to kick the minority out of the game.
Brett, What you say is sensible. The individual must decide and be tough enough to abstain. That's what should happen.
Even if it was partially-banned by clubs or the game players could and would likely do it underground. In secret.
Alcohol is in our nature.
It's un-Australian not to drink. Especially, with your mates.
https://youtu.be/81tS6hogDNU
Remember the classic legendary Rugby League commerical: I feel like a Tooheys? Listen to the words. It's symbolises our culture.
And its big money in NRL and other sports. It's sponsors.
Alcohol was advertised 3 times a minute in the 2018 NRL grand final.
I am very torn on this issue. As an anti-alcohol, anti-smoker, anti-any-drugs, anti-destructivness. I wanted alcohol abusers, like Peni to be sacked. But that's quite selfish of me, as I don't consume any of that crap. That's a personal decision; but an anti-social, weird and un-popular one by real-life Australians and many, if not most, countries.
Fox wrote an interesting article 66 scandals in 4 years and counting. Alcohol is and would have been involved in most of these scandals. You can add Terepo to that growing list.
I'm sorry: The Australian Captain, and potential future Immortal Greg Iglis, stood down for alcohol abuse. Often alcohol is used an an excuse.
This is a rare occasion, where I am not sure there is a solution, other than the individual deciding. And saying No. Reflecting, learning and growimg, and standing up and swim against the tide. Even if your mates think you're weird. At least, many fans would respect the professionalism. And your mind would be sharper. As would your body. Alcohol kills brain cells. And rugby league players, as most of us, need every bit they have.
TAD, You and I both know the last thing on people's mind when they hit the bottle is cirrhosis. Or killing brain cells.
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