Rugby League / John Harms / 02 May 2010 / Leave a comment Bet Now

John Harms reflects on a disastrous week for the NRL and sport in general, and ponders the why, how and wherefore.

It has been a most tumultuous week in Australian sport.

Well, in Australian professional sport.

You have to be specific because I reckon professional sport and normal, everyday, garden-variety sport are actually quite different.

One is about commerce, the other is about the game.

The tumult comes from the exposure of the flagrant salary cap rort at the Melbourne Storm. This incident has received such sensational coverage that you would think it has altered the course of human history, and that civilisation as we know it will never be the same.

There is no doubt it is a magnificent issue; an issue which would make a university sports studies lecturer salivate.

Indeed, a media studies lecturer salivate.

Indeed, a business studies lecturer salivate.

Indeed, a sociology lecturer salivate.

Indeed, a law lecturer salivate.

Indeed, a professor of literature salivate.

As someone who would like to teach literature drawing on the finest traditions of the apple-crunching Donald Sutherland in Animal House (a movie which influenced my undergraduate career more than I could ever have anticipated), I would like to consider the Storm rort as part of the sweep of human history. It is beautifully Greek and Biblical and Shakespearean and Footy Show all at once. It is about greed and ambition and community and fallen heroes and a whole stack of stuff.

Which also makes it perfect to discuss over a few beers.

And there has been plenty of that over the past week.

What I find most surprising about the whole fiasco is not that newspaper sub-editors have soberly rejected the temptation to go to town with bad headlines (their restraint is to be congratulated and shows the lofty position the game holds in this country), nor that News Limited have portrayed themselves as squeaky clean in the whole matter.

No, the thing I find most surprising is that people are surprised that something as heinous as salary-cap breaching is happening at all. Brian Waldron, it seemed from the reporting, is so anomalous in something as pure as Australiansport (yes, it is one word, in the same way as thegameofgolf is one word for Greg Norman), that in Act II he is the villain.

In Act I, of course, he was the premiership hero.

But really: a footy club is cutting corners in an effort to win the flag, build its legend and its supporter base, and its profit?

Derrr.

But really: a business does not feel morally bound by a fierce desire to uphold the law of the land (or the league)?

Derrr.

Remember Balzac's dictum: behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

Some of this was discussed at a very fraternal gathering of the willing at the North Fitzroy Arms on Saturday afternoon where the conversation and the red wine flowed among the Queensland visitors and the locals gathered there - except for Adrian who spent the afternoon on the phone to his bookie. And in a rare form turn around, actually won. (He'd have won a lot more had he been ringing Betfair, of course).

After the steak and the Sydney Cup, we crossed St Georges Road to the beautiful Brunswick St Oval, with its 1880s grandstand, home of the old Fitzroy, and the new Fitzroy who play in C Section ammos. They were playing Ajax, Melbourne's Jewish side, coached by that bloke you just can't keep out of the synagogue, Bernie Sheehy. Bernie Sheehy is one of the world's finest footy minds and as Irish as the Liffey itself. Also highly positioned in the world's best lunchers rankings.

Being at that ground and watching community footy (and enjoying everything it is about and stands for) alerts you to the reality that footy played at the highest level - about five tiers above this - has always reflected the values in which it is embedded.

In the late-nineteenth century, elite footy in Melbourne (and it was professional) was about geography, and community, and local pride. And some rather dastardly things were done in the name of the local suburb, even one as pure as Fitzroy. It was also about making a quid, and you don't have to look too far to find betting scandals and nobblings and all manner of skulduggery.

These days, the fans may think of geography and community and all that is glorious, but those who run the show think about money. Commercial values form the basis of so many assumptions in public thinking, and this is reflected in football.

So, when business leaders are being snipped to the tune of millions of dollars for improprieties and collusions, then what do you expect?

Business leaders lead, and if that's business practice in some parts, then some others will take heed.

Even those involved in the football business.

What intrigues me is that the early reporting of this suggested The Storm is unique.

Pig's arse.

If there's not a stack of clubs doing this across both footy and rugby league (among those who can afford it), I'll go he.

There must be a lot of nervous administrators out there, just wondering how David Gallop is going to manage to keep that lid down on Pandora's Box.

He's had enough to do already.

We ain't seen nothin' yet.