Some years ago the late and great editor of Inside Sport magazine, Greg Hunter, gathered his team of journalists and told them of a feature piece the mag would run about sporting “gamesmanship”. He assigned each journo a different sport – cricket, rugby league, even golf – and sent them on their way to knock out the yarn as they saw fit. But there was a caveat: it wasn’t to be called “gamesmanship”. They would call it “cheating”.
Terms like “rule-bending”, “gamesmanship”, they were anathema to Hunter. They were wishy-washy, a nod-and-a-wink. They were flat out lies. White ones, maybe. But still lies. Untruths. Ex-parrots. Feigning injury or conning the referee or otherwise acting dishonestly to gain an unfair advantage, it’s cheating. It’s not “bending” the rules, it’s breaking them. Hunter was black-and-white. The big picture – the purity of sport – demanded it.
Not to say he wouldn’t have been impressed with Glenn Stewart. The Souths back-rower told the truth, and admitted to “diving” and winning an advantage for his team. As my mate Bally says, Stewart’s action-acting was a “try-saver”, as good as any copybook tackle around the ankles that whisked a winger into touch.
So, yes, here we are, again, rolling about in the latest imbroglio to engulf rugby league. How long before someone brands it “Dive-gate”? Not long. And as a post-round talking point, Dive-gate was top fodder. Most of the media were stunned someone actually told the truth. But Stewart, bless him, because he’s old, crotchety and ugly enough, and has a streak of the cussed about him, said words to the effect of: ‘Sure, I wasn’t going to catch the bloke [Michael Morgan] so I ran into Ethan Lowe and fell over in the hope there’d be a video investigation and a Monopoly-esque bank error in my team’s favour’.
And there was. And there has been outrage. ‘What if it had happened in a grand final?’ etc. Now, whether you think it’s cheating or cynical or just part of the hurly-burly of sport depends upon your belief in the purity of sport, and, one assumes, fairies in your garden. Another mate, Kochy, reckons Souths are well known for running into decoy runners.
“They must be coached to do it,” suggests Kochy, who also reckons Greg Inglis ducks his head in tackles and milks penalties. Kochy is a Bulldogs supporter, and saw Krisnan Inu rubbed out for a “spear” tackle on Inglis, a huge man of superb athleticism. But that’s another story.
Adds Bally: “It was a damn good dive by Stewart because it fooled all the refs and saved a try. But the bigger issue is that the refs got it wrong again, upstairs and on-field. I wonder what Todd Greenberg said about that one?”
Greenberg hasn’t uttered anything publicly, as yet, but he likely will. And he’ll no doubt trot out some eloquent spin about … whatever, best practice, something, and onwards the world will turn with a nudge over 99.97% of the human population completely unconcerned with the greatest game of rugby league.
But we are. And here are. And we must blame someone! We must find out who’s responsible! It’s ridiculous! We, the people of rugby league, demand “perfect” rugby league! We can’t cop messy or indistinct much less wrong. We demand rugby league be neat and clean. We want “completed” sets. We want scrums that don’t collapse (or push or anything). The ball must not hit the ground from a man’s hands, no! That’s a knock-on and should be punished with turn-over. And there should be no chance of the other team getting the ball back in the scrum or play-the-ball or tackle because rugby league wants things clean.
And that’s why every time the ball crosses the try-line, or even any time anything happens at all, we should check it on the television to see what happened, just in case there was the barest chance of things being unclean.
And that’s what we have. And that means scope for crafty men like Stewart to, well, cheat. Because people do. They don’t call it cheating because that’s a word with imputations. Is falling over and feigning injury as bad as taking steroids or bribing the ref? No. But it’s still cheating, it’s still gaining an advantage through unscrupulous means. And it isn’t fair. And there should be an investigation.
No there shouldn’t. Because we should just cop it sweet. But we don’t cop it sweet. Why? Because we hate unclean! It’s why we hate rugby union with its stoppages and collapsing scrums. We hate Australian rules because they can drop the ball and play on! We hate soccer because of the diving and injury-feigning, and um … hmm.
And here we are. An argument ran years ago – and lo, did those in charge agree – that it was “ridiculous!” that 40,000 people in the stadium and millions watching at home could bloody see on the replay that the man on the ground had got it “wrong” and why couldn’t men upstairs simply tell him thus? ‘Hey, champion. Little knock-on in the play-the-ball. We could all see it. Turnover.’ Etc.
But rugby league, like the great game of life, isn’t that simple. There are nuances, and implications. Did Jarryd Hayne’s toenail scrape the Suncorp sideline paint? Did Ryan Hoffman fall over because Wati Holmwood thundered about ANZ Stadium in the nude? And did Ethan Lowe impede Glenn Stewart in his pursuit of Michael Morgan?
And that’s why referees check everything: to be sure. Because rugby league can’t cop it when things are wrong. And if they are deemed wrong then things are changed. And there are implications. And one of the implications is that a two-person team is asked to pass judgement on incidents, and everyone thinks they’re wrong.
Stewart knew there’d be a review if he ran into Lowe. And being an experienced man well-versed in his body’s human movement, fell down as if harpooned and caused the on-field official to think, as he is instructed to think: ‘We have the technology, we should check it out, to be sure’. And thus the two-pronged video team upstairs “got it wrong,” according to some. Others would say you could make a case Stewart was impeded in his pursuit of Morgan.
And here we are. Again. Some argue we should brush video referrals for anything but grounding. But this, too, has implications. And the game could arguably be “messier” (and rugby league hates messy) because decoy runners could be everywhere in the defensive line, clogging it like mighty human bollards.
People argue, well, they can’t “disappear”. And that’s correct. And coaches know it. And when Johnathan Thurston’s weaving and dummying and deciding which of his giant crash-test dummies to hurl into the heaving meat cauldron, you might have James Tamou, Matt Scott and Tariq Sims all in there, standing about, getting in the way because they can’t disappear. And if you think the four officials on the field can adjudicate whether players who ran into them might’ve got to the ball-carrier who’s just scored a try – and get it right, every time – then I would suggest along with fairies in your garden you have many giant red kangaroos bounding about in your top paddock.
The bottom line is that you can’t “fix” this. You can’t script sport. All you can do – and Greenberg and referees’ boss Tony Archer know it – is have the best worst system. Or you could cop it sweet. And you could call cheating for what it is.
