Article from:
The Daily Telegraph
Players are on notice
By Rebecca Wilson | August 30, 2008 12:00am
THIS was the week rugby league struck back.
For so long, badly behaved footballers have had a knack of stealing headlines from the real game and getting away with it.
There is no doubt Greg Bird ruined the week, and possibly the season, for his team when he allegedly glassed his girlfriend in the early hours of last Saturday morning.
The back pages should have been full of the Sharks' great win last weekend and the very real prospect they may finish in the top two teams of 2008.
Instead, we read on the front page that the champion Cronulla lock allegedly spent the night drinking and arguing with his girlfriend before everything went pear-shaped and Katie Milligan ended up in hospital with a fractured eye socket and a lacerated eye.
Milligan may well decide not to make a statement against her boyfriend. Either way, Bird will still face a court. He is charged with assault occasioning grievous bodily harm.
Safe to say that this time last year, though, Bird would most likely have still donned his sky-blue jersey this week and played in the match that could decide the Sharks' finals prospects for the year.
The club would have thrown us the "innocent until proved guilty" line and allowed the judgments to come from the legal world. But Cronulla's fans and sponsors demanded action, spurred on by claims Bird made the terrible decision to lay blame for the alleged assault at his flatmate's feet.
No matter what a court decides now, Bird's reputation has been indelibly tarnished in the Sutherland Shire and beyond. His indefinite demise, which followed closely on the heels of the sacking of Todd Carney from the Canberra Raiders, proves that rugby league bosses are finally realising that this stuff simply cannot be tolerated.
Carney is the one who publicly urinated on a mate's leg at a nightclub in Canberra several weeks ago.
At a time of the year when neither team could afford to lose a star, Carney and Bird's bosses decided enough was enough. Bird will never wear that blue jersey again, whether or not he is found guilty or innocent. Carney won't be seen anywhere for a while either.
An obviously shattered Sharks coach, Ricky Stuart, and his chief executive, Tony Zappia, swiftly cut Bird earlier this week. The public backlash and the implications of Bird's alleged actions were simply too much for a club and its fans to take.
Stuart is feeling particularly betrayed. He had taken a troubled Bird under his wing and turned him into a champion.
Off the field, too, Bird appeared to have transformed himself into a reasonably decent young man. The result was his humiliating suspension - and a very cloudy future in rugby league.
Fox Sports US boss, David Hill, told a gathering of rugby league administrators last year that the NFL in the US had adopted a no-tolerance approach to bad player behaviour for several seasons.
He advised them strongly to follow suit. But rugby league and the other football codes have been far too forgiving beasts for that.
Very few clubs are willing to make examples of players, let alone their big stars. The cynical nature of sport has meant that winning has been placed above sensibility as clubs have turned a blind eye to appalling antics.
The West Coast Eagles copped Ben Cousins for way too long.
The culture at the Canterbury Bulldogs has been rotten for years because club bosses allowed badly behaved players to run the place.
Thank goodness a stronger management is now in place.
Rugby union had its fair share of boofheads too - blokes who wreaked havoc on away trips and managed to escape with only minor penalties.
The sacking of the Western Force's Matt Henjak earlier this year, after he broke another player's jaw in an ugly nightclub incident, was a portent of what we can expect from footy codes as they try desperately to move their sports to the back of the paper again.
It is too early to say what will become of Greg Bird.
That is for a court to decide.
But there is no doubt that the Sharks will be a better club for their decision to cut him this week.
Bird's manager, Gavin Orr, has already visited Bird's girlfriend in spite of a court order preventing any third parties associated with the axed Cronulla star from seeing her.
Milligan's lawyers are also associated with Orr so it remains to be seen if the young woman will make a statement against her boyfriend.
As the final sad chapter is played out in a courtroom, something good has at least come of the entire affair.
Footy clubs have handed their players notice that the old adage that the player is always right won't stick any more.
The worm has finally turned.
link
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/sport/nrl/story/0,26799,24263704-5016307,00.html
good article by Rebecca Wilson.
