NRL Hooligans thread

[serious14]

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/05/13/rugby.scandal/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Third most popular story on CNN International as of the time of this post.

 

[dibo]

Sacked for having consensual sex with a girl who then later regretted it..hmm

What I also don't get is why it's taken her so long to regret it publicly?

In addition, surely this should just be a matter between Johns and his wife and family and it isn't a sackable offence for his current employer. If he was still employed by the club and they sacked him from breaching a club rule (if they had them in place) then that would make sense. Please explan.... ???

She would have been pretty traumatised (there were a number of other women who didn't come forward but whose cases are similar).

While there's no question that she gave consent for Johns to have sex with her, there's got to be some consideration of the fact that she *didn't* give express consent for everyone else. One yes doesn't mean the blokes arriving through the window were given implied consent. It's not a case of once she's on the job then it's an open door policy.

Characterising it as consensual sex that is later regretted is probably missing the point, but it would have been so incredibly difficult to make any charges stick.

Johns and the (still unnamed, to the NRL's disgrace) other Sharks players have apparently felt ashamed and sorry for the actions on the night, which also implies that they know what went on wasn't 100% right. Using a teenage girl for a prop in a team bonding exercise is completely disgusting.

Johns had a pretty squeaky clean image, which is one reason why he got these jobs in the first place. That image is pretty tarnished now, which is why he's been stood down. Image matters, even to the NRL and Channel 9.

 

[~Floss~]

(still unnamed, to the NRL's disgrace)

They named which trip it was and the date and location, and stated that it was at least 11 players and others associated with the club. It would be easy to work out the possibilities to within 50% certainty i reckon.

 

[Honkee]

So let me get this right.

Mathew Johns: Fired from channel 9 for consensual sex (jury is out on whose story, his or hers, will end up being true)

Mathew Newton: Smacks Brooke Satchwell in the eye is given a leading role in one of channel 9s biggest productions of the year?

I guess it pays to have fathers in high places

 

[Sean]

Sacked for having consensual sex with a girl who then later regretted it..hmm

Brought the game into disrepute and also cheated on his wife with who he has two boys. Sick f**k.

This is an issue which is happening throughout all levels of the game from Professional to amateur leagues across the country. Why not target the top offenders? theyre the ones to made an example of as theyre supposed to be role models to the fans of the sport.

What shat me last night in ACA's interview with Matthew Johns is that he did not stand up and give a direct message to the players of the NRL that they're the ROLE MODELS of the sport and that they should be responsible and conscious of their actions. They chose to play professional football so they should follow suit as to what duties are expect of them and paid for.

I feel nothing will be learnt from this. The pack will still be the pack of boys, and the gaggers looking for trouble will still find themselves in it.

 

[Sean]

So let me get this right.

Mathew Johns: Fired from channel 9 for consensual sex (jury is out on whose story, his or hers, will end up being true)

MJ had the chance to stand up and say something in what was a distorted power balance between a football team and a highly intoxicated 19 yr old female. He instigated the gang bang by taking her back to the team hotel and when it spiralled from two on one to 14 on one with subs, he did not interject when he "took a step back" (as he put it). He let it go on.

 

[FFC Mariner]

If I was away with a my team on a work sponsored event and something like this happened, everyone involved would be sacked straight away (as we should).

Regardless of the value to the organisation of the people involved or the impact on the unit in the short term, we would go for brand damage if nothing else.

Until the tools who run the game and the clubs themselves realise the reality of the 21st century and if you want to be a business (and take the $$) then you have to act like a business.

You cant have it both ways.

This family has now shown itself to believe itself to be above the rules that govern "mere mortals" and are paying for it.

Their mum must be proud

 

[dibo]

It makes me wonder what would have happened if the boys involved weren't prominent sportspeople and were instead maybe some boys from Bankstown with family names like 'Skaf'.

 

[~Floss~]

What shat me last night in ACA's interview with Matthew Johns is that he did not stand up and give a direct message to the players of the NRL that they're the ROLE MODELS of the sport and that they should be responsible and conscious of their actions. They chose to play professional football so they should follow suit as to what duties are expect of them and paid for.

I feel nothing will be learnt from this. The pack will still be the pack of boys, and the gaggers looking for trouble will still find themselves in it.

Agree 100%.

Even when fed questions designed to give him ample opportunity to build some credibility he stuck to the 2 lines his PR person (or lawyer) gave him.

eg. Q: Was there anything you would do differently now if given the opportunity to go back to that night and change things
A: I would have stepped out sooner and played no part in it

... which would have changed nothing except the name Matthew Johns would be replaced with someone else as the figurehead.

"My main concern was the pain and embarrassment it has caused myself and my wife"
... obviously very true.

P.S.: I believe he was also asked if he cared to comment on how this affects the NRL / its image & players: Declined, saying he can only comment on his own feelings of public embarrassment.

 

[Sacko]

Sacked for having consensual sex with a girl who then later regretted it..hmm

Not too uncommon (or is that just me?)

Just how many times have you been sacked for having consensual sex with a girl then?

 

[dibo]

Sacked for having consensual sex with a girl who then later regretted it..hmm

Not too uncommon (or is that just me?)

Just how many times have you been sacked for having consensual sex with a girl and then passing her round to your mates like a bucket to drop their loads in too then?

Edited for accuracy.

 

[FFC Mariner]

Thanks Dibo. That would be none.

is anyone else getting ready to hurl when the Johns boys launch their charitable foundation- it is next in the PR spin playbook isnt it?

 

[Paolo]

Channel nine have just confirmed the reinstatement of Matthew Johns after the kiwi girl withdrew her allegations stating that she didn't know the interchange rule

 

[Sacko]

Channel nine have just confirmed the reinstatement of Matthew Johns after the kiwi girl withdrew her allegations stating that she didn't know the interchange rule

 

[dibo]

Annabel Crabb from the SMH firmly sticks a pointy toe into the whole saga.

Group sex and 'bunning': it's all Greek to me

    * Annabel Crabb
    * May 14, 2009 - 1:48PM

"Am I missing something?" I thought to myself early in the week, as the Matthew Johns controversy thundered on with a life of its own, and yet it seemed that Johns would press on at The Footy Show.

I mean, no one wants to be judgemental, or anything.

And I'd hate to be thought a fuddy-duddy.

But you don't have to be especially judgmental, do you, to harbour some reservations about someone who is unfazed about being joined, at the business end of a date, by nine or 10 workmates with their pants off?

Aberrant behaviour can be survivable.

The West Australian Government boasts as Treasurer a man who is famous for theatrically sniffing the freshly vacated seat of a female staff member.

Hell, a search engine and 15 keystrokes (K-E-V-I-N-R-U-D-D-E-A-R-W-A-X) are all it takes to summon a visual reminder of the weird stuff our Prime Minister gets into when he thinks no one is looking.

But this is a bit different. A lot different. Eleven guys lining up in front of a 19-year-old is a lot different.

"I left the room. I only went back in to check that everything was OK," Johns said on Wednesday night, halfway through the Nine Network's half-hour torture of Johns and his wife, an interview so intensely voyeuristic that, after 20 minutes or so, you felt about as bad as if you'd been in the room yourself.

Went back in to check that everything was OK?

OK in an "all my mates having orderly sex with the girl I brought back to my room" sort of way?

One of the things that's most baffling about this whole affair is the extent to which a small part of the population apparently considers this sort of stuff unsurprising.

And hats off to David Gallop, by the way, whose stubbornly, insistently normal responses to this behaviour provide an island of sanity.

The closest thing I've heard to a justification is that it's some sort of complicated team building exercise.

Perhaps that's true, although if it was team building, it's obviously failed, seeing that at least half a dozen unnamed blokes from the room that night seem fairly happy for Johns to take the rap - to a devastating extent - for everything they did.

Where are those guys?

Where's that famous team spirit?

But surely somebody, at some point, needs to cut through the forgiving fug of psychoanalysis and evaluate this quaint league tradition (apparently it's called "bunning", a new word for most of us) for what it is.

Strip away the fame and the adulation and all the trappings.

Strip away the girl, even, and ask the obvious question.

Which is: Why would a group of blokes come together, as if drawn by some invisible gravitational force, and gather in a room to masturbate with each other?

What do we ordinarily call that behaviour?

Much criticism has been made that the players who engage in "bunning" are exploiting these girls for bestial sexual purposes.

I don't know.

Those girls are being used all right, but I reckon they're being used as beards to disguise the otherwise perfectly obvious, screaming queerness of what's going on.

Come on. Are you kidding?

Let's say it out loud: it's the gayest thing ever.

And these are the same blokes who can't wait to climb into dresses for stunts on The Footy Show. Don't think we're not putting two and two together.

So come on, chaps.

If you want to get together and celebrate your oiled, toned bodies in the celebrated Greek tradition, then go ahead.

Just leave the ladies out of it, will you, and do us all a favour?

 

[David Votoupal]

Let's also look at it this way. Not every NRL player does those sorts of things, and for every idiot you find perfectly good people who play the game.

And let's not fool ourselves into thinking other codes are scot free of these problems, or of any kind of boofhead mentality.

 

[FFC Mariner]

At last a journo lifts the homo-erotic cone of silence.

Closets the lot of 'em

 

[~Floss~]

Let's also look at it this way. Not every NRL player does those sorts of things, and for every idiot you find perfectly good people who play the game.

And let's not fool ourselves into thinking other codes are scot free of these problems, or of any kind of boofhead mentality.

Yes, but you're suggesting that within the NRL there's a 50% or 1:1 rapist ratio.

I'd guess in the rest of society it's less than 1%.

Even considering any other celebrity group (including footballers, rock stars, TV personalities, you name it), may be slightly more "sexually adventurous" (or just more in the spotlight) than the general population, it is absurd to be defending a group based on a suggestion that for every violent sex-criminal there's one that's OK.

 

[FFC Mariner]

Boofhead is one thing, believing that women fall into 2 camps - wives, mothers etc and sexual victims - is quite another.

Sooner they all realise that mutual masturbation in a room full of other men is actually  a kinda gay thing, they ccome out and live happy lives out of the closet

 

[Paolo]

The girl should have just stayed still....its common knowledge that thrashing and screaming attracts other sharks