SPORTSRITE - Inmates playing club rugby league an arresting idea

With Tim Eves
THE temptation here is to stop, just briefly, and say this: What's changed?
There might be an array of arguments pro and anti to the proposal to include a team of prison inmates in the Northland premier club rugby league competition, but in all brutal honesty, it won't have a huge impact on character profile of the participants.
Now, before a horde of ex-cons all start hunting down personal details, there is a yarn from the deep dark past of this particular correspondent's journalism career worth telling.
Back then rugby league was the round handed to this new inhabitant of the Advocate sports office ruled at the time in distinctive fashion by a man called Garry Frew.
The new recruit ripped into the colourful world of Northland rugby league with an approach best described as scatter-gun, in hindsight, maybe more accurately defined as random.
Very soon screeds of copy were produced describing in poetic detail action from places like Jubilee Park, Takahiwai Park, Jumbo Park and Fish-bone Park, usually accompanied by lucid quotes from stunned sideline observers who were, on occasion, even a coach.
That was until a man best described as a behemoth appeared at the door of the Advocate sports office. "Which one of you is Tim Eves," he bellowed. There were three occupants of the office that day, two were exceptionally quick to point accusing index fingers in the direction of the third.
Glowering from a height that was disturbingly close to the light bulb, the behemoth then said this: "Stop putting my &@#$ing name in the newspaper. The police are looking for me."
So a crass generalisation it might be, but news that the Northland club rugby league competition will include a team full of convicts is not something all that new. There have been teams who were nothing more than the recreational arm of local gangs, others that have been gutted on the eve of such occasions as grand finals by the untimely execution from the local constabulary, of outstanding warrants of arrest.
The question here, though, is not just that a few blokes who may have fallen foul of the boys in blue happen to congregate in a sports team. Let it be known that there are quite a few criminals who play rugby, soccer, netball and squash as well.
The issue here is based on morals, human rights, privacy and most importantly the rights of victims of crime.
If security is assured, why shouldn't a team of criminals from Ngawha prison play rugby league? Maybe because they are in there for hurting someone on the outside in the first place, and deleted their rights for recreation in the process.
It is a bit rich though that, just to play inside the prison barriers, players who are not in prison but who may have a criminal past or even a stay at Her Majesty's expense to their credit, will not be allowed inside to play the game.
So, in essence, a bloke who has done his time will not be allowed to play against a team full of convicted criminals called the Ngawha Saints.
The Ngawha Saints? Now there's a name designed to attract a headline too, by the way. Clever fellas, and what, may we ask, is the uniform? An orange jersey with a serial number on the chest and a compulsory black eye mask?