Rugby League: Sex, lies and rugby league

By PETER JESSUP

Just a week before the rugby league season opens, the code is in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

At the centre of the storm across the Tasman are the Canterbury Bulldogs - for the second season in a row starting their season with a sex scandal.

A woman's allegations of gang rape have prompted police and National Rugby League investigations that call into question the standards and morals of a code under siege.

For the Bulldogs, it has probably ended their hopes on the football field - if anyone can remember football.

Police are continuing to interview players and take DNA samples. Most have co-operated, via their lawyers, but star wing Hazem El Masri has refused and may be summonsed to provide an interview and sample.

His objection is that he doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't take drugs or commit adultery and was insulted at being involved in the allegation of pack rape made by a 20-year-old Coffs Harbour woman.

The police had told him he was not a suspect, not among the six players named by the victim or among others thought to have been in the pool area of the Pacific Bay Resort hotel early on February 22, when the alleged assault took place.

The woman was found by a hotel maintenance worker at 7am, lying in a foetal position on grass near the pool, screaming and swearing.

A taxi driver has told police that just two hours earlier he drove the woman and one Bulldogs player, whom she was obviously keen on, from the Plantation nightclub to the hotel and that she was obviously in good spirits at that stage.

There seems no doubt that some criminal charges will follow.

In addition, one player has clearly broken the club's code of conduct, which precludes bringing women back to the team hotel.

Bulldogs chairman George Peponis has said any player found to have breached that code will be stood down.

But legal advice was that the club could not act immediately because that might prejudice a fair trial for any player subsequently charged.

It will be easy for the Dogs to shunt that player out as the sacrificial lamb; much harder to tackle the culture of arrogant dismissal of community standards the club has maintained, its unspoken assumption that it stands above the laws of the land.

Just as the salary cap rort of 2002 made mugs of those NRL clubs that did stick to the player payment cap, so the assault by the as-yet-unidentified players is a major "dissing" of their team-mates.

Any suggestion of this being a team bonding session, some kind of rite of initiation, is bizarre at best. It is incumbent on all sporting clubs of any code to educate young players that ignoring community standards degrades the brotherly bond sports teams espouse.

El Masri and others not involved have a right to feel aggrieved at being let down. They were also let down by the club.

After beating Canberra the night before, players were due at a recovery session in the hotel pool at 8am. So what were some doing at a nightclub at 5am?

And why was there no supervision from management either at the nightclub or the hotel as they rolled home?

This is not the first such incident. In 1997 a Bulldogs player apparently urinated on the leg of a make-up artist who was doing his face in preparation for a television advertisement. It was said to be an initiation rite for new first-graders.

Others tried to break into the hotel room of another television worker at 3am after a drinking session.

Last year, at the same Coffs Harbour hotel, a 42-year-old woman went with one player to his room and had sex, then woke to find another had initiated sex with her and a third was lining up.

Club and police investigations were conducted but no charges laid, the Bulldogs fining the three players involved for breach of the club code.

On February 22, Bulldogs players danced on nightclub tables, groped women on the dance floor and sparked a brawl as a result. Some were evicted by bouncers.

It is apparently younger players who were involved in the incidents, including the alleged sexual assault. The club cannot divorce itself from all responsibility for those players' behaviour. Like all clubs, it has a duty of care.

These are guys in their early 20s who earn in the region of $100,000 a year for playing football. Some have never had another job. They have grown up in an unreal world where everything is taken care of for them, from meals to medicals, tracksuits to transport. Classes conducted by the NRL on behavioural codes are not enough.

At the Bulldogs, some have believed group sexual assault is acceptable behaviour and - not only that - but that the club would circle the wagons to prevent any "collateral damage" after the boys had had a fun night out.

How else do you explain ex-Auckland player Sonny Bill Williams turning up to be interviewed and DNA tested on Wednesday wearing a T-shirt carrying the words "We Play Dirty".

None of the players was in club gear. You'd have to suspect they were told not to wear Bulldogs logos. Yet no one saw fit to tell Williams his shirt might be seen as in questionable taste at best, arrogantly defiant and intimidating at worst.

Williams is one of four New Zealand players at the club. The others are Roy Asotasi, Hutch Maiava and Matt Utai.

After the allegations were first aired the team held a "truth session", where each player spoke and gave his version of events at the hotel and nightclub on the night in question.

Some reports have suggested that the tone of that player meeting was that the woman was asking for it. She had had consecutive consensual sex with eight players on the Wednesday before, the meeting heard.

Whatever was said, it obviously emboldened some, who clearly showed they thought no charges would be brought.

Afterwards, coach Steve Folkes spoke about the allegation for the first time. He went on John Laws' radio show to defend his players, conceding only that some had shown an error of judgment, but that was all.

An unidentified player interviewed by the Sydney Sunday Telegraph described the woman as hysterical after being rejected by the boys when she offered group sex. She was "a scrag", he said.

When he added that "some of the boys love a bun [group sex]", and that group sex was common practice in rugby league, he lowered the club's flag even further.

Team captain Steve Price, clearly not involved, said the allegations had affected the entire club.

"I've got a wife and kids and all of the other players have families," he said. "We have all been painted as being guilty because of the way things have eventuated. You walk past people and you wonder what they think."

Bulldogs club chaplain Ken Glendenning has counselled a number of players.

"It's very difficult for them to read all of the things that are being said in the papers and not be in a position to respond," he said.

Club chief executive Steve Mortimer admitted that "the last 10 days have been the worst experience with the game of rugby league. If only a fraction of what is alleged to have happened is true it very much appals me".

It's not about to get easier for him.

The police investigation and the court case that seems sure to follow will drag the club name down for months.

To make matters worse, on Tuesday the club appears in the Licensing Court to answer charges that it failed to keep proper accounts as required under the Registered Clubs Act, an action related to the laundering of money paid to players over and above the salary cap.

The NRL has instituted its own inquiry. It will cover the Coffs Harbour allegations, new claims by the woman involved in that case that she was approached by club officials who tried to dissuade her from going to police, the allegation that a player urinated in front of media and an unrelated allegation that a Sydney Roosters player openly had sex on a Newcastle beach during a pre-season trial.

That inquiry is likely to be widened to include the latest case, where two Melbourne Storm players are accused of a sexual assault.

Some clubs have taken the pro-active approach. The Manly Sea Eagles employ a minder who goes out with players, ensuring they don't get into trouble and arranging transport home when they've had enough.

The Warriors are among those who impose curfews, breath-test players after their allowed night out and provide managerial supervision.

Premiers the Penrith Panthers set a good example. At after-match functions, their players are all dressed in suits and ties. They all wear a belt engraved with their names. It is both to instil pride and to deny any opportunity for players to give the names of others, as is alleged in the Bulldogs' case.

Their grand-final-winning lock Scott Sattler spoke this week of how the Panthers side partied hard after the 2003 championship win but managed to do so without incident.

"The way things happened that week was as a result of the way the coach [John Lang] wanted us to act," Sattler said.

Coach Folkes has a spot on the Dogs' website. Is it a measure of his arrogance and the club's tolerance of it that the headings Born, Height, Weight, Test Matches, Personal Notes all carry the word "unknown" beside them?

It certainly seems odd that in these troubled times the Coach's Comments section carries only the words "no current items".

STORY SO FAR

* February 22: Woman complains she was pack-raped by Bulldogs players

* She names six players she said assaulted her

* Police and NRL announce investigation

* Police question 20 Bulldogs players and ask for DNA samples

* One player, Hazem El Masri, refuses to supply DNA