Opinion
Three extraordinary events signal the end of ‘she’ll be right’ era
Peter FitzSimons
Columnist and authorThe great English winger Willie Waggle-Dagger, out of Stratford-upon-Avon, put it well: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life/Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
This week we saw something of a king tide in the realms of concussion-in-sport news. None other than the King himself, Wally Lewis – the finest footballer of his generation – addressed the National Press Club and spelled out just how grim things are for those, such as him, suffering probable CTE.
I know it. You know it. No footballer had the swagger, the dagger or the-moves-like-Jagger of Wally Lewis. And yet here he was, confessing his fears, his vulnerability, his growing early dementia because of his years of training and playing football.
In the audience at the Press Club was Collingwood premiership defender Nathan Murphy, who had just announced his early retirement aged 24 because of his concerns over his repeated concussions.
A day earlier, Cronulla co-captain Dale Finucane had announced his own immediate retirement from the NRL, not really because he had decided enough was enough, but the game’s administration itself, following medical and surely legal advice, gave him no option. Finucane admitted he had tried everything to change the decision, but all avenues were closed.
All three events are extraordinary. No footballer of Lewis’s calibre has ever spoken like that; no AFL premiership defender has ever called it quits for such a reason at Murphy’s age. And they all happened in the past fortnight. The position of the dinosaurs who continue to dismiss or diminish the importance of regarding concussion as an existential threat to the game and its players becomes more ludicrous by the week.
Wally Lewis showed no thoughts of self-preservation during his celebrated playing career, but it has come at a cost.Credit: NRL Photos
Federal Sports Minister Anika Wells is already on board. While not yet committing to the $18 million that Lewis was seeking for CTE prevention, care and research, Wells is at least committing to finding as much as she can.
“The ‘she’ll be right’ era is over because we now know,” she told me by text on Friday, “she, or he, won’t be right. And if we know that . . . we must do more and you will see that in the budget. My portfolios include aged care and sport and most consider it a strange mix . . . but on this issue it provides a unique position to take action and that’s what we will do.”
Goodo. And well done, Wally Lewis.
The rule the NRL needs to change now
Meantime, the next issue the NRL must sort in the realms of concussion is the kick-off return.
Time and again we see the ball kicked 50 metres to be passed to the biggest man in the team who runs the ball back at full speed, while three or more defenders line him up and run full tilt at him.
The concussive forces unleashed when they collide are devastating, as witness the opening play of the Roosters versus Dragons match on Thursday.
Jared Waerea-Hargreaves got the ball, and all 120kg was soon launched. Coming the other way was Dragons centre Moses Suli, and their heads clashed.
Suli went down as if shot, and to my untutored eyes seemed to not only be concussed but suffer a brief spasm. Mercifully, he was taken off but it has to be bleeding obvious: this stuff cannot continue.
Yes, league and union are physical games. Yes, the footballers sign up to bash for cash. But the football organisations equally have a duty of care to frame rules to make their games as safe as possible for their players.
Every time you look up the NRL is generating severely concussed players as players are bigger, faster and more powerful than ever, meaning that on simple physics their clashes generate more damage than ever.
It is inevitable that the rules will change, to make them safer, and in league right now that long run-back is the most obvious place to start. Why wait? Who cannot see the damage being done? Either start with a play-the-ball, or – the most obvious – restrict the distance the ball can be kicked. Get it done, now, or face the legal consequences later.
Bulldog’s court battle could be a game-changer
Yonks back, my friend Brett Papworth left the Wallabies to go and play for the Roosters, at which point, under rugby’s amateur regulations, the International Rugby Board banned him from playing rugby again.
But Brett wasn’t having it. He took the rugby administration to court, saying it simply didn’t have the right to prevent him playing for the simple reason he had played another game. I remember writing a column at the time, delicately saying rugby had every right to do exactly that.
Former Canterbury player Jackson Topine.Credit: NRL Photos
But Brett and the law won. He was right, and I was wrong. The idea that rugby could ban him for that was merely a convention and when tested in a court of law didn’t hold up. It was the classic example of sport running into the law and the law saying: That might well indeed be the way you do things, but is outside of the law, so fix it.
We will see – I make no prognostications, have no strong views, and no skin in the game – but sport may be facing another such case with the news former Bulldog Jackson Topine lodged a statement of claim for $4 million against Canterbury, alleging that as “punishment” for being late to training he had been forced to wrestle 30-35 teammates, and had suffered mental and physical damage because of it.
At this point many old footballer types, and some current ones, will be snorting unpleasantly and saying words to the effect of, “Get a grip, princess. This is football, this is the way it is done.”
Michael Chammas wrote a piece in this masthead on Friday noting that weird punishments are still done in many clubs.
“At one club, a transgressor is made to run naked through a tunnel of his teammates who slap and spank him as he goes. At another, a player might be forced to clean the gear stewards’ van or eat hot chilli peppers . . . Then there are the punishments that move beyond the merely physical, when players are forced to shave their heads, dye their hair or wear a suit every day to training.”
And yet what you and I think on whether this is right or wrong, count for nowt. It will be what the law thinks, if such practices are challenged. Leaving Topine’s wrestling case completely out of it, take the examples Chammas presents above. Imagine the fall-out in any other workplace in the country if an employee thought to have transgressed the rules in their place of employ, had to strip down and be spanked by other employees! Can you imagine the damages that would be awarded?
I cannot. If challenged by a rugby league player, it is hard to see how the judiciary could do anything other than give the club a very expensive black eye.
We will let the Topine case take its course and watch with interest.
But entirely leaving his case to the judiciary, let me make the point to all sporting organisations. When push comes to shove and judicial wig comes to puffy eyebrows and broken noses the “this is just the way things are done in sport” argument is unlikely to wash with a judge. If I was running a professional sporting organisation I would run an urgent audit to make sure that all such practices cease immediately.
McGeoch mentor’s legacy lives on in the White House
The redoubtable Rod McGeoch contacted me this week with an interesting yarn. When he was campaigning for Sydney to host the 2000 Olympics, the most helpful figure in the IOC he found was Juan Antonio Samaranch’s personal attorney, Samuel Pisar.
The child of holocaust victims and a death camp survivor himself, Pisar had been orphaned in Melbourne, got a law degree, began practising law in Europe and rose from there.
A man with a soft spot for Australia, he gave McGeoch great advice on who to talk to, and how to talk to them, to amass the votes necessary.
This week, McGeoch found out who Pisar’s step-son is – Antony Blinken, United States Secretary of State.
What They Said
Wally Lewis, in his address to the National Press Club: “I once had the confidence in myself to succeed – lead my team to victory, captain my country, remember the strengths and weaknesses of my opposition, organise myself and feel in control of my life. Now, much of that confidence has been taken away from me by the effects of probable CTE dementia.”
Lewis: “My everyday life is no longer blessed by confidence in my daily activities. Now I struggle to accept that it has been filled with fear and embarrassment about how forgetful I’ve become.” Read it and weep. Just how will he be in 10 years?
Lewis: “Players need to understand that just because you can’t always see it, like a broken arm, a brain injury needs to be taken seriously. It’s not a badge of honour to go back out on the field with a head injury – it’s careless.”
Toby Greene was offered a one-match suspension after this clash with Carlton’s Jordan Boyd.Credit: AFL Photos
GWS Giants coach Adam Kingsley on his star player Toby Greene being suspended for the eighth time, this time for hard contact with Carlton’s Jordan Boyd: “It’s hard being Toby.” He should have said it’s not easy being Greene!
Rafael Nadal on his injury woes: “I’ll try to take a step further in Madrid, then in Rome, and if, in any tournament it’s worth going out there to give everything and die, it’s in Paris.”
US Masters winner Scottie Scheffler: “I mean, I believe that today’s plans were already laid out many years ago and I could do nothing to mess up those plans. I’ve been given a gift of this talent and I use it for God’s glory.” Historically, I think it fair to say that while it is one thing to be “God’s messenger”, being “God’s humble messenger” is a tad harder? The hubris would kill a brown dog.
Australian sprint sensation Torrie Lewis: “It was so surreal beating Sha’Carri. I didn’t even notice I beat them until I saw the replay and I was like, ‘Holy Crap!’ So surreal!”
Ariarne Titmus on the allegations made against Chinese swimmers being the beneficiaries of systemic doping, the way the East Germans were many decades ago: “Every time you race, you just hope you’re racing people that are in the same boat as you, and they’ve worked as hard as they can to get to that position, in a fair manner. And so, I hope it’s like that in Paris as well.”
After TFF highlighted sportspeople new vogue phrase after losses of saying “that’s not us”, St Kilda coach Ross Lyon made his play to get back into TFF after a seven-year break, by telling reporters after a 10-goal drubbing by the Western Bulldogs: “I’d like to think that’s not us.”
Rugby Australia CEO Phil Waugh giving last year’s Eddie Jones disaster a spin that would do the late Shane Warne proud. “I’ve known Eddie for 25 years. And it was a difficult period last year, which everyone acknowledges. Pleasingly, Eddie acknowledged the difficulty and [he] had an opportunity to step away and he did it in an appropriate way.”
Team of the Week
Titans. After two losses by the hairs of Des Hasler’s chinny-chin-chin, had a win by the breadth of Des’ nose-hairs, 27-24 over the Warriors – their first win of the season. Against all odds, they might not be the hopeless jokes they first appeared to be.
Rabbitohs. Being beaten by the Storm in Melbourne is no disgrace. It happens to the best of teams. But it is how they were smashed.
Warringah Rats second grade. Despite a last-second loss to Manly Marlins on Anzac Day at Manly Oval, had the class to stay on the field for The Last Post ceremony before the first-grade match began. A pity Manly seconds didn’t do the same.
RIP John Patrick O’Shea. The great prop for Cardiff, Wales and the British and Irish Lions, died peacefully at home on Wednesday evening, aged 83. A well-known and beloved figure around the rugby traps, this masthead extends its deepest condolences to his wife, the great Australian sprinter Marlene Matthews.
@Peter_Fitz