The NRL Disgrace

BM Epic

Eats Squid
Watching 2 teams from the western suburbs of sydney contest a grand final, and when one team loses decides that brutality and thugishness will win the day!
I wonder when the NRL will one day wake up and get serious about there sport, besides there attitude towards females, now they have complete thugs who when faced with the prospect at losing, resort to violence, with the admiration of there proud parents who clapped and congratulated them for there handywork, all this at 15 years old!
I feel so proud that this is the main sport in the city i live!
Is it any wonder that rugby league at the junior level is dying slowly, and dying financially at the top level?
Then you have the rising popularity of V8 supercars, AFL, Soccer(football) etc.
Feel free to discuss!
 

Maurice.

Banned
The Western suburbs restorting to violence is a stereotype.
And on what basis do you think that it will end in violence? What, because both teams supporters are mostly Lebanese, Pakistani and Turkish?
 

BM Epic

Eats Squid
The Western suburbs restorting to violence is a stereotype.
And on what basis do you think that it will end in violence? What, because both teams supporters are mostly Lebanese, Pakistani and Turkish?
You haven't seen the news?..it happened, blacktown vs penrith, result as described, 1 player 20years banning!..now police involved, it's all over the news!
 

Maurice.

Banned
EDIT: oh sorry mate. Didn't know about that, I understand now why you mentioned something about 15 year olds;)
 

Raw Toast Man

Likes Bikes and Dirt
Mst of the kids that play a sport look up to the 'elite' level players, in this case NRL players.
They see their 'heros' always in trouble. Every week you see a report about sex charges, assult charges or drinking problems. What do you think these kids are thinking when they see this?

Western Sydney = dodgyier part of town?
 

BM Epic

Eats Squid
EDIT: oh sorry mate. Didn't know about that, I understand now why you mentioned something about 15 year olds;)
No worries mate, it made me sick watching the video of said boy kicking opponent while he is down then king hitting somebody who is being held by 2 team mates!
My daughter goes to school with one boy who is in the side, but was luckily on the bench at the time, the whole episode is a disgrace!
 

Venciferus

Likes Dirt
Kembla_Downhill said:
The Western suburbs restorting to violence is a stereotype.
And on what basis do you think that it will end in violence? What, because both teams supporters are mostly Lebanese, Pakistani and Turkish?

Quick to take a punt at the racism cut there!



BM Epic said:
Then you have the rising popularity of V8 supercars, AFL, Soccer(football) etc.

If spoken, what tone, facial expression and hand movements would you have used?
 

leitch

Feelin' a bit rrranty
Let's face it, it's pretty much a hopeless situation. There's not much need for hope because it's a crap game anyway :)p) but it is certainly getting to a point of just being pathetic.

As Declan said, even at the highest level of the game, there is a really poor image being disseminated. Worse, though, is the article I read in the paper yesterday - the Queensland rugby league clubs board has called an urgent meeting to discuss ways in which they can make underage league games safer - for referees and spectators - because of the number of fights and assaults occurring between spectating parents at their kids' games. The article noted that on a number of occasions referees have had to retreat to their locked dressing room to avoid getting attacked, and on one occasion a referee was assaulted by the first aid officer at the game. What the fuck!?

There are so many things wrong with rugby league, and I think that that is the greatest problem. If it was just elite level players being dicks, it could be controlled by just enforcing serious penalties - consider what happened to Wendell Sailor and Lote Tiquiri's rugby union careers after they fucked up, or Andrew Symonds' consequences for repeated misdemeanours - there has been virtually zero of this sort of reprimand for players in the elite league sphere. What kind of a message does that send?

Then (and I know I'm generalising here, but it's accurate to my own experience) there is the kind of bogan thug which league seems to appeal to on a massive level. If your sport attracts people already behaviourally predisposed to violence, then that's only going to continue to manifest itself in the way players and spectators behave.

I could go on for hours about what I dislike about rugby league, not even dipping into the fact that it's just simply a boring game, but I'll stop there.
 

Raw Toast Man

Likes Bikes and Dirt
Let's face it, it's pretty much a hopeless situation. There's not much need for hope because it's a crap game anyway :)p) but it is certainly getting to a point of just being pathetic.

I could go on for hours about what I dislike about rugby league, not even dipping into the fact that it's just simply a boring game, but I'll stop there.
And when you finish, I will continue with said points.
 

Breaka

Likes Bikes and Dirt
No worries mate, it made me sick watching the video of said boy kicking opponent while he is down then king hitting somebody who is being held by 2 team mates!
My daughter goes to school with one boy who is in the side, but was luckily on the bench at the time, the whole episode is a disgrace!
Right, so this is what we see the top grade players do on television and these kids are merely repeating the behaviour of their so called 'hero's'?

I'd say it's more a case of Australia being/becoming a violent society rather than copycat type behaviour. These kids probably see this daily at home, school, the bus stop...you name it. Albeit not at this level of violence but once on a footy field it somehow becomes somewhat elevated.

And Leitch, you say that heavier fines/penalties should be given to the trouble makers? What about the Taylor saga which is going on at the moment? From what I can figure A COACH was assaulted a number of times by a senior player and has been rid of his job? If that's not harsh I don't know what is.

Gregory Bird, the dude glassed his Mrs, had full support from her but was made stand down by the Sharks. Even though it was criminal this was a fully personal incident and had nothing to do with his club what so ever. Greg Ingliss was made sit aside by the Melbourne Storm for another personal mishap. These are incidents which have happened recently and from what I can gather each player has had to pay for their mistake in a not so lenient manner.

Not trying to defend these dudes and what they have done isn't wrong but to say that they don't pay for their fuckups through fines imbosed by clubs and the NRL board aswell as negative media attention is silly.

Either way I don't really care what people say regaurding the code I still love it even after repping the other code and dabbling in the odd game of AFL.

Edit: Right, just watched the vid. Pretty disgusting scene being played out. After having a mate die after an altercation two weeks ago I find that type of behaviour very hard to understand.
Don't really care if this offends anyone but I think the issue has to be raised. Who were the kids involved in the incident and prodominately, what was their appearance?
 
Last edited:

'Ross

Eats Squid
I think you are all full of shit if you think this is strictly an NRL problem.

Playing AFL as a junior there were plenty of fights, I can think of a couple not involving my club that were way bigger than that, and lots of incidents where parents and spectators got involved. Why do you think they have security guards for the umpires at Junior AFL games?

The only difference about this was SOMEBODY HAD A VIDEO CAMERA!!! These issues have been going on for ages in all sports, Soccer in Melbourne would have been the worst by far! However it has improved massively in the last 5 years...same with all the sports including Rugby League, but I guess you see one video of a fight on the news (5 years ago they used to try to put real news on by the way) and all of a sudden the whole sport is in disrepute?

The biggest thing about the Rugby League problems is due to media coverage imo, any incident will get massive publicity no matter what and there are plenty of gullible people around.
 

BM Epic

Eats Squid
I think you are all full of shit if you think this is strictly an NRL problem.

Playing AFL as a junior there were plenty of fights, I can think of a couple not involving my club that were way bigger than that, and lots of incidents where parents and spectators got involved. Why do you think they have security guards for the umpires at Junior AFL games?

The only difference about this was SOMEBODY HAD A VIDEO CAMERA!!! These issues have been going on for ages in all sports, Soccer in Melbourne would have been the worst by far! However it has improved massively in the last 5 years...same with all the sports including Rugby League, but I guess you see one video of a fight on the news (5 years ago they used to try to put real news on by the way) and all of a sudden the whole sport is in disrepute?

The biggest thing about the Rugby League problems is due to media coverage imo, any incident will get massive publicity no matter what and there are plenty of gullible people around.
I do agree with you Ross, but this rugby league violence/parent violence/assaulting referees has been getting very bad at a junior level for the last 5 years, i was listening to abc radio when don feltis(penrith district boss) and a soccer boss(from sutherland) were talking about problems in there district, well the rugby league problems were massive compared to the soccer, the parent violence thing was huge!
I beleive a lot of these so called parents are trying to vicariously live there dreams through there kids, which is sad!
I know that there was a lot of polynesian kids involved in this, but it's not exclusive to them, i know of a club at the north west of sydney that is predominantly anglo that also has these problems,just that this was caught on video, and Blacktown have been involved in this type of thing more than once this season alone, and that comes from don feltis himself!
 

slip

Beefcake...BEEFCAKE!!!
Yeah, it's definitely not just an NRL thing. I watched my own 'anti-violence' mother scream 'Get up and hit him back!' during my brothers first League game. She tried to stop him from playing as it was a rough game...

Seen Detectives/Lawyers in the mix of an indoor soccer all in brawl. Look at what goes on in Soccer overseas.

It's not just the youth, it's not just League - but they do have some real problems to sort out, and have for a long long time. At least they are reacting and putting their heads together in a non-scrum situation (if only in reaction to poor media). Will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Funnily enough, after 4 martial arts over 15yrs or so - never seen any biff/violence in that scene.
 

FR Drew

Not a custom title.
Martial arts is more about discipline control and respect than it is about combat in the majority of the formats it comes in.
 

thecat

NSWMTB, Central Tableland MBC
I played league for about 10years and I haven't kicked anyone in the nuts for at least an hr dispite several people deserving it













:p
 

Knopey

Likes Dirt
It's always mystified me as to why the police are hardly ever involved and there are no legal repercussions when this sort of thing happens. (This example is an exception, plenty of previous incidents have not involved police or legal action.)

Sure a sport is a sport and you can tackle a player during a game since it's part of the game (as opposed to walking down the street), but GBH is not part of the game. Why are the police not involved every time this shit happens? Playing the sport should not equate to a free-for-all as far as the rules and norms of society goes.

I think the lack of proper response (i.e. police, charges, the whole nine yards) in the vast majority of previous cases has led to this fucked up situation where people feel they are free to be cavemen.
 

JP

Likes Dirt
I've been at an under 10's footy game with a mate whose nephew was playing. I was sitting with his mum who is almost 70 when some parents from the other team started abusing one of the kids and the ref. Old mates mum asked them to calm down and the response was "Shut the f@#k up old lady or you'll get some too!" Needless to say I explained to them that such language and attitude was not acceptable in any part of civilised society and would not be tolerated (something to that effect anyway!).

The team the other parents were from? Blacktown.

There are a lot of lovely people around that area of western Sydney, but unfortunately there are just as many lowlifes. These are the kinds of people that are popping out kids at an astonishing, thereby populating the earth with more scumbags.
 

BM Epic

Eats Squid
I played league for about 10years and I haven't kicked anyone in the nuts for at least an hr dispite several people deserving it













:p
Ahhh Flynny, just sitting here pissing myself laughing, lucky nobody is here, otherwise they would be asking, "why are you laughing at the computer screen Dad"?
 
Top