The NRL has an alcohol problem, not a drug problem

Opinion: the NRL should be encouraging more of its players to use cocaine, says Duncan Greive – it causes far less harm to the code and those around it than alcohol.

The Kiwis had a rough weekend. A limp 30-12 loss to Australia in an ANZAC test came less than 24 hours after 20 test back Shaun Kenny-Dowall was arrested for cocaine possession in Sydney. Worse was to come. Later that evening Kiwis captain Jesse Bromwich and 17 test veteran Kevin Proctor were seen snorting white power off an iPhone with a man soon-to-be arrested for drug possession.

It was a predictably huge story. Auckland’s Herald on Sunday had it as the front page lede in New Zealand while the story sat atop the Sydney Morning Herald’s League HQ for the weekend. For a code which has spent the past decade or so in what appears to be a sincere and concerted effort to clean up its image, the news was yet another setback, the kind of twin gut punch which must make NRL CEO Todd Greenberg consider whether there’s any point in having the code’s overworked player integrity unit.

Yet the crimes – or crime, bearing in mind that Proctor and Bromwich have been named by Canberra police, but not charged – are perhaps the least meaningful to cross the game’s desk in a long time. In fact, there’s a strong argument that given the scale of the problems facing the NRL recreational drug use shouldn’t be something it expresses an opinion on.

Even the most dogged rugby league partisan would concede that the code’s players have a poor off-field behavioural record. Its worst excesses are detailed in Anna Krien’s Night Games, which recounts horrific cases of rape and sexual assault in both league and AFL, and the way clubs will circle wagons around stars while dropping lesser players cold.

The record on violence against women is arguably worse. Stars like Greg Inglis, Hazem El Masri and Kenny Edwards have been amongst a disturbing number of players charged or convicted of domestic violence-related charges. The violence extends to men too – Russell Packer spent a year in prison for an assault which left the victim unconscious with a fractured eye socket.

The record of violence associated with NRL players is unconscionable, and something which has rightly been a preoccupation of the league. In a climate rightly growing more intolerant of such acts, this could in time grow into an existential threat to the sport if sponsors and networks were to decide they’ve had enough.

Yet there is a large difference between violent crime the criminality of recreational drugs like ecstasy (for which rugby league immortal Andrew Johns was famously cautioned) and cocaine.

The offending, such as it is, falls under the category of what used to be known as ‘vice crimes’ – crimes of morality, in which the offender is also the nominal victim. These included pornography, prostitution, alcohol, gambling and drugs. Of that list, nearly all are now legal. Yet of them, drugs are arguably the least of the NRL’s problems.

The common factor for the greatest proportion of violent crime and sexual assault committed by NRL players has always been alcohol. It by no way excuses the action, but undoubtedly plays a major contributing role. The assaults are long-tailed by any number of drink driving charges, and other ‘Mad Monday’-related humiliations, like Joel Monaghan’s indignities visited on a team-mates dog in 2010.

Alcohol is manifestly the substance which causes the most harm amongst its players, yet is rarely discussed thanks to the closeness of its relationships with some of the code’s greatest teams. From the Maroons (sponsored by XXXX) and the Blues (by VB) on down, nearly every club has a close tie with a beer, wine or spirits brand. It’s simply part of the sport’s culture, long-running and seemingly inalienable.

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Next to alcohol, another ‘vice’ has often troubled the league: that of gambling. From Kieran Foran’s associations last year, to Tim Simona’s life ban, to suspensions of five players including David Williams in 2014 to Ben Barba’s losing his considerable fortune, betting has ravaged the NRL, up to and including impacting play on field in the most egregious cases.

Alcohol, gambling and drugs. Of the trio, one warrants front page headlines, captaincy-stripping and, in Bromwich and Proctor’s case, news that they won’t be playing in the 2017 World Cup. Yet, aside from the act of taking the drugs, I’ve yet to read any assertion that the ingestion (or simply the possession – Kenny-Dowall is maintaining, improbably, that he has never actually taken cocaine) of recreational drugs by NRL players has contributed to anything more than them having an extra good time that evening. Which is to say that it’s only the criminality of the act itself which appears problematic, rather than the flow-on consequences of consumption.

In many ways the NRL’s drug problem – if you agree that it has one, or that drugs are indeed a problem – is simply a reflection of Australia’s general appetite. In 2013 Bloomberg ranked countries according to a ‘decadence index’, using data across drugs, alcohol and gambling to show which nations really got after it. Australia came out third, just behind Slovenia and the Czech Republic, with particularly high scores in gambling (highest in the developed world) and ecstasy use, for which it leads every single nation, with 4.2 percent of Australians using it on an annual basis.

Essentially what we see in arrest rates is merely a function of overall societal behaviour.

And yet of the three behaviours (alcohol, gambling, drugs), only drug use is so demonised. Indeed, the opprobrium heaped on Bromwich and Proctor far outstripped players charged with domestic violence offences, who frequently play on regardless.

Why the glaring contrast, between drug charges and domestic violence, and between drugs and legal vices like alcohol and gambling? The law is one component. But the bigger part is simply financial. Beer, wine and spirits companies are all official NRL partners, while gambling advocacy and odds discussion floods coverage on the networks. They’re is a critical income stream for rights holders, who are trying to recoup the vast sums which are inflating the NRL’s salary cap at a rate as fast as any sport in the world.

I’m not suggesting that stop by any means. Codes are in a competitive marketplace for talent and attention, and alcohol and gambling associations are endemic in global sport. The NRL cannot act unilaterally without major commercial risk.

Yet it can conduct a more sober assessment of the true consequences of the actions of its players. It can have a more sensible hierarchy of crimes, one which places violence against women in a very different category to drug use. Instead of casting out those who choose one substance over another, it can shape a more rational policy, regardless of what the misguided and discredited war on drugs mandates as criminal legal sanction. Because what Kenny-Dowall, Bromwich and Proctor actually did barely rates in terms of actual harm – there are far more significant issues demanding the NRL integrity unit’s attention.

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