Disgraced rugby league player Mitchell Pearce has wonderfully sidestepped much of the punishment he deserves thanks to a great public relations campaign, says Rebecca Wilson.
She believes the eight-game suspension and $125,000 fine for his drunken Australia Day antics was not even close to the mark.
More than that, it is appalling that the NRL allowed the Sydney Roosters to be involved in the sentencing process given their obvious self-interest in a lenient punishment.
“This is rugby league. Things are never as they seem,” wrote Wilson in the Daily Telegraph.
“Idiots prosper. Bad men get 20 chances at redemption. The messengers get shot for daring to take the video, which did him in.
“This has been an issues management masterpiece that has made a mockery of genuine process and placed the NRL in a position of weakness unseen for years.”
After a short rehab stint in Thailand, which the player paid for, it seems Pearce’s image has been radically transformed and he is now even likely set for an Origin appearance this year for New South Wales.
“The NRL, without a chief executive but with a commission chairman in John Grant trying to run the joint, allowed the Roosters to negotiate Pearce’s outcome,” continued Wilson.
“It appears there is no longer a rule that says when the rules are broken, the NRL decides the penalty.”
Patrick Smith from The Australian is one that also was strongly opposed to the penalty handed out by the NRL, but he believed the ban and fine was harsh and over the top.
“It is fair to say middle ground was not found. An eight-week suspension and $125,000 fine is a bludgeoning and not a punishment,” he reasoned.
“The NRL’s wish was to trumpet a message. The worry is that rugby league might be deafened by it; that it is so extreme that the point of the punishment is missed altogether.”
Wilson obviously read the play very differently and proposes the consequences for such leniency will be felt at a later date by the league.
“The NRL has set an ugly precedent here,” she wrote.
“The next chief executive has effectively been robbed of the right to make his own decisions because every other club in the same boat now has Pearce’s case to throw at the new boss.”