Martin Devlin: Time for NRL boss to walk the walk

CEO Todd Greenberg has spoken saying it's time for the talking to stop.

The NRL will no longer tolerate the continued idiotic and offensive off-field behaviour of their players. Of a small percentage of their players, let's make that point loud and clear.

Because the silent majority don't misbehave, don't bring the game into disrepute and do respect both the sport itself and the terms and conditions of their own individual employment contracts.

Greenberg, reeling from another summer of scandalous scurrilous shenanigans is quite clearly sick and tired of being sick and tired of what's become the one big blight on one of Australasia's most popular sporting comps.

From now on in he wants the headlines to be about, and to only be about, what happens inside the lines and he's determined to take affirmative proactive action to ensure his edict be forever observed.

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Will he?

Or will he, like they always do, weigh up the profile of those involved and decide what punishment's appropriate determined on their individual profiles, pulling power and consumer popularity.

Forgive my cynicism. But this is the same Todd Greenberg who last year (alongside Mal Meninga) provided invaluable character references to Greg Inglis to help him get a softer sentence after the then Kangaroo captain had pleaded guilty to speeding while driving drunk.

Wonder if he would, or if he will, do the same for a run-of-the-mill no-name rookie who suffers the same fate this season?

Of course, the greatest thing about hypothetical questions is that there's never no right answer.

And if the man had any courage of these convictions then Shane Flanagan would have no future in the game at all. But of course he, like Inglis, like Jarryd Hayne, like all the "big" names will continue to be treated under a different set of rules - it's just the way it is.

So thanks again Todd, nice rhetoric, good presser, forceful determined quotes.

Thing is actions speak louder than words. As, a small but rogue percentage of, your errant players continue to so ably demonstrate.