Paul Lewis: Time for NRL to show some spine

Poor old rugby league and poor old NRL. It will never, it seems, escape its stigma of too many boofhead blokes, with microscopic consciences and cavemen attitudes to women - fuelled by booze and proportional overload of money to IQs.

Here it is again, league season, and the NRL has yet another golden opportunity to shake rugby's tree as the Super 14 heads through a particularly boring era and what happens? Manly's Anthony Watmough and Brett Stewart, that's what, underlining the social problems still inherent in the game.

Stewart was so comprehensively plastered he says he doesn't remember anything of the evening when he is alleged to have sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl.

Stewart faces charges whereas Watmough - who denied punching a Manly sponsor after saying something about his 21-year-old daughter - will not. The sponsor will not to press charges.

The NRL then demonstrated marshmallow leadership by continuing to embrace the system of letting the clubs deal with the matter - which they generally don't - although the NRL at least eventually decreed Stewart would be stood down for five rounds while the matter was decided.

This drew howls of protest from the players' association, who invoked the 'presumption of innocence' and said Stewart should play until the matter was settled.

This is one step too far for a sport that has never achieved anything much to arrest the demons mentioned in the first paragraph.

It is the NRL's failure to clamp down on such behaviour that has helped spark the Stewart/Watmough incidents. So many others have offended it is impossible to think anything other than it is a part of rugby league or NRL culture.

That cannot diminish the responsibility of those involved and it must be noted that league is also full of well-behaved, responsible men who are a credit to themselves and their families. But, year after year, the NRL is burned by the boofheads in drink-fuelled outrages, often involving offences against women, both sexual and violent. Time to take a stand, surely.

Stewart - whom just about everyone agrees is a model footballer - was a key figure in the now-pulled, A$1.25m NRL commercial announcing the start of the season which carried the line "Feel it". It appears that is what Stewart is being accused of.

Presumption of innocence? Yes, it's a worthy and jealously guarded concept and so it should be. There are plenty of examples of league players being accused and charged and having to wait over a year before they could clear their names - Gold Coast's Anthony Laffranchi and former Warrior Michael Crockett to name but two.

But league, or the NRL, has gone too far. Players have to know their actions will be punished. For those who say this plays into the hands of those who would entrap players and bear false witness, the answer's easy: Don't get into trouble in the first place. Walk away. It's what professionals do. Don't get slaughtered. Don't prey on women.

A season ban is the only answer. The NRL has to re-write its players' code carefully, to make it clear that booze offences and offences against women will be punished severely.

After all, if I was a public figure and up on sexual assault charges and had embarrassed and cost my employers $1.25m, I'd expect to get it in the neck before any court appearance. It's in my contract.

Phil Gould's contention there should be a blanket booze ban would be worth considering if it wasn't so hard to enforce. All NRL clubs could be required to booze-test their players at training and at regular intervals - and stand them down for lengthy bans if they exceed limits.

Treating them like babies? Absolutely. Big, brainless babies with no discipline and no sense of responsibility. Nappies, anyone?

Look at the infamous Bulldogs' gang bang incident of 2004 where (although no charges were laid because of lack of evidence) a woman complained she had been gang raped, surfacing the practice of group sex in the NRL.

Or Julian O'Neill, (not to be confused with the New Zealand player of the same name), who vomited over the walls of a motel and defecated in the shoe of a team-mate in what became known as the "poo in the shoe' incident.

He also drunkenly tried to set fire to a 13-year-old boy who was wearing a foam rubber dolphin mascot suit while on a river cruise in Port Macquarie.

Todd Carney was involved in three drink-provoked incidents in 18 months before the NRL finally refused to register him this season.

Craig Gower exposed himself in a bar in 1999 and in 2005 infamously groped the teenage daughter of league legend Wayne Pearce, chased Pearce's son with a bottle before vomiting on him, streaked naked around a resort and totalled a golf cart in one notable rampage.

Greg Bird is still awaiting a court hearing next month on charges that he glassed his girlfriend; New Zealand's Tevita Latu was turfed out of the NRL for hitting a woman and breaking her nose.

Australian test players Mark Gasnier and Jarryd Hayne were involved in an ugly booze-ridden weekend that culminated in a drive-by shooting, with a bullet fired at them in King's Cross. There are so many incidents, there isn't room for them all.

It's time for the NRL to grasp the nettle.

A year ago, after the drive-by shooting incident, NRL chief executive David Gallop said of the NRL's efforts to curb booze-related incidents: "You can't say something's not working just because you continue to have incidents."

Actually, yes, you can.

For too long the clubs have held sway and allowed - and even encouraged - their players to drink and then allow them to slip away because of self-interest. It's time the NRL came in over the top and enforced standards of behaviour and attitudes to women.

Surely there is someone there with a spine.