One word, ten letters, and often completely unjustified, it’s a word always threatening to do rugby league undone. Comparison. Thrown around by fans daily, it’s something we as a rugby league community need to cool our jets on.
It may seem silly, to say that ‘comparison’ is changing the horizon of rugby league for the worse, but give it some thought. The first thing we do today when we read a story is compare to another, an attempt to give ourselves a moral compass of how bad something truly is.
But instead, it results in the opposite.
Take this week for example. Fans were furious when Todd Greenberg announced their would be sanctions handed down to Dylan Napa following the release of several videos of the Queensland prop undergoing in various sexual acts.
They were furious because Greenberg praised Greg Inglis late last week, days after the South Sydney captain was handed a good behaviour bond following a drink driving charge in late 2018.
Greenberg was praising Inglis following the announcement of his impending retirement. He praised him on a career of being an Indigenous role model in the local community, nothing to do with the charge laid upon the Queensland captain.
The Napa case and Inglis’ are completely different. They don’t warrant comparison by any means. Yet here we are, likening the two as a means of processing and justifying the punishments.
Suspensions are another facet often compared to one another, despite being completely different offences. The infamous ‘George Burgess water bottle throw’ is a perfect example.
Burgess, in the last round of the regular season in 2015, was slapped with a Contrary Conduct charge for throwing a water bottle at a player (and missing) following an on-field melee. Burgess was handed a two match suspension.
That case still gets brought up now, three years after it took place, in the name of comparison. Every time a player is charged we hear all-too-familiar cries of ‘Burgess missed two weeks for throwing a water bottle, why is a shoulder charge only a week’. The cases aren’t similar by any means, but we do it anyway.
Every young player coming through is ‘the next’ someone or other, we compare because it makes understanding something easier to comprehend.
But it simultaneously warps our perspective, and it’s not helping rugby league. So let’s stop comparing apples and oranges, and focus on strengthening rugby league.