The Cure (2006)

"Rugby League players get treated far too leniently."

This is a quote I have heard quite a number of times, yet I continually ignored it, thinking that this is merely the words of an inept athlete having a sook.

But after some very in-depth thinking, I have come to the conclusion that they do get away with far too much. Lets look at a few recent instances shall we.

Willie Mason and every damn thing he's done wrong in the past few years, from signing someone elses name for a childs autograph, to drawing penises on napkins, the drug allegations, the Bulldogs scandals he was a part of, to name but a few, yet he still manages to get selected to play for Australia.

Mark Gasnier, Anthony Minichiello and their whole sordid midnight mobile phone shenanigans from a few years ago. They were still allowed to play for their state and country that year.

Ian Roberts smashed Garry Jack when he wasn't looking, and was charged for assault in court, but still managed to represent his state and country.

Terry Hill played for Souths, yet still went on to play for Australia.

There are many others. But it seems there is a common trend here between the NRL and the players. Everytime someone does something to bring the game into disrepute, the NRL takes the following stance;

NRL: "You did a very naughty thing, do you promise not to do that again?"
Player: "I promise"
NRL: "Good boy, now to reward you for your promise you can go and play for Australia now."

Now, I believe there should be much more strict penalties than those that are currently imposed upon misbehaving players. I have gone through many ideas, some of them included castration, torture, lethal injection and hanging. I felt a bit uncertain about all of those, but one idea that did come across as positively brilliant was deportation.

Deportation would mean that if any player does something wrong, the NRL will send them off to another country so that they cannot represnt their home country ever again.

Here's what the deportation of wrong-doers can do to our game, and you can be rest assured, it will improve the game nationally and world wide.

1. Players who are well behaved, will be rewarded if they are good enough players, with representative honours. This way our states and country will only be represented by players with good reputations, and because Australia is a a very proud and successful sporting nation, our image as a nation will improve markedly.

2. Deported players will lose their Australian citizenship and will become citizens of the country they are sent to. Because they have a clean slate in their new home, they will be eligible to represent their new country. Now because Australian sports stars, particularly Rugby League players, are all better than those from every other country, having ex-Aussies playing for other countries, will improve the strength of the international game.

3. Because our naughty players are with other countries, their integrity will drop and be less likeable, thus making Australia even better.

4. John Skandalis will finally get to play for Australia.

Now my well thought out idea doesn't end there, thats the difference between an idea and one of my well thought out ideas.

The severity of the incident will be the deciding factor as to which country the player will go to. There will be five gardes, grade five being the worst.

So here is a list of countries that players will be sent to depending on the grading of their offence.

Grade 1: France, England

Grade 2: Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga

Grade 3: South Africa, Scotland, Wales

Grade 4: Korea, Japan, Italy

Grade 5: Iraq, Afghanistan, Chad

Some of you may wonder why New Zealand wasn't listed. The answer is simple. There are so many Kiwi players already in the NRL. If they are caught misbehaving they have to go back to New Zealand and live there.

At the rate that current NRL players are misbehaving, we could see all of the above listed nations being firm favourites for the next World Cup. Players will either have to shape up and start behaving themselves, or they could see themselves lining up for the Iraq Oilers.

These laws would see that Rugby League in Australia and in the rest of the World, would once again become the clean and most followed football code that it should always be.