St George Dragons

[LP]

He is training, playing and showering with these guys but have them over at your place and you are sacked....

As much as we hate it, and as much as we know that it is a completely false premise, they are public role models and they get unjustifiably held to a higher standard which is the price they pay for having extraordinary wages.

I'm even seeing a strict focus on compliance in suburban football, the fines can kill a suburban club, who knows what the authorities might do to the professional club to set an example.

Nobody wants to be like us or Storm just because of a barbecue, a lot of people in professional sport think booze should be banned in season anyway, they see it as unprofessional and just wait for an excuse to say I told you so!

[Thryleon]

As much as we hate it, and as much as we know that it is a completely false premise, they are public role models and they get unjustifiably held to a higher standard which is the price they pay for having extraordinary wages.

I'm even seeing a strict focus on compliance in suburban football, the fines can kill a suburban club, who knows what the authorities might do to the professional club to set an example.

Nobody wants to be like us or Storm just because of a barbecue, a lot of people in professional sport think booze should be banned in season anyway, they see it as unprofessional and just wait for an excuse to say I told you so!

My problem is more one of philosophy with this.

I actually care very little about this guy, and the fact he has been sacked, but I look at this overall episode and how its being applied and I see two very real problems.

1.  Joe average wouldn't be treated the same because Joe Average wouldnt make headlines.

2.  Joe average would have LESS confidence in their COVID status, because they wouldnt be in the same sort of bubble, with the same amount of testing applied to them.

Scomo literally jumped on a plane, flew around the world, and met with world leaders in a country that has recorded more positives in the last 2 weeks, than we have during the pandemics duration, and yet look at the disproportionate response here.  I think a Rugby Player probably has more confidence in their covid status than Scomo as an example. 

These are the scenarios that make everyone think that the covid response is stupid, and by tearing up his contract, it actually fuels more public hatred in the pandemic, and does more to damage the covid response and the way we are applying rules to "stay safe" than it does to instil people with confidence.

It smacks of ruling with an Iron Fist, and that is something I will never really subscribe to as its the precise motion that enabled a holocaust to occur in Nazi Germany with few questioning the regime. 

[LP]

The penalty wasn't handed out by the government.

Joe Average can see the potential problem as easily as Scotty from Marketing, and I suspect the club and NRL recognised the failure of the pub test.

To me it's more akin to the speeding teenagers, heaps of teenagers defend that by claiming after the fact that nothing bad happened, but then sometimes parents end up burying their kids instead like the accident the other night north of Melbourne.

Nobody in a position of responsibility will leave the fate of the NRL competition to chance.

[Thryleon]

The penalty wasn't handed out by the government.

Joe Average can see the potential problem as easily as Scotty from Marketing, and I suspect the club and NRL recognised the failure of the pub test.

To me it's more akin to the speeding teenagers, heaps of teenagers defend that by claiming after the fact that nothing bad happened, but then sometimes parents end up burying their kids instead like the accident the other night north of Melbourne.

Nobody in a position of responsibility will leave the fate of the NRL competition to chance.

No it wasnt handed out by the government, but the conditions under which they compete is, which results in this heavy handed approach to "covid breaches".


Your analogy to speeding needs to be qualified to the appropriate conditions to be worth comparing as a blanket approach to speeding is the same approach to our covid restrictions which sees the vast majority of health care workers I speak to really disagreeing with the pandemic response, which is telling.

The risk of speeding is different depending on how many other people are on the roads, which roads you are driving on, the experience of the driver and how fast the car is travelling with this analogy rendering it a useless true statement and a ridiculous analogy.

This is akin to pulling someone over on the Stuart highway for doing 130 and stating you could kill someone at that speed.  That is true, but that would involve a lot of extenuating circumstances to occur, and the same risk profile doesnt apply to all highways the same way AND this is a legal speed limit on sections of the Stuart Highway.

The risk profiles change depending on the conditions (likewise with Covid).  Again, this is all about the optics, and I personally believe its a bad reason to do anything and it fails a common sense reaction.  NOTE, he is being sanctioned quite heavily.  You wont find nurses losing their jobs for working in multiple covid facilities and breaking proper covid risk rules, but like you state, they arent held to the same standard, right?

[LP]

You wont find nurses losing their jobs for working in multiple covid facilities and breaking proper covid risk rules, but like you state, they arent held to the same standard, right?

But that's already happened in some facilities.

And their have been Joe Average members of the public arrested and fined for breaching COVID rules, some have even been put into detention.

If you think it's about the optics, then I understand your Stuart Highway analogy, but I'd assert that sends a message and has a real world impact, and of course the person you kill can be yourself but we should not assume that is a victimless crime. It can have a dramatic impact on Emergency Services for example, as much as suicide can impact a family.