NRL head of football Todd Greenberg. Source: Richard Dobson / DailyTelegraph
WHERE does the NRL's Integrity Unit go ... if it's found the game has no integrity?
The investigation into whether the Canterbury Bulldogs football club acted improperly is a watershed moment for the new NRL administration, and the Australian Rugby League Commission that looks over it.
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It is a chance to say old ways no longer work.
It is a chance to draw a line for fresh standards.
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It is a chance to tell us that it's okay to say we trust in a game we have already given our hearts to.
And, if it is not any of those, then the game is dead.
We believe in a lie.
How it looks from here, former Canterbury chief executive Todd Greenberg, now the NRL's head of football, seems to me to have been too clever in his handling of the Barba allegations.
The cruel irony is that Greenberg, the bright young face of the game, might become the victim of old school ways.
Faced with domestic violence allegations against Dally M Medal winner Ben Barba, Greenberg handled it in a way that soon had most, unaware of the truth, applauding his management skills.
He told no one of the allegation while standing Barba down and forcing treatment, citing the more palatable "alcohol and gambling" issues as reasons why.
Drawing from the textbook Management Secrets of the 1970s, for a while it looked like everybody was a winner.
The game was portrayed as caring, concerned. A sympathetic arm was put around Barba. The Dogs picked themselves up and got on with it.
Until the photo of Barba's former partner Ainslie Currie emerged on Sunday, with split lip, followed by Tuesday's series of damning text messages.
The story was blown.
Cover-ups have long been part of rugby league. They still conceal who wore the bowler hat down an England street on the 1963 Kangaroo Tour. Naked.
There has long been a belief that the public does not have the right to know all that happens in the game, not always for the protection of the public.
"Why should it go to the Integrity Unit?" Brad Fittler asked on The Sunday Footy Show.
"If the partner doesn't want to lay charges why is it our role, why is it our duty to delve into everyone's life and control everyone's life?
"Why can't they just deal with it like it has happened for..."
Before he was cut off, way too late.
Fittler is as decent a man that played the game. But like many who played with him, or enjoyed watching him, he understandably sees the game from the players' perspective, in Player Land, which misses the point.
The game's problem is thousands of people agree with him, and based on his actions I'd suggest Greenberg's thinking was probably not that different.
It shows what the NRL is up against.
And we must realise there is something bigger at stake than what happens in Player Land.
If the game isn't honest to the fans about why the Dally M Medal winner was stood down days before launching the season, then when can anyone trust the game is being honest to them?
What do we believe when the next salary cap scandal occurs? Or the next player is stood down for gambling and alcohol problems? If there's a betting scandal?
Every lie attacks the game's integrity, eroding public confidence.
The billions of dollars that pour into the game come from people who pay, above all, for an ideal.
They pay for an image, carefully crafted, of men bigger and stronger than the rest of us. Men who play hard but fair, who give to the community, and like to help those in need.
Whose morals are unquestioned.
Sponsors pay into that image, believing that is what will help sell their product. Which is why they can leave mid-contract when a player or club fails that standard.
The game has grown so much entire marketing departments exist at clubs to service these people.
Similarly, fans pay for an image, collectively paying millions of dollars for it.
This is where the billions that now fund the game come from.
And that money disappears if that public confidence is eroded.
If the game tolerates domestic violence by helping cover it up, what else will it tolerate?
The moment we know we are being lied to, that image the game crafts for itself evaporates.
What else can't they trust?
Can we trust what we are being told?
Is that little livewire fullback at Canterbury, Ben Barba, the one all the kids want to be like, is he ... Is he what we want our children to grow up to be like?
We deserve the truth before we make that decision because, for many of us, this is more than a game.
It is an affair of the heart.
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