COMMENT: It's a disgrace rugby is heading to Qatar – but that's not because of sportswashing

06/05/2024 22:30

Column: So, elite test rugby might be going to Qatar.

Interesting.

I can't say I'm too enthused. Nothing to do with sportswashing, but we'll get to that.

When I think of sport in Qatar, I think of English footballer Jordan Henderson.

The then-Liverpool captain was a vocal critic of Qatar – and its human rights record – ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in that country.

A longtime advocate for the Rainbow community, Henderson said he was shocked and appalled by many aspects of Qatari culture and wholeheartedly supported the idea of England captain Harry Kane wearing the 'One Love' armband during the tournament, as a gesture of protest.

It never came to that.

FIFA said anyone wearing the armband would be yellow-carded and the players backed down.

Coverage at the time was largely limited to FIFA bullies pushing the players around and then the inevitable talk of corruption etcetera.

None of that was untrue, but it missed the point that most of these blokes are just virtue-signallers and, having huffed and puffed about what they were going to do, they never had any intention of matching their words with actions.

Henderson, by the way, then signed a contract to play for a club in Saudi Arabia.

I mention that, as talk intensifies that the Nations Championship – featuring the All Blacks and Wallabies – could be staged in Qatar.

We’re still a few years away from the inaugural iteration of that tournament, but already I can imagine the wokesters in our player base tying up their rainbow laces and making similarly hollow threats about not supporting a despotic regime.

When I was a kid, All Blacks captain Graham Mourie and centre Bruce Robertson didn't just say they disapproved of apartheid. They made themselves unavailable for the Springbok tour of 1981.

The difference then was that rugby was amateur. Players could afford to have principles.

We'll see how many players of the current crop have their silence bought, should the Nations Championship ever get to Qatar.

The fact it could be going there is a disgrace. Again, though, not of the sportwashing kind.

It shows just how desperate and inept our administrators are and how they will stoop to any level to avoid the inconvenient truth that they pay their players and themselves too much money.

Rugby is not a game anymore. It's a global business that can't make ends meet, particularly in Australasia.

So we have New Zealand Rugby (NZR) chief executive Mark Robinson regularly waffling on – including in Auckland last week – about growing fan and commercial connections across the world.

I think what Robinson is really saying is the All Blacks are a commodity that's for sale and NZR isn't fussy about the identity of the bidders.

The thing about NZR, though, is that it's insufferably woke, which is partly why this country's provincial unions are in revolt right now.

Diversity and inclusion is vitally important to NZR as they quietly virtue-signal their way out of business.

But such is the distressed nature of their asset that it appears NZR will even take coin off Qatar, no matter how unpalatable or at odds that might be with their own cultural agenda.

It's comical really.

In the same way that I don't want to hear players protesting about potentially playing in Qatar, I actually don't think the combatants in the Nations Championship will be complicit in sportswashing.

I think sportswashing is hogwash, in the same way tobacco sponsorship of sport once was.

I never picked up a packet of fags because I saw Mal Meninga lifting the Winfield Cup or Viv Richards collecting another Benson & Hedges man of the match award.

Same as I don't suddenly intend taking a holiday in Saudi Arabia because their Public Investment Fund has pumped money into a variety of sports.

I don't personally care where the money comes from to fund global sport and use LIV Golf as an example.

The golfing establishment tried to turn it into a moral issue, as if their money was good and the Saudis' was bad. All it did was make them look like hypocrites.

Booze, fast food, gambling; they're blue chip, solid gold sponsors. Qatar and Saudi Arabia? Not so much, apparently.

So should a chorus of folk start condemning NZR as morally corrupt for taking the All Blacks to Qatar, I won't join it.

But I do think our governing bodies should feel embarrassed that they've run their game so poorly that this type of investment has become the silver bullet.

How about taking a long, hard look at your business model first.