No excuse for toxic off-field behaviour, but there is an explanation

August 20, 2026 — 7:30pm

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Two decades ago, I sat in my office at Sydney University and watched an incredibly fit young man in his late 20s break down in heaving sobs. He was an elite footballer at the top of his game playing with one of the leading NRL clubs.

He’d asked to meet. He said he wanted to get something off his chest. At the time, I was a pro bono gender adviser to the National Rugby League and was working with a team of researchers to understand the off-field culture of the game following an alleged group sexual assault in Coffs Harbour.

When the then CEO of the NRL, David Gallop, approached me in 2004 about conducting education with the players, I told him that there was no point running programs that were not grounded in real-world scenarios. So we surveyed all the players about off-field behaviour and we followed up with in-depth interviews. We repeated the research every five years and designed and evaluated education programs based on what we learnt.

What surprised me most was the honesty of the players. Many of them wanted to talk. In the case of the man sobbing in my office, he wanted to clear his conscience. He told me about staying in a hotel on an away game and becoming aware that a group of his........

© Brisbane Times