News of the latest scandal among rugby league players has been received in some quarters as surprising. Some Catholic schools in Sydney are even contemplating ending an association that goes back decades. There are however, broader forces at play which no initiative by schools has sufficient power to affect.
In some respects, it would be a shame were this particular code of football to make itself too outrageous to be invited into schools. In the early post-war years, many students at schools run by orders of religious brothers were initiated into the game and some nostalgic attachment will linger. Baby-boomer blokes will have some memories — not always fond — of being thrown a football or two among a class of 60 and being told to enjoy themselves as they might.
At the working class school I attended, the teaching staff seemed to regret not being a few miles east along the main road at the prestigious 'college' where rugby union was played. Our buildings were crumbling, the methods of instruction barbaric and student creativity and initiative regarded with suspicion.
However, the school's football teams were extremely successful and in a period where sectarianism was still fairly common, successes in rugby league, along with swimming and cadet bands, were important for prestige and self-respect.
The school was near a major sporting ground, the home of a rugby league team, and stars of first grade, especially state and national representatives, appeared at presentation ceremonies and team training. These blokes did become role models of sorts, especially for boys who had none in other fields.
Of course the strong rugby league tradition was not all positive. Boys from migrant families would have made spectacular soccer players, but the sport was regarded as unmanly. And inevitably, anyone who was not good at the game or who participated unenthusiastically was not valued greatly.
Yet we were never scandalised by the behaviour of the stars and had a healthy degree of scepticism about footballers. Many had other occupations while others had sacrificed a career in order to work in day jobs provided by sponsors, supporters or even the registered clubs themselves.
Ironically, while these stars did not have unqualified adulation, they displayed far greater skills than are exhibited today. They tackled around the ankles, passed with style, slipped through gaps with silken ease, swerved and sidestepped past opponents, kicked accurately and gave credit to