DHM wrote:
Right or wrong there was plenty of opportunity to make those points in private. When you publicly criticise administrators like that you almost force them to proceed or drag something out so they are not seen to be buckling under pressure. The length of time that the "investigation" took seemed rediculously long to pretty much everyone. Far longer than needed to gather the facts and decide if Zak should be charged. Was that possibly because the people who "run" RL couldn't be seen to be jumping to the complaints of a club executive?
In that scenario GH did Zak no favours at all. But not really the crime of the century in any case.
Lets say what GH said was true. Surely that needs to be out in the open. Surely the club cannot be complicit in hiding those actions? Surely, if what he said was true, there is a duty to Hardaker and to the game to make sure that people are aware the RFL are behaving like this?
The RFL publicly accused a player of making a homophobic comment, left him hanging there for weeks, and then decided well there isnt actually any evidence for it. That isnt good enough, the RFL have failed there already (and you would think they would avoid drawing attention to that fact but this is Nigel Woods RFL we are talking about) if the Ref did subsequently change his match report, that needs investigating, if the RFL did not pursue this case with the same vigour and tools they pursue others that also needs investigating.
I think people trivialise a little bit what GH said because it was prefaced with such a confrontational term as 'witch hunt', but i dont think it is a small thing at all that the Chief Exec of one of the leading clubs legitimately feels, and has at least some evidence that, a referee changed a match report to include an offence he originally stated he hadnt seen. That really is a huge accusation and not one that should either be made or taken lightly.
I also think it makes the RFL, who publicly accused a player of homophobia with no evidence, look a bit hypocritical to then charge a CE for making an accusation at them. If it was ok for the RFL to tacitly make an accusation, then its ok for GH to tacitly make one against them.
