I think Smith, for once as he's a coach I've always respected, is bang out of order. He is comparing having sex with a dog to being homosexual. It's the most insulting the I've read. Being a homosex...... rugby league fan I think Joel should just man up and take it. I don't see how dog flavoured chanting and shouting can hurt someone that much, especially as he'll be playing in a successful side next season.
Smith is wrong to call for fines. I've heard he's been getting a lot of stick from the Warrington players and the clubs own fans have had a word or two, a few of them not agreeing with signing him. There is also no legal reason for any club to prevent their fans from chanting songs about dogs. Chanting about dog sex is not yet illegal in this country like homosexual abuse is, so unless they try to shoehorn it into some ridiculous RFL bylaw it's pretty hard to crack down on.
He's a player who was sacked by his club for gross misconduct and also effectively barred from the NRL because of what he did. Smith is wrong therefore to turn him into a victim who requires protection. I think mentioning it at all is totally the wrong thing to do personally, why not just 'let sleeping dogs lie' as Barry Mackenzie put so brilliantly in his trolling thread on the VT. This would die away after a while if the player, the club and the media didn't talk about it so much. Why bring it so sharply back into focus by demanding the RFL fine clubs for the behaviour of their fans when it hasn't even happened yet. The time to do that is if Monaghan was finding it hard to cope, not before he's even started. Mentioning it now will just make those initial calls louder and Smith wading in foot first won't reduce the abuse at all.
