The furore that has consumed Australian sports in the last few days might seem a little parochial to American or European readers, but the ramifications of it speak to a much wider issue regarding the expectations that we have for our sports stars and the governing bodies that organize our leagues.
For those who have missed it, a brief summary. Israel Folau, a star rugby union player, has been threatened with dismissal from his contract with Rugby Australia (RA), the governing body in charge of the sport, after posting homophobic memes on social media. Folau, a devout Christian, had been warned a year ago about posting anti-LGBTIQ content and had signed a new contract with Rugby Australia which is thought to contain a clause that specifically prohibits him from expressing such beliefs. Since the memes were posted, Rugby Australia has said that they will fire him should he be unable to provide “compelling mitigating factors” for his behavior.
Initially, Folau went to ground and was unreachable by his employers, but recently resurfaced and met with Rugby Australia, who control the Australian Wallabies national team, and New South Wales Rugby Union (NSWRU), who control his club, the NSW Waratahs. The parties met in Sydney on Friday and reports from the meeting from RA and NSWRU stated that their position was “unchanged”, in that unless Folau sufficiently explained himself, he would be fired. Those are the facts of the case as they stand at the time of writing. All the rest is bluster, but bluster that tells us plenty about how we see our sports stars and governing bodies.
Let’s take a tour of the dramatis personae. Folau is a man of strong faith, a faith that he clearly takes to include the anti-gay standpoints that he has repeatedly expressed. It is his right as a citizen to hold those views, regardless of how unpopular they might be and how much offense they might cause. He is of Tongan heritage and a proud member of Australia’s Polynesian community, a group for whom religion is often central to family life. In 2017, Folau wrote an article for the Player’s Voice in which he wrote of the “three Fs” of Polynesian families: faith, family and finances. For a lot of Polynesian boys in Sydney, that third F is inextricably linked to a fourth: Footy.
Lucky then, that Folau is also a supremely talented athlete: he began in the National Rugby League (NRL), the premier competition in Australia’s dominant rugby code, rugby league, where he was 2007 Rookie of the Year and became the youngest man ever to represent Australia at just 18. He transitioned to AFL football with the Greater Western Sydney Giants and then again to rugby union, where he is the franchise player for the NSW Waratahs and a standout for the national team. That might not mean much to non-Australians, but imagine a number one draft pick in the NBA winning Rookie of the Year, giving it up to play Major League Baseball and then going on to play quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. Israel Folau is that good.
Which makes him difficult to fire, obviously. That Rugby Australia has threatened to fire him, and seem likely to carry out that threat, is a huge call. Their position on Folau has to be seen in the context of the current situation within Australian sport and Australian society in general. From a purely sporting perspective, this is a crucial period for Aussie rugby union: there is a World Cup in September and Australia will likely enter it at their lowest ever international ranking. 2018 was one of their worst years on record, losing seven of their thirteen matches. They need their best players and Folau is certainly one of those. On a club level, Australian clubs lag behind their counterparts from New Zealand and South Africa - with whom they compete in the Super Rugby championship - and again, they need their stars.
Off the field, things aren’t much better. Domestic rugby union has now been almost completely superseded in Australia by the NRL and the AFL, while viewing figures have even fallen lower than the A-League, the major soccer competition, which only began play in 2005. It is a sorry state of affairs for Rugby Australia. The international game has always been more important to administrators than club rugby union, but even that is currently in a state of flux. World Rugby, the international governing body of the sport, has been debating beginning an international competition, the Nations Championship, which they hope will boost revenues and TV viewership, but has been criticized for excluding Pacific Island nations. Rugby Australia needs the money and the eyeballs but is conscious that the Nations Championship might diminish their domestic game yet further. The potential exclusion of Tonga, Samoa and Fiji from the Nations Championship caused a huge backlash among players and fans alike.
The Polynesian aspect of Folau’s story ties back into this. Rugby union in Australia is traditionally very white and very middle class, concentrated around the elite private schools of Sydney. The discord between what the fans and administrators look like and what the players look like is striking. It is estimated that a third of all professional rugby players worldwide are of Pacific Islander descent, whether Polynesian (heritage in Samoa, Tonga or New Zealand Maori) or Melanesian (Fijian or Papua New Guinean), an astounding number given the relatively small number of people in that part of the world. Increasingly, Rugby Australia’s players hail from the heartlands of rugby league, the huge expanses of Greater Western Sydney that are home to the majority of Australia’s Pacific Islander community and who provide almost half of the players to the NRL. Folau is the most prominent of these, a league convert turned to union and the most famous Polynesian in Australia.
In threatening to fire Folau, Rugby Australia are reflecting the general mood within Australia regarding gay rights. The country legalized same-sex marriage in 2017 after a two-thirds of the public backed it in a vote - Israel Folau was a prominent voice against it. The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, himself a Pentecostalist like Folau, condemned the player’s comments, as did Bill Shorten, the leader of the opposition Labour Party. From face-value a PR perspective, there was only one option for Rugby Australia, and that would always likely trump any benefit Folau brings on the field.
Internally, it might have been a more difficult decision. Not only are they depriving themselves of their best player in a World Cup year they also risk isolating their most prominent Polynesian star in a sport filled with Polynesian players at a time when the governing body’s stock among Polynesians has never been lower. Homosexuality is still illegal in Tonga and Samoa and, while Folau’s views are by no means shared by all Polynesians, there is a significant minority who see them as part of their cultural heritage. Billy Vunipola, an England international of Tongan descent, posted a message in support of Folau, which was liked by a host of other players and earned himself a disciplinary meeting with the Rugby Football Union, Rugby Australia’s English counterpart. Other members of the Polynesian community condemned Folau, with New Zealand All Blacks star Nehe Milner-Skudder writing: “What I find disappointing is that an influential Pacific Island brother with a massive following, lots of people look up to him and to see a post like that which spreads hate, rejection, a message of intolerance and difference...Lot of people will be affected by it, especially our Pacific youth, and that's not what they need to be hearing.”
Through their actions, Rugby Australia has dramatically shifted the opprobrium from themselves and their sport onto one individual and his beliefs. Whether or not there is more endemic homophobia in rugby goes undiscussed, because the public ire is concentrated on Israel Folau. The rugby league authorities also quickly got a statement out that nixed any ideas of his switching back to the NRL. Now it seems most likely that Folau will end up abroad, playing club rugby union in France or Japan, earning a good wage but exiled from the national team.
Rugby Australia’s conduct has been swift and decisive. They gave Folau a warning, he did not heed it, and he will likely pay the price. At the very least, he is in breach of contract if, as suggested, Rugby Australia included a clause in his deal regarding social media posts. They can hang him out to dry and make a big play of their values to the rest of the nation. They have shown social leadership - if at considerable sporting cost.
