Todays article by Phil Rothfield. Â Submitted this as new article early this morning Dan, but still not up:
THE next time David Gallop walks into a Manly dressing room, the players will turn their backs on him.
Such is the fury and anger at Brookvale over Gallop's blatant case of double standards in his handling of the Brett Stewart and Todd Carney booze-fuelled pre-season dramas of the past two years. Look at the two cases. Stewart was a total cleanskin. No priors. The face of the game.
He drank a few beers at Manly's 2009 season launch and was asked to leave. He got a taxi home. It's been established in a court of law that that's all that happened.
He was suspended for four weeks - a penalty that Gallop demanded in a late-night phone hook-up to the Sea Eagles board.
Todd Carney?
He has the worst priors of any sportsman in Australia. High-speed police pursuits, drink driving, stomping on cars, urinating on a person, setting a man's groin alight. I'd need more pages to list them all.
He allegedly breaks the law by stepping into a motor vehicle while over the limit the morning after a alleged bender at the Coogee Bay Hotel, despite being warned by a judge that his next traffic offence would result in a jail term.
He receives a paltry $10,000 fine - about a week's pay - and escapes a suspension.
Roosters chairman Nick Politis must be ecstatic.
Is it possible he has exerted his influence to help diminish Carney's punishment?
David Gallop put himself in a dreadful position by handling the Carney issue on his own.
It didn't even go to the NRL board, where bright people like Harvey Norman boss Katie Page and some experienced officials could have at least been consulted and asked for an opinion. The board hasn't even met since last October.
Gallop called for no evidence regarding the Roosters star's off-field behaviour in recent months.
He asked nothing about another drunken incident at an inner-west night spot recently, where Carney misbehaved but was lucky the owner refused to go public because he didn't want bad publicity affecting his business.
So the Dally M winner is free to play in round one and Gallop has handed down his decision.
The Roosters can now rejoice.
Gallop is no doubt a man under pressure. His supporters at News Limited and the Australian Rugby league about to exit the game and hand the power back to Politis and the 15 other club chairmen who now think they run the game.
So how do we prevent this injustice from happening again?
Surely the new commission will have the foresight to set up an independent panel to deal fairly with any future off-field misbehavior. The fans deserve a level playing field.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/znrl/nrl-double-standards-on-todd-carney-brett-stewart/story-e6frfgh6-1226015601242
