Paul Gallen's $50,000 fine is a cruel and unusual punishment

It’s fair to say that many observers greeted Paul Conlon’s decision to resign on Wednesday – in protest over the $50,000 fine handed down to Paul Gallen – with sympathy. All this for a tweet that, while distasteful hardly caused more of a stir than the heavy-handed punishment dished out by the NRL.

Now that the storm has calmed, the punishment looks cruel and unusual. To some, it appears predicated on vengeance for the perceived slight of Gallen’s social media rant. This is to say nothing of the fact that the Sharks skipper was not even given a hearing.

The punishment has already seen the NRL’s judiciary chief Conlon resign. He labelled the penalty imposed upon Gallen – the maximum allowed under the NRL’s code of conduct, agreed to by the players’ association – as the most “disproportionate” he has seen. It is akin to Australia dropping a nuclear bomb on New Zealand because they had the temerity to claim Crowded House as their own.

“I have never witnessed a penalty more disproportionate to the offending conduct than that dealt out to Paul Gallen,” Conlon said. “My role as a judge involves ensuring that punishment fits the crime.”

Conlon also accused the NRL of “double standards” and it’s hard to disagree. In a game in which elbows to the jaw and dangerous tackles routinely draw suspensions of less than a month, in which off the field players have beaten women, and in which players who admit taking performance enhancing drugs will miss only three meaningless premiership matches, Gallen was whacked with a fine of $50,000 and had his rep career virtually exterminated – he has also been banned from representing Australia. Gallen’s is the second largest fine a player has ever received.

The affair has played out like a satire of the political machinations of an organisation out-of-touch with reality. Unfortunately, it’s hard not to see it is simply the actuality of rugby league in this country. Welcome to the NRL. After removing the offending tweet five minutes after it was posted, Gallen attempted to make contact with the NRL chief executive, Dave Smith. Smith reportedly didn’t answer the call and then had a deputy relay Gallen’s punishment to him.

Gallen is entitled to be livid at how he has been treated. His tweet was out of line, no question. He did something dumb. But he didn’t deserve the whack he got. He didn’t deserve 1/10^th of the whack he got. The punishment looks like a childish reaction by a scorned hierarchy attempting to keep a lippy serf in line.

It doesn’t stop there though. The NSWRL chairman, George Peponis, was asked to explain his support for Gallen – through official channels no less. Peponis is an independent chairman who said nothing more than that this is a matter between the NRL and Gallen. It smacks of an attempt by Smith and the ARL chairman John Grant to silence criticism.

The faith anyone in or around the game has in the system is weakening. The hope that Grant and Smith would act as agents of positive change for the game is now gone, at least in my view and many of those I know. The belief that independence alone would be rugby league’s salvation is long dead.

For me, the NRL’s reaction to a tweet is just as embarrassing as anything Gallen said, or anything Todd Carney may have done on a Saturday night. The league should be held accountable. Maybe through resignation. Maybe through water torture. Maybe through a session in the stocks. After all, who knows these days what a justifiable punishment is?