Rugby Australia pay Israel Folau $8m in out-of-court

What a bunch of fannies 🤦

Way to put back equality a few decades.

I hope Aussie sports fans are fuming?

They should tell him to stick the rest of his contract.

He hasn't been let go, he has been fired for gross misconduct.

Just to take away any ambiguity: this is a complete back down from Rugby Australia. No shared points. No moral victory. Just abject failure. They've lost millions and millions of dollars and been forced to apologise. Didn't even leave with their dignity intact. Each and every person on the RA board should be reviewing their positions, particularly Raelene Castle, who would have been on the nose anyway in any competently run organisation. Well actually a competent organisation wouldn't have hired her in the first place after the mess she made of the Bulldogs.

The big winner: Israel Folau. $8 million, some free publicity for his father's church/ cult that no one had heard of previously, and the criticism of his wife fired her up nicely to lead the Silver Ferns to the Netball World Cup. He makes as much, probably a lot more than he would have playing and he gets the pleasure of publicly humiliating RA and just about sending them bankrupt on the way out.

And notice I've not once mentioned homosexuals? That's because it had long since become nothing to do with the initial post. Just a play thing for far right and SJW commentators to BS about for a month or two.

Never should have gone this far. What a fucking disaster...

Top post.


This is what happens when public opinion and sentiments pressurise you into making decisions 

Once again, another example of “free speech” being bandied about without so much as a whimper as to the real issue at hand.
I am all for Folau’s right to say whatever he likes. I have no problem with it. However, with that right comes mine, and anyone elses, right of reply.
Instead of attacking Folau personally and trying to quell his right to say anything, and then hamfistedly try and sack him for breach of contract, all Rugby Australia had to do was re-iterate, as many times as needed, that they unreservedly do not agree with Folau, his words are abhorrent, at odds with general society, and not needed in a pluralist and secular nation like Australia. And then, at the end of his contract, part ways and don’t re-sign him.

You can’t sack someone for their religious beliefs. You of all people, Father, should know that.

The ‘warning’ is immaterial if it cannot be upheld, contract or not. What it probably would’ve boiled down to is the cliched ‘bringing the game into disrepute’ line. And, I dare say, knowing what I know about Rugby in Sydney at the very least, Folau was not bringing the game into disrepute, moreover he was preaching to the choir. The game is well supported by the very conservative Eastern Suburbs, North Shore and Northern Beaches regions and the large ex-pat Islander communities across Western Sydney. Both are probably the most religious demographics in Sydney.

And, from this, is where I disagree slightly with Hosko’s take. Rugby Australia assumed that like you and I, there would be a severe backlash across the board. However, whilst there was push back, in the Rugby heartlands there was more support for Folau than they imagined. And this is the biggest problem Rugby in Australia has. It has always misrepresented itself as being popular across a broad and widespread demographic. The reality is that aside from small pockets of Sydney and Brisbane, it’s easily the 3rd most popular football code, and in most places, it’s 4th (behind Association Football, Australian Football and Rugby League). And in those pockets, the people not only agree with Folau, they know he’s their best player. And Folau knew it too.