Also, playing for your country is a pretty unique job that should quite obviously require a certain value system, and to require you to have to really prove that if there was reason to doubt it.
I agree in theory. I have a few questions i don't have an answer for tho. First, i don't really know how and if you could reconcile that with most western legal systems where the standard premise is innocent till proven guilty.
What you are suggesting is, essentially, inverting the burden of proof, which i am not sure is legal in many places. Second, you would need to state that explicitly in a contract. I am all in favour of making people accountable for their actions as long as they made aware of those conditions beforehand.
Matera et al tweets have unravelled a new level of shitstorm in Arg and the aim hasn't been only at the players but at UAR, rugby clubs and rugby in general. It's partly their fault for endlessly repeating the "values" speech to differentiate themselves from other sports. That ended up putting a huge bull's eye in rugby.
My question is, what is the responsibility of, let's make it simple, the rugby club? Someone who finished high school, plays footie, rugby, studies at uni, has a job. He does something bad, bad enough that it becomes newsworthy.
I would say that other than the person himself if he plays rugby, most journalists would target the rugby club. Rarely the school, not the uni, not his employer, not his footie club. Sometimes his family (if it's related to classism, racism, etc, but not so much if it is related to violence) but most definitely his rugby club. There is this expectation that, for example, a guy that volunteers 3 times a week to teach/train 14-year-olds rugby is responsible for anything bad enough they could do in the next 10/15 years. It's as if rugby trainers have this burden of having to be not only trainers but mentors, motivational speakers and psychological advisors, with all the asociated liabilities if things go wrong. And again, a lot of them without being paid a cent.
Not sure how it is elsewhere, but in Arg that is incredibly unfair. I'm curious.
I always looked at it as if the moral values that you got out from playing it were a huge benefit from actually playing the sport, but not the purpose itself. You learn teamwork because it's a team sport, you learn leadership because good leadership pays off in the pitch and you learn resilience because that yields results. You dont learn those things as a lesson with them as the end result. That happening is a fortunate accident.
Placing the blame on the clubs and trainers for the wrongdoings of the people they train, as if they were responsible for anything they do is mental. Unless you can prove otherwise, course.
