Racial abuse has been common for years in the Group 6 rugby league competition and the ugly incident yesterday at Dudley Chesham Sports Ground at The Oaks was just a matter of time, say insiders, including a local footy senior administrator.
At yesterday’s under 18 game between The Oaks Tigers and Campbelltown Collegians the brawl broke out at the end of the match.
The match had ended in 16-16 draw when the home side – trailing by two points – received what some thought was a dubious penalty.
The Tigers kicked the penalty goal to get a draw.
It is alleged some fans of the local side yelled racial slurs aimed at black Collegians players leaving the field after the final hooter, including things like “black monkeys and Centrelink bludgers’’.
These were followed by more racial abuse posted on social media afterwards, one sent to us in a screen shot.
Police are investigating following the NSW Rugby League decision to stand down both the under 18 teams from Collegians and The Oaks, and one of the things they are looking to establish how the brawl started.
From the information the South West Voice has received, a young player from Collegians reacted to the racial abuse, punches were thrown, leading to an all-in brawl, although a video sent to a radio station has some people standing back watching the melee.
The administrator we spoke to on the promise of anonymity confirmed what everyone has known for years: park football is rife with racial abuse and vilification and nobody’s doing anything about it.
“It’s well known. Everyone knows it and group 6 administrators and the media keeps hiding it or covering it up,’’ said a local resident who contacted us about the incident.
Group 6 needs to go back to being a country rugby league competition, which should not include teams from Campbelltown. I know it might be hard for Group 6 to survive without Campbelltown these days but it did throughout the 1980s and 1990s, once Campbelltown City were excluded. This needs to be the challenge for the NSWWRL, and the NRL should help out too if they want grass roots competitions to continue to exist. The NRL need players coming through, so why would they not act on CRL and JDRL to fix the big issues. They have all the money as we recently found out with the boadcast deal. Campbelltown is part of district rugby league and it needs to part of that instead of being partly country rugby league. I know that under 18s works in the bush, but it is no good for metropolitan rugby league (district rugby league). District league should go back to what always worked as in under 19s, which was C grade, and then under 23s (B grade).