Thanks for such a thoughtful and wide-ranging post, SeaEagleRock8. To sum up the state of affairs using the title of a dud 2009 romantic comedy: "It's Complicated".
But if anyone really thinks that sport, commerce and social issues (which I prefer to the term "politics") aren't inextricably linked, they are looking back fondly at a bygone era that probably never existed in the first place.
The only purity left in sport these days, if there is any, is the purity of the contest. In rugby league, that's the purity of the game, 80 minutes of two teams going at it so that their supporters, numpties like you and me, can forget about the **** going on in their lives and the world around them, and cheer for their players and their clubs. And it turns out we can't even count on that.
Sport, as you have no doubt heard, is a business. Sure, on one level it exists for the fans, but really, it exists so that a small number of individuals and corporations can make money off it. The Super League war was proof of that. And when sport becomes an entertainment "product", it also becomes a media product, and the media loves… conflict.
For the media, rugby league is a giant soap opera, and every player atrocity, every boardroom manoeuvre, every bit of controversy means more money for Channel Nine, Fairfax (owned by Nine) and News Corp (including Fox Sports). It is in their interests to intertwine sport, politics and social issues as much as they possibly can, to keep it in the headlines and footy forums, and then to run more stories and opinion pieces and polls about how bad it is that sport and politics are so intertwined, and what are we going to do about it?
Good or bad, the genie has long been out of the bottle: sport cannot exist in a social or commercial vacuum and never will. Sporting organisations are going to take a position on social issues whether we like it or not, as will clubs and individual players. And hoping that it will all go away and crying out, "Why can't it all just be about the footy?" isn't going to make it so. We are going to have to learn how to deal with it and make it work.
My biggest fear is that we've already fallen into the trap of letting players (and fans) believe that a sporting club's team jersey - which represents the club, the sporting body (in this case, the NRL) and, from time to time (even if "too bloody often") various social issues and initiatives - is also somehow a banner of individual rights, beliefs and personal choice. It's not - it's a ****ing football jersey. It represents the club and the team, not the depths of your soul. And if you allow players (either as individuals or acting in a bloc) to pick and choose which jerseys (and whether you like it or not, there will be more than one Manly jersey every year) they will and will not wear, you are eroding the very concept of what it means to be in a team and part of a team.
So yeah, it's probably only going to to get messier from here.
