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Some interesting points here..sorry to keep this going
Too late for Henjak, but lessons there
Wayne Smith, Rugby Union Editor | February 23, 2008
UNQUESTIONABLY, Matt Henjak let down Australian rugby. The question now is whether Australian rugby also failed Matt Henjak.
The contracts professional players sign with their Super 14 teams are almost a throwback to the days of indentured labour. Worse in a way, because not only is every minute of their working day regimented and supervised, but the rest of their day as well. Even Julie Bishop would be struggling to justify them.
Players are told what to eat, what to wear, where to be, how to behave, who to acknowledge, what to say, what not to say, when to say it. They are weighed regularly, admonished when they are too fat, force-fed dietary supplements when they're too thin, drug-tested and breathalysed. They are run ragged, made to move mountains in the gym, told to be ferocious for two hours a week but then punished if they show so much as a hint of aggression in any of the week's remaining 166 hours. And, for good measure, they then get to endure the equivalent of a 60km/h car crash every weekend.
Hell, if it weren't for the fact that professional footballers are paid obscene amounts of money to do something they love, clubs might struggle to find anyone actually willing to sign their draconian contracts.
Naturally, once they own a player's body club administrators then have a duty of care to look after him. Besides, it's in their best interests to keep him in good working order. If he's broken, they fix him. If he tears a rotator cuff, they get it surgically repaired. If his hamstring twangs, they get it retuned. And once they repair the injury, they carry out regular maintenance to ensure the problem doesn't flare up again.
But what happens if, as in the Henjak case, the problem is not one that can be stitched up, set in plaster or "physio-ed"? What happens if his problem is alcohol?
Digby Ioane couldn't hold the ball when he played for the Western Force, so they worked on him, long and hard. But for all the work they put in, the problem remains, judging by the amount of ball he turned over for his new club, the Reds, last weekend.
Henjak's hands are fine. What he can't hold is his grog. It was a problem when he was at the Brumbies and it went west with him when he joined the Force.
Indeed, before he had even played a single game for his new club, the Force had to fork out $16,000 in an out-of-court settlement to make certain that the moment Henjak landed in South Africa he wasn't bundled off to answer alcohol-related assault charges arising from an earlier visit there with the Brumbies. So right from the start, the Force knew, as it would come to know with Ioane, that they had a lot of work to do with Henjak.
There is no question that the club officials made a start. They arranged for him to receive counselling on the dangers of alcohol. They made certain he had regular sessions with a psychologist. What they didn't do was maintain the effort and ensure he wasn't needlessly exposed to temptation. They eased up on a problem there's no easing up on. That's not to absolve Henjak of his sins. Many a person with an alcohol problem stays on top of his demons. They might never go away, those demons, might never be beaten, yet still people make decisions that they will not allow those demons to rule their lives.
From all reports, Henjak fought his demons for 14 months, but in a moment of weakness, opened the door to them. And in they rushed.
Let's leave aside the question of what eight or so Force players were doing at a Fremantle bar on February 10, two days before they were due to fly out to South Africa for the start of their Super 14 campaign. That's something for RugbyWA to work through when the team returns in a week or so. Hopefully the nonsense that one Perth official peddled earlier this week, that the players had put in an arduous pre-season and needed a blow-out, will not be heard again. What? Needed a blow-out just before their first match of the season? I think the Force need to get a handle on how they speak to the media and to the public. A few comments made after the incident inflicted more damage than necessary. The media are quick to tear apart any ambiguous and/or candid statements as we have seen.
The more important questions are why Henjak's fellow players let him start drinking and then why they didn't force him to stop. The explanation given is that Henjak and his co-combatant, Haig Sare, told them all to go away and let them sort out their differences themselves. Surely the mere fact the players felt there was a need to intervene in the first place was reason enough for them to separate the pair, frog-march them out of the bar and send them home. Good point and obviously there are some facts still AWOL on the issue however we can only hope that players have learnt from this and if there is a next time..God forbid..a more sensible approach will be taken, ie, get the players the heck away from each other for an undisclosed amount of time.
Instead, they acted out a scene straight out of Groundhog Day, the one where Bill Murray gets sloshed with a couple of buddies. At the end of the session, one of the drunks says to the other, "friends don't let friends drive" - then he pulls his inebriated mate to his feet and asks "so, are you OK to drive?". And when the slurred reply comes back, "yesh", he hands him the keys and lets him get behind the wheel.
That's the level of care Henjak's team-mates showed him - if in fact they can be called "mates" at all. Force coach John Mitchell summed it up when he observed this week "mateship is about helping each other".
Now it's too late to help Henjak. And given his long and undistinguished record of regularly letting his demons off the leash, there won't be too many people in Australian rugby shedding tears for him.
But even if he couldn't learn from his mistakes, the game itself must. Otherwise it's going to be Groundhog Day all over again for Australian rugby.
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