The Israel Folau saga

[formerflanker]

Thanks mods for re-opening this thread.
Your commitment to free speech is respected.
(NB No sarcasm intended)

 

[formerflanker]

The deathly silence from both parties to the CoC meeting means most of us are operating in the dark.
For example, many still say that Izzy broke his contract yet there are others who can quote precedent to show he didn't.
We don't have all the facts yet.
I did see somewhere today that a social media clause will be inserted into players' contracts from now on, indicating there wasn't such a clause in Izzy's contract.

I just tried to search for that article but gave up at the sight of so many search results!

 

[Ulrich]

There are worse things to worry about in life than the religion of one rugby player. Honestly, go think about it for a while and go think what impact it truly has on you or anyone for that matter.

Come to South Africa if you want to have drama in your life because this is childsplay by our standards. There are way more pressing things in life to concern yourself about than this.

Leave him be, he is human too.

Let him play, he has the talent.

 

[gel]

“You’re talking about a guy who showed he was a liability in the social media space last year, and then you go and sign him up for four years on a $4 million deal. You want to make sure you have everything in place. You need to dot your I’s and cross your T’s across everything. They didn’t.
“They went back and said, ‘Oh, we need you to sign this with the additional social media clauses,’ and Israel Folau said, ‘Na, I’ve already signed a contract’. That’s what Israel Folau’s lawyers will use.”

bwhahahahahah
That's the point I have been making all along - RA are fucking useless twats and this incident is no different to anything they have ever done before - they are grossly incompetent and it will cost the game millions because they are just trash at their job responsibilities.

 

[Ignoto]

Gel, multiple sources have stated it is not possible to include a social media clause into the current EBA between RA and the Australian Rugby players. Hence the need for a code of conduct.

 

[Ulrich]

RA should get screwed. If they do not value the social and religious views of their personnel they should never have employed him in the first place.

It is his views. He is entirely entitled to it, whether they, the sponsor or anyone else agrees with it or not. It is the views of Israel Folau.

 

[Ulrich]

Siya Kolisi got lambasted because he said quotas are unnecessary. He can thank his lucky stars the pigments of his skin were dark enough else he would be dropped completely.

It is bullshit like this that should not matter a fu...

MERIT and MERIT only. NOT religion, NOT skint colour, NOT political affiliation!

 

[Gnostic]

A report during the week gave the opinion of a Law Professor at one of the Universities that said the potential is there for this saga to go unresolved for years and Folau may well end up seeing out his contract being paid not to play.

So lets add up the costs of his contract, the damage this saga has done to relations with other players of similar beliefs and the outright divisions it has caused within Australian Rugby, and now add to it the open ended costs of having to pay various silks their usual exorbitant fees to run this hearing which may or may not stretch on for an extensive time, then add in the real potential for Folau to claim costs of his defence against RA. This has the potential to send RA over the cliff edge they have been teetering on for years, instead of managing a situation every single action they have taken from the first statements they made have really limited the outcomes possible for them instead of maintaining or increasing their managerial options (no matter what they privately thought and said) and they have increased the downside risk to the business by orders or magnitude.

I will add in that while we have established as discussed above that it appears RA had no ability to put in a social media clause due to the EBA, it is that same body, even if it was before the costly and to no real purpose re-branding from the ARU that agreed to the EBA in the first place. We should not be surprised that such an agreement was made when you consider the incestuous nature of professional Australian Rugby with the same names appearing as players, administrators, Union Representatives and also as "Journalists". Nobody has ever been held to account in Australian Rugby for the multitude of failures at all levels. Some have been shown the door like JON, but that is of no consequence when he gets his lovely big payout and a contract that says nobody can be critical of him officially. SO then we hire Hawker and Clyne as first in line at the gravy trough, just remember where they came from, Hawker from NRMA - how did that go? But that's OK he was a former player and he had CEO in front of his name so he must go alright. Clyne from NAB - Royal Commissions aside, lets look at the performance of that group while he was there, but that's alright he's been extorting a Bank CEO salary so if he's willing to take a pay cut to run RA he must be a good bloke.

Is it any wonder we are where we are?

 

[gel]

Gel, multiple sources have stated it is not possible to include a social media clause into the current EBA between RA and the Australian Rugby players. Hence the need for a code of conduct.

They're incompetent because they tried to do something about the issue AFTER he had already signed the contract.

He had already been the subject of disciplinary action, he had written an article saying we was going to continue posting about his faith and that RA had misrepresented his view of discussions, yet they still went ahead signing him up under the standard eba contract.

Business 101 - if the contract is not favourable (or is risky), don't sign it unless you are prepared to pay the consequences if it goes south.

They could have not signed him (given the support they got back then and now surely you would all be pleased with that), they could have had termination clauses based on probationary periods - (those aren't against any eba I've ever seen) they could have had behaviour management actions put in place, they could have discussed a myriad of social media management tools that are common in many workplaces that are not limiting freedom of speech or expression - but they didn't do any of those.

They did nothing and they are likely to pay a price.

Their cheapest option now is to slap him a fine and let him play.

If they sack him and he chooses to go them in court it will be a field day.

I don't know where y'all work, but you lot must work in some pretty draconian places tbh.

 

[Gnostic]

RA should get screwed. If they do not value the social and religious views of their personnel they should never have employed him in the first place.

​

​

It is his views. He is entirely entitled to it, whether they, the sponsor or anyone else agrees with it or not. It is the views of Israel Folau.​

​

​

​

​

Whilst I agree with you to a certain extent Ulrich, I will also say that very few of these blokes would hold any significant social media presence if it were not for their ability to play footy coupled to their exposure in the pro set up. To be frank most of them are blokes with little else to commend them in a skills sense, so whilst I am 100% on free speech and that free speech by its nature will always offend somebody, the ability to make use of a profile granted as a fringe benefit by means of being a pro contract can and should be controlled by the employer. If these blokes don't like that in the contract fine, don't sign, go and play club footy and say what you want, you just will not get the audience.

The highest profile players make as much if not more from their side endorsements in the same way, and I'd be stunned if those contracts are not far more rigorous that what the completely incompetent RA/ARU has come up with the EBA and individual contracts.

 

[Ignoto]

He had already been the subject of disciplinary action, he had written an article saying we was going to continue posting about his faith and that RA had misrepresented his view of discussions, yet they still went ahead signing him up under the standard eba contract.

But from what Castle has said publicly, Folau made promises on his side to shut up about hating Gays, Drunks etc So they obviously took him on his word trusting that it was all resolved.

Now, I don't think RA are blameless in this situation, however, I think it's too far fetched to land this shitshow in entirely their court and Folau should be copping some of the crap.

I don't know where y'all work, but you lot must work in some pretty draconian places tbh.

Not really, although I think a lot of the camp who can't see anything wrong with what Folau said are of a different generation to the otherside of the fence.

My work environment has an extremely wide range of ethnicity's, sexual orientations and everything because the firm does not tolerate the understanding how different every single of the thousands of people they employee are.

 

[Forcefield]

It's an interesting one. I don't know enough about the law in these areas, but I wonder if a social media clause is really necessary. Personally, I think that RA was pretty clear that posts about people going to hell is not considered acceptable and would not be tolerated. He knew that when he signed a new contract. The recent social media posts are no different to what has been posted in the past. Yes, you can play the "I was just quoting the bible". But just because you are quoting doesn't exempt you from responsibility. Ultimately, I think RA will win this, but it will be a pyrrhic victory.

Of course, like almost all things, RA could have handled this all a lot better.

In professional sports players are contracted to make money. Too often results = money and the lines get blurred. At the end of the day you could be the best of the best, but if your actions alienate the few sponsors/fans the code still has, you undermine your value. Also, by putting the code under duress, how is that treating your team mates?

 

[gel]

But from what Castle has said publicly, Folau made promises on his side to shut up about hating Gays, Drunks etc So they obviously took him on his word trusting that it was all resolved.

Sequence of events are horribly important. She said publicly that he had made promises during their first disciplinary meeting last year. He then wrote an article specifically because he felt what she said publicly misrepresented what he said during that meeting. That right there are the earning signs that RA ignored and/or did nothing to mitigate the probable events.

This is the mindset I see here:. If you say RA have handled this poorly from a contractual point of view, then you automatically agree with Folau religious stance (as you just did by automatically casting me as having different generational viewpoints)

Edit: I find it offensive that people can't resonate the idea that one can not agree with what Folau wrote and also not agree with the procedural way that RA have dealt with it. It seems that it has to be all in or all out according to some on here.

And you've not understood what I meant by mentioning work places being draconian at all.

 

[Lorenzo]

We don't really know anything about how RA has handled it from a contractual point of view. I'm willing to bet they got advice prior to both their public comments and the breach notice, and i'm willing to bet they got it from someone relatively competent. Rugby management isn't really their thing, but most of the people involved have enough corporate experience to know when to call a highly regarded employment lawyer. So LOL RA FUKD UP AGAIN LOL mightn't be the best assessment at this point, at least not for us that don't know what is going on. It's been reported that their hands were tied somewhat due to the CBA (EBA?), but again, who knows?

There numerous possible legal issues here. How effective is an 'entire agreement' clause in cases of misleading pre-contractual representations? Is the parole evidence rule relevant? How broadly should the code of conduct or bringing employer into disrepute clauses be interpreted?

We'll see soon enough. My personal view, and I held this a year ago, is that they should never have re-signed him in the first place. It's not like he gets us over the hump to being championship side.

 

[gel]

There's evidence to the contrary, and in the case of Cameron an enormous amount.

 

[fatprop]

Resorting to bully tactics now against people who oppose us betrays that victory. We have asked the country to celebrate our diversity, but that means we must also celebrate diversity of opinion.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/sil...our-gay-marriage-victory-20190503-p51jsk.html

 

[Quick Hands]

We don't really know anything about how RA has handled it from a contractual point of view. I'm willing to bet they got advice prior to both their public comments and the breach notice, and i'm willing to bet they got it from someone relatively competent. Rugby management isn't really their thing, but most of the people involved have enough corporate experience to know when to call a highly regarded employment lawyer. So LOL RA FUKD UP AGAIN LOL mightn't be the best assessment at this point, at least not for us that don't know what is going on. It's been reported that their hands were tied somewhat due to the CBA (EBA?), but again, who knows?

There numerous possible legal issues here. How effective is an 'entire agreement' clause in cases of misleading pre-contractual representations? Is the parole evidence rule relevant? How broadly should the code of conduct or bringing employer into disrepute clauses be interpreted?

We'll see soon enough. My personal view, and I held this a year ago, is that they should never have re-signed him in the first place. It's not like he gets us over the hump to being championship side.

I wouldn't necessarily be putting a lot of faith in how RA handle their legal affairs either. So much misplaced faith on these threads in RA, when they are shown to be a slipshod operation in so many ways. A recent example.

Australia’s rugby union team has lost another clash, this time over its domain name, with a tribunal striking down the organisation’s claim to wallabies.com.au.
Despite the ARU filing a supplementary complaint, the WIPO panel handed the sports body a comprehensive defeat ruling: “The panel does not find that the disputed domain name has been registered or is being used in bad faith.”
The panel also slammed the ARU’s preparation of the complaint, saying: “The panel considers that the complainant was careless in the preparation of its case.”

https://mumbrella.com.au/australian-rugby-union-refused-ownership-of-wallabies-com-au-567321

 

[Quick Hands]

Sequence of events are horribly important. She said publicly that he had made promises during their first disciplinary meeting last year. He then wrote an article specifically because he felt what she said publicly misrepresented what he said during that meeting. That right there are the earning signs that RA ignored and/or did nothing to mitigate the probable events.

This is the mindset I see here:. If you say RA have handled this poorly from a contractual point of view, then you automatically agree with Folau religious stance (as you just did by automatically casting me as having different generational viewpoints)

Edit: I find it offensive that people can't resonate the idea that one can not agree with what Folau wrote and also not agree with the procedural way that RA have dealt with it. It seems that it has to be all in or all out according to some on here.

And you've not understood what I meant by mentioning work places being draconian at all.

As far as I know, discussions before the signing of a contract as Castle keeps saying are just that. They don't form part of the agreement if they aren't included in the contract. I also note that over a year ago Folau disputed Castle's spin on the meeting, so I hope RA isn't basing its case on these "discussions".

Others on here have also said that RA didn't put a social media clause in the contract because the EBA prohibits such a clause. Well, if that's the case it can't be included in a legal binding verbal contract either. You can't say the law prevents us putting this in a written contract so we'll enter into a verbal contract instead.

 

[Up the Guts]

Cheika was there at the hearing giving evidence. Thought he had ruled out Israel from Wallaby selection so I wonder who it was for or what it was about?

 

[KOB1987]

Cheika was there at the hearing giving evidence. Thought he had ruled out Israel from Wallaby selection so I wonder who it was for or what it was about?

No that was just the media playing on his words. He said that he was unable to select him in the foreseeable future, inferring that was because he had been stood down. As well as a heap of seemingly RA directed script about it being disrespectful etc.

I’m pretty sure he wasn’t giving evidence to make sure we never see him play again ;-)