With just the NSW Women’s Premiership squad in action this week, the floor opens up for broader talking points as Sixties and Forty20 dive into the Under 19s representatives for the Eels in the men’s and women’s NSW and QLD squads before the fellas have a serious chat about the club’s struggles in the lower grades over the last month.
Ashley Klein featured in the press for all the wrong reasons last week as it came to light that the code’s #1 official has struggled with a serious gambling addiction. While the NRL knew about Klein’s issue and has downplayed the severity of the situation, many fans stand in stark disagreement as he is set to officiate Origin II tomorrow night.
Speaking of Origin, the boys preview the big game including all the selection questions and colourful player strategies that have been disseminated through the media ahead of the critical game two in Melbourne.
I preface this to state that Ashley Klein has not been proven or suspected of cheating at any level in regards rugby league.
He remains a competent official.
I made the suggestion a while ago that corruption generally by referees cannot be ruled out whilst gambling is around the game.
Also the fact that the NRL is so bloody lax at enforcement and their track record of looking the other way doesn’t instill any confidence that they have any ability to uncover any corruption, if it exists.
Generally most on this site disagreed with me saying that I was alarmist and worse.
(There is no active unit dedicated to uncover or fight corruption from officials per se. The NRL relies on third party tip offs instead.
Case in point – players who are long term drug cheats- Bronsan Xerri – the only reason they uncovered his performance enhancing antics was because a third party dobed him in)
But I digress…
If you have ever had the misfortune to know a out of control gambler then you would be quite aware that they don’t just gamble on one thing. To say that a dedicated gambler only gambled on horse racing and didn’t gamble on anything else is frankly fanciful.
Klein by his own admission lost about 500k over the years that THE NRL KNEW HE WAS GAMBLING !
By any metric that would.mean that he would have had to have gambled something in the vicinity of 1.5 million.
One may say that that is an out of control gambler.
Also the NRL has stated that they have checked his accounts and Klein has not bet on the NRL.
That is through his own registered accounts.
An out of control gambler can walk in off the streets and bet on anything legally and can also get mates to bet on a result and share prize money.
There are plenty of ways to make a buck and of course there are plenty of black market shadow men out there trying to manipulate the result.
This in no way infers Klein has done this but illustrates the ease in which it can be manipulated.
Again this is in no way an attack on Klein personally but it shows that the checks and balances that the NRL have against the temptations of corruption is paper thin.
It must be said however that in other professional sports the very idea that a serious long term gambler like Klein would be in charge of a game would be laughed at, the fact that he is in charge of our showpiece event is so far off the scale that it shows just how backwards we are on the big stage.