The Duality of Moran

The Queen is dead. Long live the King.

Or, you know, whatever.

As is usual whenever I write about rugby league, it’s usually because the game has made an absolute DeSean Jackson of itself (it’s NFL season now, spare me a reference). Today is no different.

For anyone not familiar with the news, the Queen, she goes by Elizabeth, or Lizzy, just died. As we all know, the Queen was the head of the English monarchy, an institution with a, ahh, lets say somewhat chequered past. I could go on about the colonisation, displacement, and eradication of native peoples in places like America, India, Africa and of course, Australia, but now is not the time or place.

Enter Caitlin Moran, NRLW utility back for the Newcastle Knights, and proud Indigenous Australian woman, who posted on Instagram something along the lines of "what a great day, the dumb dog is dead” [paraphrased].

If you’re wondering why I’m devoting any bandwidth to this seemingly non-issue, you would not be alone, but alas, as I mentioned at the top, the NRL just loves to punch itself in the face.

What followed the post was a chain reaction of some of the most cantankerous pearl-clutching I have ever seen about what is essentially a matter of opinion.

It all started when WWOS alerted the Knights to the post on Instagram. While I’m not sure who exactly it was, I can make a fairly educated guess that it was someone who has made a career out of tweeting “kaboom” with an 8-bit explosion and scabbing free coffees off Sam Burgess.

Former Jillaroos star Caitlin Moran posted the comment, along with a photo of Queen Elizabeth II, on her Instagram account on Friday morning.

It is so offensive that Wide World of Sports has chosen not to republish it.

Moran deleted the comment from her Instagram story some eight hours after posting it - but only after Wide World of Sports made the Knights aware of its existence.

- Unnamed rodent

I’m not a trained journalist, I merely do this as a hobby (hence the article frequency being once a month at best), but if I was reporting on something like this, I wouldn’t frame it as some sort of childlike gotcha, like you just caught your partner cheating in your own bed.

“Yes she deleted it, but not after we got there first!” I mean, come on, what the hell is that?

Speaking of adultery and other actual illegal and immoral acts, this quote from Ray Hadley almost sent me into an early grave, I laughed so hard.

[It is] perhaps the most reprehensible thing ever seen connected to rugby league.

Ray Hadley, professional bootlicker.

Sorry, I nearly threw out my back picking up my compendium marked “rugby league atrocities”. After a quick thumb through the sections marked “sexual assaults”, “drink driving”, and “stealing from charity”, I arrived at my desired page.

“Instagram stories about celebrities.”

I opened the page and found…that no one cares? Wow imagine my surprise.

Well, I lie, some people do care, people so keen to impress sense of importance and tradition upon those they perceive as insolent and ignorant.

“Oh you wouldn’t like someone to talk about your grandmother like that?” No, but my grandmother also didn’t cover up her son hanging out with paedophiles or refer to African dignitaries as “gorillas” so, swings and roundabouts I guess?

What’s most telling, to me anyway, about the reaction to this social media “OUTBURST” is the considerably more muted scrutiny faced by young Canberra Raiders fullback Xavier Savage over what could also be deemed a controversial Instagram story post.

For those unaware, Savage posted about Andrew Tate with a quote along the lines of “this guy gets it.” If you don’t know Andrew Tate, you are in for a helluva Google rabbit hole, but to summarise, he is a former British kickboxer who now lives in Romania and runs what I can only describe as some sort of influencer marketing empire.

Tate’s house has been searched by Romanian authorities under allegations and suspicions of human trafficking, and he even admitted his move to Eastern Europe was partly due to him being “less likely to be investigated for rape allegations.”

Other quotes attributed to Tate include that “[women] belong to the man” and he is “absolutely a misogynist.”

The thing with Tate though, is that those that stumble onto him don’t often get blasted straight with the hate cannon, and a lot of his internet presence is around intangible guff like “personal branding” and “mindset”, so a lot of people don’t see the horrid trash until it’s too late, which is why I’m willing to brand Savage as a naive fool with a “grindset” rather than an outward villain.

I realise I’ve laboured the point here but what I’m essentially getting at is why the NRL felt any need to police what is ultimately a personal opinion. The double standards against male and female athletes and personalities has been highlighted far too often recently.

Even today, and I feel silly writing this, Braith Anasta shared screenshots on to his Instagram story about an elderly Twitter user that disagreed with Braith’s views. Braith, with typical class, responded by saying he “needs an uppercut” among other insults that prove he was definitely not mad, stop asking.

Did the rodent who snitched to the Knights about Caitlin Moran hold similar disbelief at Braith’s comments?

He was using a figure of speech…bit silly but there you go.

- Unnamed rodent

Yeah that tracks. You could never dare call out the double standards of being a pelican on social media because that would shatter the very cronyism your entire career is built on.

No one cared about Xavier Savage spreading the views of a misogynistic lunatic on Instagram. No one cared about Braith Anasta threatening to beat up an old man on Instagram.

The embedded ancient hierarchy of rugby league media is so heavily steeped in tradition and “doing things the right way” it has set itself in stone. The further away we move from their hazily-recollected halcyon days the louder their cries of being cancelled become.

For a group of old buffoons that are quick to bemoan cancel culture and “the woke mob” they sure do make a career out of perpetrating the very characteristic they seem to despise repeatedly.

I’m constantly told how the soft, soyboy millennials are the problem and how we “can’t take a joke” and “you wouldn’t last in my day son.”

Maybe not, but there’s no way of knowing whether I would survive in your day. What I do know for certain though, is you can’t survive in mine old man.

As a final insult to Moran, she has been handed a one game ban and been fined 25% of her NRLW season salary. It is worth noting the fine has been suspended provided Moran “fulfils a number of conditions.”

For as underpaid as NRLW players are, slapping them with a fine of a quarter of their earnings over a throwaway Instagram story is honestly ludicrous. These girls have made great sacrifices to play their sport at what should be a professional level complete with full professional benefits, and yet they are administered like little more than park bludgers and treated with appropriate contempt.

Knights NRLW coach and fellow Indigenous Australian Ronald Griffiths offered the following comment about the matter.

The relationship between Indigenous people and the monarchy is certainly a complicated one.

The Queen is dead, long live the Republic.