Rogues Gallery wrote:
:mrgreen: Excellent post. What's done is done and can't be changed or excused. But I'll guarantee that when the ban is announced some Wigan fans will say it's too harsh and some Saints fans will say it's too lenient.
Flower cut a very forlorn figure at last nights awards dinner at Wigan, but fair play to the lad for turning up, it would have been much easier for him to stay away.
Exactly. Let's put it like this - in all forms of justice there is the basic tenet that
'you commit the crime and you serve your time'. Thereafter what kind of planet would we be on if people were pilloried and disadvantaged forever because of something stupid? He's a 27 year old lad, I was one of them once and messed up then more times than I can recall now.
Nobody, not Wigan, not Saints, not the RFL, not the vast majority of people who saw it (save for micro brain cells like Mr Hock but who takes him seriously anyway) condones it in the slightest. But the reaction has gone too far and the lad, who I believe is as penitent as it is possible to be, needs to serve his punishment and be allowed to get on with his life and career - as long as he's learned that indiscriminate violence has no place in any sport (or society for that matter).
As I have said before; people have short memories.