– Shaun Martyn, FairBreak Founder

I’ve followed the Manly RL club fiasco this week and can’t remain silent. I can’t remain silent because we have been living the inclusion, opportunity, diversity brief at FairBreak every day, for years.

We just had 90 players from 35 countries compete in a tournament in Dubai celebrating the diversity and inclusiveness of cricket. This was the first time anything has been staged of this magnitude in a team sport.

Broadcast to 141 countries and seen by 30-40mill. Check out the response by players and viewers if you don’t believe me on our website www.fairbreak.net or social channels @fairbreakglobal.

I have no idea how many religions were represented across all the players, officials and management as it doesn’t influence any decision about who is involved.

This week we have seen what should have been a celebration of the outstanding contributions women make to Rugby League in Australia.

Instead, we got one of the most mismanaged debacles I have witnessed from a marketing and messaging perspective in sport. Whoever is responsible at Manly should be shown the door if they haven’t been already.

The hypocrisy just screams out. In a ‘Women in League’ round we object to something on religious grounds but are happy to have a betting sponsor on our kit and play in a stadium named after an alcohol brand. Gambling and alcohol are two of the biggest issues in family dislocation and domestic violence! Can someone please sit the players down and explain that to them.

Q: How come they don’t refuse to play because of those issues?

A: Betting and Alcohol pay their salaries.

The sooner we have ‘pure sport’ across all sport the better for everyone regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or ethnicity.

Sport is supposed to be a celebration of the ‘best’ in all of us. Something we should remind ourselves of everyday.

Image thanks to Clay Banks on Unsplash