Carter Gordon isn’t a rugby league player.
Everything he’s done in his young career to date says that he’s a rugby player to his core, with long held dreams of taking on the British and Irish Lions next year in a series that many players hold in higher esteem than Rugby World Cups.
It really has taken an extraordinary coalition of the incompetents to deliver him to the Gold Coast Titans on a platter. Commentary this week about what damage his decision has caused to rugby are upside down: it’s the damage that rugby has done to Gordon that should be top of the agenda.
Consider what the code he clearly still loves has offered him in the past year or so.
The basket case Wallabies to the basket case Melbourne Rebels, and by the way how would you like to join the basket case Waratahs? Sure, they don’t have a coach and some of their best players are leaving – and you’ll also take all of the blame if things don’t work out – but just sign here.
Over the past year there are probably more striking images of Gordon in tears on a rugby field than looking happy.
Carter Gordon was thrown to the wolves at last year’s Rugby World Cup.Credit: Getty Images
And as if to underline rugby’s current mess, the Gordon story wasn’t even the most alarming of the day. No, that prize was collected by Rugby Victoria, who unsurprisingly stirred a mutiny among their own clubs by – and let this sink in – signing off on a $400,000 loan to the Rebels at the end of last year.
This masthead’s Carla Jaeger broke that story on Thursday, a mind-boggling example of the professional game taking money out of the community game, which included the killer line, “if Rugby Victoria is forced to hand back the repayment, it will be owed a total of $512,000, and will recover around $76,800 of that”.