Opinion

William Scholes: Season cannot end soon enough for Ulster Rugby

William Scholes

William Scholes

William has worked at The Irish News since 2002. His areas of interest include religion and motoring.

The unfortunate Jono Gibbes, Ulster Rugby's departing head coach, talking to the media. The club now excludes news journalists from its press conferences. Picture by Hugh Russell
The unfortunate Jono Gibbes, Ulster Rugby's departing head coach, talking to the media. The club now excludes news journalists from its press conferences. Picture by Hugh Russell The unfortunate Jono Gibbes, Ulster Rugby's departing head coach, talking to the media. The club now excludes news journalists from its press conferences. Picture by Hugh Russell

BEING on the receiving end of attitudes which might be described as North Korean or, for those with longer memories, Stalinist is nothing new to the press in Northern Ireland.

Generally it is those in the political arena who attempt to control the message in such an unapologetically crude and cloddish fashion.

The DUP and Sinn Féin, for example, are veterans at limiting press access or simply ignoring questions.

Other approaches include feigning indignation about difficult questions or going on the attack when you are under pressure.

For enhanced effect, these can be blended. An example of this has been put in the public domain by the Renewable Heat Incentive inquiry.

It has published evidence which, among other things, gives some insight into how the DUP constructed a press release - belligerent even by that party's low standards - which happened to also reveal, against her will, the identity of a whistleblower on the cash for ash scheme.

It is unlikely that Ulster Rugby wanted to find itself associated in the minds of the media or anyone else with the dark arts of political spin.

Yet that is where it finds itself in the wake of the organisation's bewildering handling of the fall-out from a nine-week trial which involved two of its star players and which raised issues of clear public interest.

Here it has been the author of its own misfortune, with a strategy that could appear next to 'cack-handed', 'car crash' and 'crisis management' in the index of The Big Book of How Not To Do Media Relations.

To recap, Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding, both Ulster players who have also represented Ireland, were unanimously acquitted by a jury of raping the same woman in a bedroom at Jackson's house in June 2016.

Two other men, Blane McIlroy and Rory Harrison, were also found not guilty of lesser charges.

Following the verdict, Jackson and Olding were sacked following a review conducted by Ulster Rugby and the Irish Rugby Football Union.

As the father of a rugby-mad primary school-age son, this was in my view undoubtedly the correct decision.

It was also the only credible response for a sport which has built itself a reputation for being an inclusive, family game; one which is generally regarded with good will by, in the euphemism of Northern Ireland, all sections of the community.

Ulster Rugby presents and markets its players as role models for boys and girls; I won't be the only parent who thought that the tone and content of the series of mobile phone messages which formed part of the evidence heard in the trial - as well as the attitudes they betrayed - are incompatible with that.

Anyone, Ulster Rugby fan or otherwise, who cannot recognise that the phone messages alone were a serious problem immediately identifies themselves as a dunce.

Having got to the correct outcome on the fate of Jackson and Olding, Ulster Rugby has still managed to find itself appearing off-balance, wobbling in a vertigo of its own confusion.

There are several heroically inept aspects to how Ulster Rugby has handled the fall-out from the case.

This includes barring news journalists from press conferences - a truly bizarre approach for a professional sporting organisation operating in a commercially-sensitive environment.

Another unusual feature has been the lack of visibility from senior figures on the management side, including chief executive Shane Logan or representatives from the Ulster Branch committee.

No-one, to my knowledge, was laying the blame for the obnoxiously offensive and misogynistic phone messages at the door of Ulster Rugby, much less Mr Logan personally.

Yet there were clearly legitimate questions to be answered around the culture in the club and the game in Ulster more generally - questions of the sort that should be fielded by the management rather than the playing side.

Still, it was Jono Gibbes, the head coach, who was wheeled out to face a room of journalists hungry for answers.

One can only feel enormous sympathy for Gibbes, who was put in a very difficult situation for which he was clearly, through no fault of his own, ill-prepared.

Generally referred to as 'the departing Jono Gibbes', on account of how he is cutting short his term in Ulster to return home, one wonders what impression of rugby in the province he will bring back with him to New Zealand.

Depending on results elsewhere, tomorrow's match against Munster in Limerick could mark the end of Ulster's season.

It can't come soon enough.