Public dispute over NRL culture in wake of sex tape leak

The NRL’s longtime gender adviser, Professor Catharine Lumby, has expressed her disappointment at finding out she no longer has a role to play with the sport, advising of her concern that years of work is in danger of being undone under the Australian Rugby League Commission’s current leadership.

Lumby, a Professor at University of Sydney and workplace diversity consultant, responded after being labelled an “attention seeker” by Australian Rugby League Commission Chairman Peter V'landys for criticising the NRL’s leadership amid revelations of a sex tape scandal involving players.

Following a video of an unnamed Parramatta player having consensual sex with a being leaked earlier this week, Professor Lumby yesterday told Channel 7’s Sunrise program of her concerns over the NRL’s culture, commenting “some days I feel like I’m hitting my head against a wall, and frankly, I don’t know where the leadership in the NRL is on this any more.”

Professor Lumby, who, in 2019, following string of off-field incidents, had suggested some players may well be "education-proof”, went on to tell Guardian Australia, “I’m disappointed because a really brilliant team of men and women have worked so hard on these issues for well over a decade.

“It would be really great if the new leadership got their heads around that.”

In response, V’landys said Professor Lumby’s values did not align with those of the NRL and that the Commission had no obligation to seek advice from her, indicating that her consultancy was no longer required.

V’landys told the Sydney Morning Herald “she criticised me for not contacting her; why do I need to contact her? She has no role with us.

“I have no time for her. Her values do not agree with ours. All committees she was on have been disbanded. She just seeks attention ... she is not a spokesperson, she doesn’t represent us.”

Professor Lumby was first employed by the ARLC in an advisory capacity in 2004 and has since been working with the NRL on a pro-bono basis. She was on one committee - the wellbeing and education committee, which had a number of different incarnations over the years - and was not aware it had been disbanded.

Professor Lumby said she had never been contacted by V’landys since he took over the role of Commission Chair from Peter Beattie in October 2019 and that her association with the league had never been formally ended.

She went on to state “15 years of unpaid work, which I was asked to do, does not deserve to be rewarded with comments like ‘who is she’ and ‘she’s an attention seeker’.

“The only reason I ever worked with the NRL is that I believe in the game, I care about women’s rights.

“What I care about are the issues and I do seek attention for these issues. I do not want to see women sexually assaulted or harassed off the field. But it’s not about me, it’s about a team of people in the NRL who, over the 15 years I have been involved, have worked on these issues. And focused not just in some sort of random way but in an evidence-based way on changing the culture.”

Lumby said research showed the work undertaken over the past decade and a half had begun to make a cultural difference and that attitudes and behaviours were changing in the right direction.

“It does seem to me that the current leadership is not educated about the history of how much has been done.

“We are going through a moment of cultural reckoning on these issues and the NRL should be claiming credit and should get on the front foot, not the back foot.

“What we’re seeing is a defensive and reactive response, which is understandable, but probably not productive in the long term.”

The NRL has not advised whether it still has a gender adviser.

Images: Professor Catharine Lumby (top, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0. Full terms at www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) and Australian Rugby League Commission Chairman Peter V'landys (below, credit NRL).