Innocence lost
While not quite jubilant, there was an air of satisfaction in the way Joe McVeigh addressed the media following the acquittal of his client, one Paddy Jackson. Adopting the tone of an imperious leader lecturing his minions, Mr McVeigh opted to scold and chastise all those who had doubted Jackson, forgoing magnanimity in favour of vengeance and honour.
In doing so, he managed to further damage his client’s reputation, this parting shot an unsavoury cherry on a distinctly unappetising cake.
But it was the final words of McVeigh’s speech which proved most salient: “As for Paddy, his main priority now is to return to work, that means getting back on the rugby pitch and representing his province and his country.”
Return to work. It sounds so simple when you put it like that; a few weeks off to deal with a pesky legal issue and then back out playing with the lads. Perhaps in ordinary circumstances it would go exactly like that, but, as we’ve seen over the past nine weeks, Jackson’s circumstances are far from ordinary.
At the time of writing, it remains to be seen just what kind of future Jackson, and his co-accused, Stuart Olding, have in the game, but the general consensus is that it lies away from their province, away from their country.
Although no announcements have yet been made, the IRFU is expecting to haul both players before a disciplinary committee in the coming weeks. From there, a decision will be made whether to terminate their contracts, and potentially end their careers on these shores.
And it’s in the best interests of all parties to rip up those contracts, send the two lads on their way, and draw a line under this whole sorry episode.
Jackson and Olding may plead their innocence, point to the verdict reached by the jury of eight men and three women at Laganside Court, but that innocence should not be mistaken for virtue. In an ideal world the private text exchanges of any group of people, whether they be defendants in a high-profile court case or otherwise, should not be made public knowledge. If my daily natterings with my own hombres were printed in a national paper I would be swiftly jettisoned out of this job and would most likely be disowned by my family.
But the difference is that those chats, as risqué as they are, do not relate to questionable sexual activity, they do not objectify people I’ve met, and they do not make light of crude, callous behaviour as a matter of course. Again, I’m no angel, none of us are. We’ve all, at some point in our lives, woken up after a night of drunken shenanigans and poured scorn on an unwitting conquest, distanced ourselves from our actions, blamed it on the beer goggles.
But recounting a one-off tryst with a fully complicit partner is not the same as sending virtual high-fives to the other participants of a spit-roasting, as they so succinctly put it.
Again, we have no way of ever knowing if the complainant gave her full consent or not -that’s a discussion for another day – but regardless of whether she did or not, the content of these WhatsApp discussions should be enough to ensure neither Jackson nor Olding play competitive rugby for Ulster again. Those postings paint the players as reprehensible degenerates, insidious whelps with a worrying lack of morals.
That they are linked to one of the most controversial trials of the decade, a sordid, tawdry affair which left little to the imagination and repulsed and enthralled in equal manner, proves further grounds for expulsion.
Yet, perhaps perversely, Jackson and Olding will end up plying their trade in foreign climes primarily because they were exonerated. The subsequent backlash, a public vying for its pound of flesh, has backed the IRFU into a corner. Where the Belfast Crown Court failed, it is expected to succeed.
Freed from the constraints of an arduous legal system, the heads of Irish Rugby can meet the demands of the 50,000 signees of an online petition and banish the two men indefinitely. Those protesting the verdict need a win, they need to know that this kind of behaviour, these kind of people, can’t be allowed to go unpunished. If they don’t get that win, if Jackson and Olding do return to work, the next backlash may go beyond mere online petitions.
