Put the story another way. Last October, I was fortunate enough to travel to Papua New Guinea with Australian representative rugby league teams led by Mal Meninga and Brad Donald. I say fortunate, because over some years of travelling with Australian sporting teams, I have never seen a group so well trained in politeness and humility and respect. It was easy to see why, among seasoned sportswriters, rugby league people have a reputation as the best people. Here was a group of men and women who stood up to offer their seats among other courtesies, were grateful for their opportunities, and had none of the airs, arrogance or (more irritating) confected gallantry that you see in representatives from some other professional codes. You had to salute the NRL, the clubs, the representative coaches and mentors, the entire apparatus, and the players themselves for their behaviour.

Worlds colliding: Dylan Napa confronts the media for the first time after lewd videos of the NRL star were leaked on social media. Credit:Janie Barrett

Their trained behaviour, more precisely. For when players are so thoroughly tutored in rules of how to be good people, there can be a corresponding pressure building beneath the surface, particularly when these rules are imported across class lines. Once the lights went down and the masks came off, another side emerged. No atrocities, but ways of relaxing that the middle-class league supporter is not familiar with and would rather not know about. Two sheltered worlds.

(Oh, and before this is mistaken as class prejudice, note that the footballer with the most strife-torn off-seasons in recent memory was Ben Cousins, a private school boy through and through; and that in selected middle-class male-dominated environments, such as male university colleges and sections of the financial services industry and some professions, atrocities occur at a rate no doubt higher than in professional rugby league. What’s the difference? They’re not spectator sports.)

With the very sad dramas around Barba and some other players repeating the cycle of another bad summer for rugby league, it’s hard to think of what else the league, the clubs, the coaches, the staff members, the families and the players could do. I don’t think any sport has worked harder on its image – not just polishing that image but making its players accountable – than rugby league. Only a tiny fraction of NRL players are publicly exposed in these so-called atrocities. Without the work that is put into behaviour improvement, there would no doubt be a larger fraction, still not a lot, but certainly enough to make the game more of a byword for testosterone toxicity than it is. If Todd Greenberg had any hair, he’d have pulled it out by now, because this is a problem that all the resources and goodwill the game musters can only partially solve.