Lost amid the hysteria, outrage and debate of the NRL’s player behaviour crisis has been the involvement of a key pillar in rugby league’s biggest problem.

The National Rugby League’s clubs.

The game’s 16 professional franchises have mostly escaped scrutiny throughout the NRL’s off-season from hell.

Rape allegations, domestic violence allegations, cabbies allegedly being bashed, drink driving convictions.

This is the rugby league summer of 2018-19 and it will be remembered for the wrong reasons, for a long time.

ARL Chairman Peter Beattie has beaten his chest about next week’s judgment day where the game will pledge to stand down those charged with serious criminal offences.

But what has been glossed over is the bigger problem of why these issues are occurring in the first place.

media_camera Beattie has been vocal about the league’s policy. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas.

It is a systemic problem that has risen throughout rugby league’s dramatically fast transition from a working class game to billion-dollar industry.

In the space of essentially two decades, the NRL has exploded into a stratosphere it wasn’t ready for.

The stakes are so much higher now and clubs are doing everything they can to stay ahead of the pack.

What that has entailed is creating a generation of players that are so far out of touch with reality that it is impacting on their ability to function in society.

The players are taken such good care of by their clubs that they are unable to take care of themselves.

In some cases it starts before their 13th birthday.

A potentially excellent prospect is spotted by a club talent scout or preying player manager looking for their next big pay cheque.

They are signed to a scholarship with the club, or hooked up with a school that specialises in playing rugby league.

From that moment the goalposts have shifted. They are no longer like any other teenager navigating their way through life and learning along the way.

media_camera The game has been damaged by the court cases. AAP Image/Dean Lewins.

Clubs bend over backwards to keep the good ones in their system. Schools can be the same.

Many have never held a casual job by the time they graduate school. They simply haven’t had to or needed to.

Then they enter the warped world of the NRL.

Their days consist of training, albeit hard throughout the pre-season, and knocking off much earlier than those in the workforce.

Meals are provided. Appointments are booked for them. They don’t have to manage their own time because someone else has decided how to do that.

When a player moves clubs, particularly out of town or interstate, the transition is laid out for them on a platter.

Club welfare officers, who play an important role in other facets, find accommodation and organise removalists.

The flight bookings are made for them and they are picked up at airports.

The players are so babied that they never learn how to complete simple tasks.

A representative star last year, in a fit of anger, questioned why his bank had charged interest on a home loan.

media_camera Todd Greenberg is dealing with players who live in a bubble. Picture by Richard Dobson.

There was another who trashed his club-sponsored vehicle and gave it back with a string of unpaid fines.

One of the game’s biggest names doesn’t return his football manager’s phone calls and regularly goes missing.

Others demand to be paid fees to promote the code on top of their already $1 million-a-season salaries.

New Broncos coach Anthony Seibold summed up Brisbane’s challenge succinctly after looking around the club’s $27 million headquarters in Red Hill.

“The facility we’re in can breed entitlement,” he said.

But it’s not only a building that Seibold and the rest of the NRL is battling against.

The NRL won’t overcome its behavioural problems until it delivers its players a dose of reality, much like Gold Coast Titans coach Garth Brennan did late last year when he made his entire squad go to work for a week.

They washed cars, dug holes, laid bricks, cleaned houses and scrubbed dishes. They mixed with real people and learnt how tough life can be.

A week-long exercise isn’t going to turn around a generation of entitlement but it is the attitude needed to make long-term change.

The NRL’s clubs must make their players grow up before the game is so badly hurt it can’t recover.