Does anyone else like how literally anyone in the media who is an NRL player that is caught doing something automatically becomes a ‘star’, even if they are fringe first graders?

I sure do just love it. Oh, and by ‘love it’ I mean I absolutely hate it.

Look at the reaction of journalists to Liam Knight’s DUI charge the other week. More or less every article stated ‘NRL star Liam Knight’ or ‘rising NRL star Liam Knight’, which just baffles me.

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The guy hasn’t even played a single game of first grade. He might be a rising player, but he is years away from being an NRL star.

Then there was Myles Taueli, another drunk driver, with articles on him labelling him an NRL player. The problem is, he hasn’t played a first grade game yet, which means he isn’t an NRL player.

The equivalent would be labelling a second year education student as a teacher. It is ridiculous.

But as ridiculous as it is, we see this sort of stuff time and time again. Fringe first graders are charged with speeding or something, and all of a sudden according to journalists they are one of the biggest names in the game. If someone that you could actually argue is an NRL star is caught doing something illegal or irresponsible – like Mitchell Pearce or Greg Bird – they become ‘superstars’ or ‘megastars’, which is just a ridiculous title.

This crops up in more or less every article about an NRL player’s arrest, but why is it so prominent? Well it is a by-product of the trend where all journalism is slowly becoming ‘click-bait’ that preys on outrage culture, essentially just making the general public as angry as possible.

These NRL players are given the label of ‘star’ not because it will make NRL fans read it, but it will make people know nothing about the sport read the thing.



Calling Liam Knight a star will encourage Johnny, the Victorian AFL fan to read the article on his arrest to laugh at how ‘backwards’ the NRL is.

Calling Mitchell Pearce a superstar will make Archie the upper class loser chuckle at the barbarity of the players that play the sport for commoners.

Calling Myles Taueli an NRL player will make Mrs. Stevens feel validated that she doesn’t let her children play contact sports because they go and do dumb stuff like driving under the influence.

I want to say that I am not defending what these people did. Mitchell Pearce, Liam Knight and Myles Taueli are all stupid for what they did. But they are being used to make the game look worse than it actually is.

The sad thing is that this trend are perpetuated mostly by rugby league journalists, which is ridiculous. I could understand why non-NRL journalists would perpetuate these trends, but these are the people that are supposed to support the game. Yet they jump at any opportunity to make the players in it all look horrible.

I am sure this isn’t just an NRL issue, I am sure AFL and union journalists pull similar shenanigans. But I wouldn’t know, I don’t follow any other sports at all.

I appreciate that this is a very specific and niche complaint, but I think it is worth complaining about despite that. It is one of the more annoying faces of the outrage culture, anti-sports journalism that has appeared over the horizon recently.