To do so would deny the player the opportunity (as is the process under the NRL’s rules) to make any form of detailed written submissions about the proposed sporting sanction, and his guilt. Equally, the player would be prevented from conducting his defence in the NRL’s appeals tribunal, without risking that every piece of evidence and testimony would automatically become something that the police or prosecution might obtain by subpoena or warrant. Loading On that basis, it’s rare that the NRL sanctioned Greg Inglis on Tuesday after Inglis was arrested and charged with mid-range drink driving and speeding offences. It’s possible to argue the NRL might not have dealt with the matter so swiftly and finally if Inglis didn’t earlier that day orchestrate his own mea culpa media conference. But after Inglis himself freely admitted guilt (yet oddly refused to stand down from his position as the newly minted Australian captain), any risk he might be prejudiced in any criminal proceedings evaporated. Explaining the foregoing; that’s the easy bit. But that the NRL’s only sanction imposed on Inglis for speeding through the countryside pissed is banning him from two Test matches and stripping him of the Australian captaincy conferred less than 24 hours prior . . . that’s the abstruse part.

Two years ago, Andrew Fifita was intentionally not selected by the ARL Commission to represent his country, even after turning in a barnstorming performance for the ages in the grand final of 2016. For the ARL to not select Fifita to represent his country on "character" grounds (or whatever opaque reasons that were proffered) was dangerous territory. Yes, it might’ve been entirely unpalatable to many people that Fifita dared ever visit his childhood friend, the convicted killer Kieran Loveridge, in jail. Yes, it was arguably idiotic that Fifita might’ve mustered the temerity to scribble some indecipherable acronym on his strapped wrist before playing in regular season games during 2016 in some kind of not-so-secret homage to Loveridge. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video But none of that demonstrated that Fifita was of "bad character". Yet the ARL didn’t pick him and Fifita hasn’t worn Australian colours since, and he never will. Good fortune for the Mate Ma’a. The same year, then Rooster Mitchell Pearce was captured on video properly off his chops, pretending to fornicate with an unenthusiastic white hound, and expressing his rampant desire to do just that. He was filmed in a private residence and caught on camera without his knowledge or consent. The NRL fined Pearce $125,000 and banned him from rugby league for a third of the season.

How anyone can blow 0.085 13 hours after his last drink is a matter of divine mystery. Dave Warner and Steve Smith – the Australian Test cricket vice-captain and captain respectively – seven months ago were (together with Cameron Bancroft) embroiled in one of the most lamentable, unsavoury and unacceptable episodes in the history of cricket in this fine nation. Warner and Smith were banished from all forms of international (and state representative) cricket for a year. Smith and Warner were stripped of their leadership roles, and it’s hard to fathom how Smith can ever captain his country again; Warner probably won’t even be selected to wear the baggy green from this day forward. Yet as underhanded, deceitful and wrong as Smith and Warner’s behaviour might’ve been, neither committed any crime. Neither did Pearce or Fifita. But once you line up the penalties that each of those four individuals suffered, and then contrast the sanctions in each instance against what’s been imposed on Inglis . . . the feather touch of the NRL is an unmitigated insult to the intelligence of any fair-minded rugby league supporter and society in general. Whatever Pearce and Fifita might’ve done to adversely affect the public’s perception of the image of the sport, what Inglis has fairly admitted to is much worse. Likewise, whatever damage was inflicted on rugby league’s "brand" through the naked, booze-fuelled Mad Monday antics of however many Bulldogs players, it’s no damage at all compared to an Australian captain driving drunk at speed in the first hours of his reign.

Loading Each year, the NSW Government’s Centre for Road Safety publishes myriad reports in relation to road traffic accidents and their causes. In 2016, 51 of 356 deaths on NSW roads involved at least one driver with a blood-alcohol level exceeding the legal limit. Relevant also, given Inglis was arrested while returning from the Koori Knockout tournament is that, for the period from 2011 to 2015, one-third of fatal car accidents in NSW involving an Aboriginal person included, as a factor, at least one driver with an illegal blood-alcohol reading. Stark, but statistics don’t illustrate carnage. One of my oldest friends in the world was struck by a drunk driver while standing at the side of the road one night 20 years ago. He barely survived.

That same year, someone who once was very close to me was a passenger in a vehicle that was annihilated by a truck hurtling down the wrong side of a busy road. Behind the steering wheel, the driver was boozed to the eyeballs. He was a recidivist who went to jail in the end, even though it was a place way too good for him. But packing someone off to the big house didn’t do anything to repair horribly snapped bones, or give his victims their day over again. And 33 years ago to the day last Monday, a classmate of mine at primary school was killed by a drunk driver while walking his BMX across a pedestrian crossing on his way home from cricket training. I’d never wish the sight of his tiny, white coffin on even my worst enemy. Inglis being charged with mid-range drink-driving isn’t some blip on the radar that should be forgotten in the fullness of time. Inglis could’ve wrapped his car around a tree and killed himself or much, much worse.