Rugby Australia's ex-CEO describes warning Israel Folau after he posted that gay people would go to hell. Folau agreed to stop but repeated it months later. The discipline decision was straightforward; managing the fallout was the hard part.
Israel was our most highest played, most high profile player. He was of Polynesian descent, he was deeply religious and inside the Wallabies we had a group who were largely Polynesian but that had held deeply Christian values. But Israel sent a tweet which talked saying that gays would go to hell if they didn't repent. So we had a conversation, Israel and I and I said to him that whilst we deeply supported his beliefs, to be Christian, actually expressing his views in a public forum when he was a contracted wal be was not appropriate if there was people who felt bullied or disrespectful by those comments. So we agreed that that was it was, it was a sensible, grown up, mature conversation. First mistake, understand the bounds. That's great, excellent. Committed that he wouldn't do that again and unfortunately he did about a period of time, number of months later. So for all of the big media furore and the really big complex conversations, the decision was simple, the fallout was not simple. So how you navigate through that was very difficult.
