Only Whores and Rats Truly Love the Night

Those in rugby league will never forget the name Sonny Bill Williams. He will be remembered by history as an ungrateful greedhead who’s only God is the almighty dollar, a money hungry whore who will throw his friends, family, reputation and soul on the flames to earn an extra buck or two. $100 for a blowjob, $200 for anal, extras negotiable, will do anything for a dollar. The winners write history and always have. This time will be no different. And hypocritical whores who flee in the night like a conman sensing the net closing are rarely regarded with any great fondness. Williams will come to personify the incurable greed and unflinching selfishness of the modern athlete.  History will brand Williams a cowardly traitor and his name will sit alongside those of Judas and Cain and Brutus and Benedict Arnold. It is an obituary that will be deserved.

Williams will spend an eternity frozen in Cocytus, the teeth of Satan deep in his flesh, his soul forever stuck in the Ninth Circle of Hell, the place reserved for the most vile all of beings, The Traitor.

“O that a soldier so glorious, ever victorious in flight, Passed from a daylight of honour into the terrible night; Fell as the mighty archangel, ere the earth glowed in space, fell- Fell from the patriot’s heaven down to the loyalist’s hell.”

The facts of Sonny Bill Williams illegal abandonment of the Canterbury Bulldogs and rugby league are clear and there is absolutely no defense for his treasonous behaviour.

Williams has been nurtured at Canterbury since the age of sixteen. Throughout his time at the Bulldogs, he has interspersed brilliant skill with injury and on-field stupidity. For every big shot that left an opponent with stars floating around his cranium, there was another injury that left true followers of the game questioning his toughness. For every wonderful line busting run, there was an ill considered pass that would cost the Bulldogs dearly. Despite his obvious talents and significant pay cheque, Williams success did not translate into any notable Bulldogs success. Great players carry teams beyond their potential. While Williams was capable of mind boggling deeds, he was far from great. The Bulldogs have achieved very little throughout his time at Belmore and while there is no doubt he won games for the team almost single handedly, he failed to consistently lift the team to any great heights.

Off the field, his behaviour was similarly contradictory. He portrayed himself as an idol for a community and a game yet constantly embarrassed both Canterbury and the NRL with his drinking exploits. Of his exploits, I am not critical. Athletes should not automatically be cast as role models. He has, however, sought to place himself into a leadership role in both the community and the football club and having done that, he has a level of social responsibility to adhere to. He failed to live up to the standards befitting even the poorest of leaders.
Last season he signed a five year deal to remain at Canterbury. He was offered a three year deal but, according to his former manager Gavin Orr, sought a five year deal after receiving medical advice that his knee was unlikely to hold up. The Bulldogs adhered to his request. At the time, Williams noted that he was offered more money elsewhere but accepted the Bulldogs offer and signed, as an adult, without coercion. Orr was subsequently fired.

Since firing Orr, Williams has been an acolyte of Khoder Nasser, the Mundine cult’s primary operator. It has been a steep downhill slide since joining that conglomerate of clowns. He has bitched and moaned about his contract, attempting to manufacture a reason to leave the club. He was unsuccessful, with the Bulldogs appeasing him on every occasion. As the season went on, his personality became withdrawn and his public utterance’s increasingly strange and disruptive. He made an issue out of not being able to play Origin football, claimed he wanted to play for the All Blacks and went on nonsensical public ramblings when handed a free pass by Channel Nine. All the while, the undercurrent has been his apparent dissatisfaction with his Bulldogs deal. This comes as no real surprise given that it is very difficult for a manager to earn from a player who is one year into a five year deal that said manager didn’t negotiate. While he pledged his keenness to remain a Bulldog (a most magnanimous gesture considering he was signed until 2012) to Canterbury fans and management, he was seemingly orchestrating a campaign to betray the club in the most craven of ways.

Williams’ grand plan came to fruition on a cold Saturday afternoon, where Williams boarded a plane for France without informing anybody at the Bulldogs or the NRL. Despite publicly chastising Willie Mason for his disloyalty on numerous occasions, Williams defiantly boarded the international flight with absolutely no consideration for the club that made him or the bushfires he had started. There was also seemingly little consideration or concern paid to his own hypocrisy. Most in the rugby league community reacted with appropriate shock and disgust, an anger borne out of disbelief that one man could be so greedy and treacherous.

It has been chaos ever since. Williams, selfishly, is in hiding, refusing to explain himself. Subpoenas have been issued against both Williams and Nasser. The latter, quite unbelievably, has denied being a representative of Williams and in the process slandered Mark Geyer. David Gallop has promised to ban Williams from the NRL for life should he step foot on a French rugby field. Through his legal team, Williams has leaked that he intends on challenging the legality of the salary cap, a further attempt to desecrate and wound the game that saved him from an existence of inevitable mediocrity and menial failure.

Equally as sickening as Williams’ rat-like treason are the apologists who have attempted to justify his duplicity. 

Rumours of gambling debts, threats on his life from a renowned biker gang and disillusionment with public life, no matter how true they may be, are no excuses for his ostensibly premeditated plan to walk out on the Bulldogs and the NRL one year into a five year deal. Apologists like Danny Weidler and Phil Gould are nothing but low rent vermin who get their thrills from hurting rugby league. Weidler is a cheap grub who has an infatuation with celebrity and wants nothing more than a romantic walk down a deserted beach with his hand resting in that of Sonny Bill’s. Gould, similarly, is an egomaniac who takes glee from all destruction so that he can point out that he told us so. He is like the old war veteran who refuses to accept that the war is over; still fighting the Super League battle he lost over a decade ago. The petulant attacks on David Gallop, filled with poor manners and historical falsities, highlight just how little he cares about the game. It is more important that he gets his shots in so that his ego bucket is filled. Channel Nine have done the right thing in dumping him from The Footy Show. They should now fire him completely.

The best we can hope for now is that Sonny Bill Williams is stuck in purgatory for the next four year’s and then banished to hell. One would hope he is tied up in a legal quagmire for many years, sending him into a world of destitution and loneliness. He, of course, will never play for the Canterbury Bulldogs again. He doesn’t want that and neither do we. When he does lose the legal battle, however, he should be forced to play in the Jim Beam Cup for the Chester Hill Rhinos as a reminder to all where criminal disloyalty will take you. He will be well paid but he will be emotionally crippled, mentally beaten and, one would hope, athletically ruined. He would then be banned from the NRL for life and be forced to flee over to Europe, once more, to play rugby. It is doubtful his price would be as high as it is now. The economics of the situation would be less demand as there isn’t a great want for someone with an array of physical injuries who hasn’t even sniffed the top level for nearly half a decade.

And, of course, once his playing days do finally come to an end and his cult throws him to the wind, there will be plenty of time for reflection. The conscience can be a heavy cross to bear when you have made your name and your money through deception, lies, treachery, duplicity and disloyalty. Perhaps his money will keep him warm and happy. Perhaps it won’t. By that stage, nobody will care.

The Bulldogs, of course, will recover. They always do. Few sporting franchises have the regeneration abilities of Canterbury. It is a fabled franchise that thrives on hard times. The pieces are in place for a premiership run in the next few years. A new front office and a new coach will freshen up the team. The Bulldogs have seen the error of their way in signing the likes of Mason and Williams. Their recruitment policy has changed with the focus now on team men. The selfish prima donnas will be left to other clubs.  The Bulldogs are never a team that can be kept down too long.

One thing that is for certain is that the bastard treachery of Williams will never be forgotten. Not out Belmore way, at any rate. Traitors are never treated with compassion and are rarely welcomed back. Just ask Jarrod McCracken.

Williams can choke on his own stupidity for all we care. He is a whore and a rat, a selfish hypocrite with no respect for anybody that deserves all the hurt, failure and nastiness coming his way. He and his apologists can offer all the cheap excuses they like. It will not take away from the fact the Williams has engaged in the most cowardly of treasonous behaviour.