Of the inflatable toys available to visitors on the notorious Las Vegas strip, a baseball bat appeared the least likely to trigger the NRL’s first incident of 2025.
And yet, a child’s toy has created an adult-sized headache for Peter V’landys.
Not since the Danny the Dolphin drama – when Julian O’Neill put a cigarette lighter to a teenage boy’s dolphin costume more than two decades ago – has such a foolish prank set the NRL alight.
The closest we came to an atrocity during the first foray into Vegas was an altercation in a hotel corridor between Rooster Spencer Leniu and members of the Broncos squad. That exchange, as the result of a ‘monkey’ slur that Leniu directed towards Ezra Mam, prompted the NRL to room the teams further apart for Vegas 2.0.
Now it appears that players from the same team need to be separated.
As far as rugby league atrocities go, this one would barely move the needle back home.
Hudson Young and Morgan Smithies explain their actions in Las Vegas.Credit: Billie Eder
Hudson Young and Morgan Smithies, intoxicated by the bright lights and alcohol, exchanged blows inside the elevator of the team hotel. The incident wouldn’t have raised the attention of hotel security had one of them not bumped the lift’s panic button during the scuffle.
Bump it they did, and when security saw the inflatable bat, they initially mistook it for a real one.
“It played no role,” Young said during his mea culpa to the travelling media contingent. “We came back as a group, as a team, and one of the boys got a toy baseball bat from somewhere, that was it.
“That was mistaken as a weapon in the elevator, but it played no role.”
The NRL is eager to make the Las Vegas move a winner.Credit: NRL Photos
The Raiders have named Young and Smithies to play against the Warriors at Allegiant Stadium. It’s unlikely the NRL will come in over the top and ban them from the match.
“A process is unfolding now,” said NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo. “We’ll wait to get all of the facts. It’s premature to comment.”
Abdo was forced to address the drama some 12,500km away, just as he and ARLC chairman Peter V’landys were boarding their own Vegas-bound plane.
The drama was both avoidable and unavoidable. The morning after last year’s match, your correspondent contacted Lieutenant Kendall Bell, a veteran Vegas cop who has been patrolling the strip for a quarter of a century.
“We had no problems at all, the game was fantastic, the crowd was fantastic and the players were fantastic,” Bell said.
But the combination of money, alcohol and temptation was always going to bring someone undone. That there are twice as many teams and players this year only doubled the chances of it happening.
“We expect them to be professionals to be on and off the field,” Abdo said.
“It’s a reminder that we expect the players to be on their best behaviour, wherever they are. The players have been excellent ambassadors, and I’m hoping this is a one-off, and we don’t see any more.”
The concern for the rumbling Raiders is that because this happened in Vegas rather than the relative anonymity of the nation’s capital, it could be a case of double demerits when sanctions are applied.
Asked if he felt the incident was being magnified because it was the first one in this location, Canberra CEO Don Furner said: “I would say so, yes. But we all knew that before we left.”
The Raiders will wait until they return home to sanction the players. Depending on Canberra’s response, the NRL may then step in.
There’s a feeling within the game that, had the Leniu racism row occurred at Allianz rather than Allegiant Stadium, the Roosters prop may have copped half of the eight-match ban he received.
Regardless, the coverage devoted to a player being hit with a plastic baseball bat, due to where the incident happened, is greater than if a real one was used somewhere else.
The Herald’s travel expenses to Las Vegas have been partly funded by the NRL.
NRL is live and free on Channel 9 & 9Now
