At close to 9.30pm in Las Vegas on Sunday night, Ricky Stuart was enjoying a quiet beer with his coaching staff at a bar at the team hotel in Resorts World.
He stepped outside the bar to take a phone call from Nine colleague Danny Weidler, who had just heard the same thing as this columnist about the brawling Raiders.
Hudson Young and Morgan Smithies.Credit: Getty Images
After he got off the phone, this masthead approached Stuart about the incident. What happened next was a lesson in crisis management to clubs who have often prioritised the protection of the players over the good of the game and their clubs.
Stuart proceeded to recount the events that led to his players Hudson Young and Morgan Smithies exchanging blows inside the elevator of the team hotel after a night out on the drink.
At this point, the identity of the players were still uncertain, and Stuart contemplated keeping it that way. What happens in Vegas, and all.
“I just don’t want to embarrass the game,” he said as he contemplated the best way to handle the incoming storm headed his team’s way. “I don’t want to ruin it for them.”
But what he realised was the ensuing circus that would follow if the details of the boozy altercation didn’t come to light.
He didn’t want the week to be hijacked by camera crews and journalists following his team’s every move, and decided to name the players and force them to accept responsibility by facing up to the media the next morning.
It was strongly supported by Raiders CEO Don Furner, who on the night it happened demanded the players accept responsibility if it were to ever become public. He also wants them to address the fans and sponsors at a club function later this week.
“At the end of the day they are the ones that made the mistake, so they are the ones that need to apologise and take ownership of it and not as I see sometimes: hiding by someone else to make the announcement,” Furner said,
“They did that this morning. We’re happy they did that. Now they have to prove to everybody that they made the mistake, can get over it, be professional and win the game.”
Too often teams will hide players and throw teammates and coaches under the bus to answer questions about a problem they didn’t create.
Smithies and Young were more than happy to oblige with the coach’s request, and did the walk of shame from the team hotel to the waiting media pack across the road to face the consequences of what their coach described as “irresponsible behaviour”.
“I want to apologise for the actions on Thursday night. It wasn’t good enough,” Young said.
“The NRL invests so much time and effort into this game. It’s such a great space to be a part of here in Vegas and a great spectacle. Things got a bit out of hand on Thursday night. I’m embarrassed for myself, our teammates and the NRL.”
The pair didn’t want to go into the details of what took place.
Like the fact that they had just returned from a night out on the town – which almost every player across all three teams in Las Vegas has done at some point over the first three days – and began to argue because Smithies didn’t have a room due to a hotel system malfunction that had left some guests waiting up to seven hours to check in.
Smithies wanted to spend the night sharing a bed with his teammate and best friend. That was met with resistance from Young and what began as a wrestle for the room turned into a brawl with punches being thrown.
The inflatable baseball bat that they had bought as a memento on Las Vegas Boulevard just a few hours later was then mistaken for a weapon by hotel security when they confronted the pair about the punch up in the elevator.
Security only became aware of the incident because one of the players bumped the emergency button in the lift, alerting the crew of security watching over the footage from 5000 cameras in the precinct.
They were evicted from the hotel and left to explain why they didn’t have a room. Eventually, they were ushered back into the hotel, with one player escorted to his new room. The problem was that it was already being used by an unidentified Panthers player, who was inside the room. Only in Vegas.
The pair have apologised to their teammates, but the real apology was to their partners, who are currently travelling around the country on a holiday together.
“We are best mates,” Young said. “He was at mine for Christmas and our partners are travelling America at the moment so there’s no issues there.
“I spoke to my partner, but there was nothing to say because we’re best mates. I feel awful, especially for my family as well. It’s a massive thing for them coming over here and they have to deal with this as well.”
As for the shiner under Smithies’ eye? “That’s from training,” he said.
No one was buying that.
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