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Mathew Johns - Source: ONE Sport -
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I got to enjoy a slice of Australia at the weekend. My wife, Jade and I packed up the car and zoomed off down the Pacific Highway to Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast.
Jade said we were going to get back to nature in style through glamorous camping, or glamping, as she described it. The brochure told me the camp offers a unique escape from today's hectic world in a beautiful bush setting. Great, just what I needed after a week of news that was at best, pretty sordid.
We drove along the coastal road listening to ABC talk back radio and still couldn't escape it. The Matthew Johns group sex scandal involving the New Zealand woman "Clare" was continuing to dominate the airwaves and our conversation.
Aside from the dire Federal Budget handed down recently, the Matthew Johns saga was the next biggest news story in Australia with 18,500 (as of 15/05) mentions across TV, print news and online news.
It's an issue that appears to have polarised a nation.
At first rugby league got knocked for six in the fallout from an ABC programme exposing a culture of group sex within the game. Interestingly, this also triggered a backlash from the game's remaining supporters, and not just the male ones.
Let's take the online social networking website, Facebook.
Tens of thousands of Matthew John's devotees are using the site to demand Channel Nine reinstate him. The Support Matthew Johns Facebook page has attracted as many as 10,000 fans an hour, many of them women who say they are willing to forgive their hero for his sexual sin. Posts of encouragement for Johns and in many cases abuse for the other parties involved, like "Clare" have been posted on the site.
Most of the posts are showing sympathy for fallen NRL star.
The knives are also out in the Australian media, not for Johns however, but for the New Zealand woman "Clare" at the centre of the scandal .
Questions are now being asked about the validity of her account of the night in question when she went back to a hotel room with Johns and one other player, but ended up having sex with at least six players, while others stood by watching.
The Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper has been the most active publication. It's now carried several reports that have raised more questions than answers about the woman's story. For example, how one of the Cronulla Sharks players caught a lift with "Clare" after the incident and how hotel owner, John Butterfield, branded "Clare" a liar. He said "Clare" had boasted about another incident in a toilet with two Cronulla players the night before the group sex romp.
Australia's Channel 9, which stood Johns down from his TV commitments, has also aired an interview with "Clare's" work colleague at the time, who said that "Clare" had boasted about having sex with more than two Cronulla players.
The next target will no doubt be the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which exposed the sordid incident in the first place and the Four Corners reporter, the multi-award winning Sarah Ferguson, who will no doubt be called upon to defend her report.
By the way, the 'glamping' was great, if not a little
chilly.
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