CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The North Queensland Cowboys’ close relationship with Aboriginal Australia and the LGBTI community appears to be playing on Prime Minister Turnbull’s mind this week, as the tropical NRL franchise prepares for a grand final showdown against the Melbourne Storm.
As the first NRL club in Australia to sign an openly gay footballer, Ian ‘The Gay Cowboy’ Roberts, and a team that has hosted vast numbers of Indigenous talent over their 22 year existence – the possibility of their players dropping a knee during the national anthem to protest Aboriginal deaths in custody and the gay marriage plebiscite is very real threat to the Turnbull government.
Turnbull has made a quick dash to Townsville this morning to catch the players before they board their cost-inflated Qantas flights to Sydney – in an attempt to bribe the players into not protesting.
“Boys, if anyone drops a knee this weekend during the anthem this weekend it will surely bury me” he said.
“This postal vote has really backfired. I’m at risk. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Please. Just please refrain from doing it. I can promise you a state of the art Townsville rugby league stadium – twice as big as we ever imagined… But only if you don’t make a scene during the anthem”
This comes after over a hundred American pro-athletes and team staff have joined in on protesting both the Trump administration and the police brutality across all American football codes. President Trump has come out and said anyone who kneels during the anthem is a ‘son of a bitch’ and deserves to be fired.
It remains unseen whether or not Turnbull has successfully convinced the Cowboys to avoid embarrassing him tomorrow – it all depends whether or not Johnathan Thurston is happy with the artist’s impression of Cowboy stadium.
