I was glad to see that the eight-match ban on Featherstone Rovers halfback Dane Chisholm for allegedly using discriminatory language was overturned on appeal last week.
Chisholm was alleged to have spoken derogatively to an official from another club who he accidentally collided with during a match last year.
Essentially there was no evidence that could be corroborated to confirm that Chisholm had used words that could be interpreted in that way and the appeal heard evidence from people who had been standing near the incident that such language hadn’t been used.
One of those people has written a letter to our Mailbag this week pointing that out and suggesting that the charges shouldn’t have been brought in the first place without any evidence to back them up, other than one person’s word against another.
And that doesn’t mean that the person who brought the case was lying about it.
It’s just that things said in the heat of the moment are not always clear.
Meanwhile, Chisholm had a highly stressful close-season with this charge hanging over him, while it also will have affected Featherstone’s preparations for the new season, in the belief that they would be without a key player for the first part of the season.
Part of the problem for those of us on the sidelines is that there is no account of this case on the RFL website. The governing body has decided not to publish the facts of the case.
Perhaps we can understand why it does that, but it makes it even more important that a player does not have his reputation trashed by association.
I should add that I do know that Chisholm has some great relationships with disabled children associated with the Featherstone club and that he is highly respected in that role.
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