AS the NRL fumbles another grubby scandal, insiders tell Claire Harvey group sex has long been excused in elite sport as `male bonding'.
Could there be anything less sexy? The idea of getting nude with same-sex colleagues and finding a virtual stranger to seduce is profoundly unappealing to most of us.
But professional footballers inhabit a world saturated with sex, booze, opportunity and risk. And old-timers of sport say there's a long-standing link between elite sport and group sex.
The ``gang bang'', they say, has long been a quiet part of sport culture, as routine as liniment and communal showers, tacitly endorsed by coaches and managers, stoically ignored by wives, journalists and fans.
Why would group sex appeal to handsome young athletes blessed with apparently ample female attention? How does it match with the superficially -- indeed often aggressively -- heterosexual culture of masculine sport? Are they secretly gay?
And when the fluorescent motel lights suddenly flicker on, how do we unpick the details: consent, compliance, coercion?
``The Grunter changed our whole perception of girls,'' wrote professional surfer Nat Young in his autobiography, Nat's Nat And That's That: A Surfing Legend.
``The Grunter was really into group sex and we all greeted her with open flies every time we saw her getting off the school bus. Other girls from our beach started getting a bit jealous of all the attention The Grunter was getting and some decided it was better to join her if they couldn't beat her; the competition was terrific -- Brenda the Bender, Sally Apple Bowels, the list got longer and longer.''
To a young athlete like Young, group sex was an adventure, part of his masculine awakening.
Sex was one facet of a crowded, physical, exciting life -- in surfing, professional cricket, golf, and all codes of football.
Eroticism is not the key point, says Dr Clifton Evers of the University of NSW.
Group sex, Evers says, is better understood as part of the physicality of men in sport -- the collective journey of shared pain, relief, nakedness, injury, energy and exhaustion.
Evers, an expert on the intersection of sport and sexual behaviour, interviewed NRL players in the wake of the 2004 Bulldogs gang-rape allegations.
``These are blokes who are familiar with bonding through their bodies,'' he says. ``They go through physical pain together. They train together, they get inked-up together, and the idea is that, through that, you form your belonging.
``You also have the opportunity to structure your bonding through a sexual situation. It's a classic situation of men bonding through something -- the woman becomes just the something.''
Psychologist and sex therapist Bettina Arndt, whose latest book The Sex Diaries examines how couples negotiate sexual issues, doubts the Cronulla episode could be considered group sex in the same way as most Australians would consider it.
``The gang-bang experience has little to do with sex,'' Arndt says. ``Men don't do it seeking a peak sexual experience, they do it to be one of the boys. They do it for each other. It's a tribal dance which has far more to do with showing off to each other about being a real man, an aggressive he-man, than enjoying sexual pleasure with a woman.''
By contrast, the couples Arndt interviewed who had group sex generally considered them positive experiences.
There is a famous incident in modern league history when NRL players gathered for a training session on sexual ethics.
As the training official started his laptop, the screen in front of the assembled players jumped to life with a hard-core pornography scene. The players burst into raucous laughter -- the trainer had opened his private collection, not his training files.
As he rushed to close it down and re-establish order, at least one man in the room shook his head in disbelief.
``Do you think the players then took it seriously?'' the observer asked later. ``Of course they didn't. It's hard enough to get players to focus at the best of times, but the whole thing was completely undermined.
``It was a joke.''
Male and female perceptions of group sex tend to differ, as researcher Joan Sauers found in her 2007 book, Sex Lives Of Australian Teenagers. Male interviewees universally remembered group-sex encounters as pleasurable; the girls described regret, loss of control and a lack of the intimacy they wanted from sex.
Some women seek out footballers for individual and group sex, as documentary producer Michaela Perske found in her 2006 documentary Footy Chicks, but sharing is a male phenomenon.
``I can't imagine a netball team going on tour and getting a guy and standing around masturbating while they take turns,'' Perske says. ``Having said that, I don't think it's a homoerotic thing.
``It's easy for people to say it's about suppressed homosexuality: they all love touching each other on the field, but I think it's more about sharing an intense experience, as they do on the field.''
Professional sportsmen enjoy ever-increasing opportunities for sexual adventure and group-sex, says Griffith University associate professor James Skinner, who researches social and economic dynamics of sport.
``The rising profile of professional athletes probably makes them more wanted,'' Skinner says.
``People want to get close to them, get in touch with them, and therefore they're in environments
where those things will happen. Professional sports stars are accessible rock stars.
``High-profile musicians travel with security, but to meet a professional sports star, you just have to know what pub they frequent. It's also an image thing for people to be seen with professional athletes. Those factors probably contribute to people -- women -- putting themselves in situations or environments that are potentially dangerous.''
To change behaviour, sporting organisations need coherent, pre-emptive discipline and education policies, says Skinner. They also need professional executives from outside the blokey culture.
``Ex-players go into coaching and management. Bonds they have from their playing days can sometimes distance them from difficult decisions they have to make. A lot of sports need to look at themselves. It's a very masculine culture in the playing ranks, administration, management.
``A lot of people cynically view the appointment of women as tokenistic in those roles, and if you ask the general public to name a high-profile female sports administrator they'd struggle.''
Trent Southworth has spent a lot of time on the sexual frontlines with footballers, in nightclubs where opportunities are rife. A former policeman, he was a security consultant to the Roosters NRL club for the past 12 months. His job was to attempt to educate footballers about the legalities and dangers of alcohol and sexual encounters, and to accompany them out at night.
He was astonished at the flirtatious advances some brash young ladies made to footballers. Southworth says no female behaviour can excuse men who pursue non-consensual sex, but thinks the groupie culture might help explain some footballers' failure to learn the rules of sexual conduct.
``For a man who has no celebrity status, trying to find a partner is more difficult,'' he says. ``Women make themselves available to footballers, and that doesn't help them to develop their behaviour.''
To Southworth, only direct NRL intervention can save some footballers from themselves: he says the league must send security consultants on all tours and nights out, as well as enforcing consistent punishments for misbehaviour and firm, clear rules.
``There wouldn't be a football club that doesn't have a policy of `no girls back to the room','' Southworth says. ``But who polices it? The CEO can't stand outside 25 doors at 1am after a night out.''
The tight nature of football teams means only external discipline can effect change, he says.
``You've got 25 players, all on each other's side. Then there's a coach, a CEO, a football manager -- that's a very tight-knit environment. You need a governing body to take a stand.''
Why not just ban group sex, as NRL boss David Gallop suggested last week?
Because it won't work, say the NRL's team educating players about sexual ethics; academic Catharine Lumby, player welfare officer Nigel Vagana and education officer Matt Francis.
Lumby says while she has no problem with Gallop's suggestion, she believes it's hard to outlaw behaviour which is not illegal.
``People ask me to be the group-sex police, and suggest I should be out there saying group sex is a terrible thing. In the education program we say very strongly: this is very high-risk behaviour and the person most at risk will be a woman. We don't advocate it, quite the contrary -- but how you stop it, short of locking every player in a cage when they come off the field -- if anyone has suggestions, let me know.''
Vagana says he was unaware of widespread group sex in his league playing days, and was surprised by former league coach Roy Masters' suggestion it was an unofficial team-bonding activity. ``I was a bit shocked at that,'' he says, ``but one of the things about rugby league is we have guys from everywhere, any culture, any demographic.
``The point is, rugby league isn't the only place these problems are happening. We are a window onto what's out there in society.''
One big change, Vagana says, is there's no longer a perception that high-value players will be protected when they stray.
``There was a perception in the past that the better players in the team were looked after. Now you're seeing guys who played test football banished,'' Vagana says.
``Greg Bird is not around any more, but 10 years ago there's a good chance he wouldn't have been booted out. Cronulla has taken a stand, that's fantastic: it shows bad behaviour won't be tolerated, no matter who you are.''
But addressing the problem means cracking the ``mateship'' code, says Clifton Evers of UNSW, who will return to the NRL later this year for follow-up research with Lumby on whether and how attitudes are changing.
``This is where mateship can get really ugly, where it's about being a mate to bloke-friends, rather than being a mate to the woman in the situation,'' Evers says.
``It becomes about looking after your mates, wanting to belong with your mates. That means women are sexual objects, by and large. If you grow up in a very male-centric culture such as rugby league, then you come across the opinions and ideas of women less.
``That fosters an understanding of relationships that privilege the male over the female.''
He says the NRL must get women involved at all levels. ``The NRL is stepping up to the plate, and what they're finding is ugly stuff. They have a whole older generation who says it's all about the men. The message has to be that women are your mates too, and if they're in a situation with you, it's never just about your male mates. It's about looking after women just as much.''
So is it homoerotic?
Ian Roberts doesn't think so. The only top-level league player to come out as gay, Roberts says group-sex encounters like the 2002 incident are ``not in any way homoerotic to me; it's repulsive; it turns my stomach'', he says.
``I've got no problem with group sex if everyone's open-minded and respectful. I'm a gay man, my God, I'm totally aware it happens, but the idea of one poor girl on her own there in that situation -- it's totally disempowering.''
