Ha ha. There are Savile comparisons going on on the VT.

Yes, I have a feeling this thread is about to take a dramatic turn of pace.

I'll be turning up Friday happy to watch the most exciting full back in Superleague playing for my club. I will have put the last few days shenanigans behind me, and in a couple of weeks it won't even enter my head when Zak goes slaloming around opposition players towards their line. He put himself in a bad place in early February, but show me a man who hasn't made a mistake and I'll show you a man that makes nothing. Meanwhile, jealous supporters from other clubs will still be trying to take the moral high ground for months and months. Like I said in an earlier post, let's see how many fans that boo Hardaker will also boo sex offender Mr Johnson at Salford that chose to nearly blind a girl by sticking a glass in her face.

Hopefully the next decade. The length of time Zak plays for Leeds and performs with distinction.

For me, the crime itself is a matter for the police and the victim to deal with. That is now done, and people are always at liberty to argue about whether they feel punishments fit crimes or not. The issue for the club, as with any other employer, is not the moral high horse some people seem to expect, it's a question of the damage he does to the reputation of the club and the disruption he causes to the operation of the business (in this case, his team mates). They have to speak to the employee and balance it all internally.

I agree that many employers would sack an employee on the spot for this type of thing. I am not, though, entirely convinced that they are right to do so.

I would also be quite disappointed if somebody was sacked for being an alcoholic without first being supported to try to get help for the problem.

I work for a US company, we are around 500 employees in the US and I report directly to the GM. He comes over once a month for management meetings in the UK and every now and again we start chatting over lunch and some of the stories come out. Our VP of European sales worked for a much bigger company than ours and they start sharing experiences - no names, just "situations" they have had to deal with. It's eye opening, some of the things our GM gets presented with are almost beyond belief. Nearly everyone is given a chance to apologise and get on with things (apart from the guy who took a dump in the middle of the canteen very early one morning without realising we have CCTV covering the shared areas of the building).
I know of one situation at my last company where one of our French engineers was caught acessing white supremicist and black magic websites on a customer site (one of the countries biggest pharmaceutical companies and one of our longest and most loyal customers). He was called in and given every chance to apologise and move on. He denied everything, so we fired him, which I guess was a bit of a result for him as he got practically full pay for 12 months courtesy of the French state and our EU contributions.

Facts are that it costs money to hire and train people, even for menial jobs. Staff turnover, even if you recruit cheaply, has to be administered. A company our size turns over around 10-15% of staff each year - so at any one point we are in the process of hiring significant numbers of people. The admin costs are considerable and if we have a person doing their job adequately then you really want to try and work things out rather than fire them and hire somebody else - who might actually be worse.

Obviously, replacing a skilled scientist is more difficult and expensive than a storesman, but even these lower paid jobs take time to train up and administer etc. so efforts are made to not have to fire anyone where possible. On the spot sackings are, IMO, the response of poor management. It's an easy option based on the inability of many managers to actually "manage" anyone correctly.

In my experience in large organisations, sacking people on the spot is extremely difficult, if not impossible and so it should be.
I think all of us on here want to see Hardaker ply his trade with Leeds for the next few years.
We also want see him recognise that being in the limelight, on the public stage rightly or wrongly imposes additional responsibility, something he needs to learn quickly & act upon.
I'd hate for all our discussions about him being based on such incidents as this we've been discussing all week.

I don't agree with the last paragraph - to drive the correct culture you have to have a zero tolerance to certain behaviour. Homophobic/racial abuse should be a no-no in organisation if you wanted a respectful of other colleagues workplace. Even if they apologise their colleagues will still be unhappy having to work alongside them. Your desire for an improved culture will be damaged. They may well apologise but does it mean anything? Take Zac he apologised but his behaviour hasn't improved - the apology is meaningless

Similar to that of David Duckenfield? Albeit on a more horrific level.
It's easy to say sorry, much harder to mean it, harder still to prove it.

Easy for David Duckenfield to say sorry? Do you really believe that? I really would like you to justify that position. Because of the sensitive nature you can do it by PM to me so we can do it without causing upset.

But is there any incidents that LFC have been involved in that they have had problems saying sorry for? LFC have made a hash of their apologies, to incidents on a similar level to the one Duckenfield made even down to incidents that are utterly trivial in comparison.

Let's go the other way with this Sal. Let's just say that we worked together and me, being the ever so funny guy I am, casually let it slip what a lovely bedroom you and your wife have and the cute things your wife does when she achieves climax.

In the real world most employees are going to turn a massive blind eye to the fact you broke my nose on company property.

Now let's imagine if Zak Hardaker reacted in exactlly the same way over his girlfriend. People would say he was being unprofessional for not just ignoring it. The RFL would issue him with the standard punishment and just shake their head at his excuse.

Works both ways, this pious real world BS.

I had no intention to trivialise the horrors of Hillsborough in comparison with these minor events.
I apologise wholeheartedly ( & I really do mean this) if my comments have caused offence.
I used a very poor example to make my point.

Interesting that it was the club who brought the police investigation to Hardaker and Minchella's attention, and "encouraged" them to go to the police themselves to answer questions.

Wonder if someone inside the club had knowledge of the incident (other than the two involved) and was hoping to bury it until the CCTV came out?

This thread is taking so many unexpected turns.

I have already posted on this thread, the club knew about this a few weeks back. It is a lie to say they brought it to Hardakers attention. They had already been in discussions with the players before the YEP piece on it, and waited to see if anything came of it.

IMO Duckenfield did what he needed to do to protect himself from killing himself. I'd expect anyone clearly and directly involved in the deaths on 96 people would protect themselves with whatever story they could rather than accept the truth.

Liverpool fans should be able to acknowledge this, because it's almost exactly what they do whenever they are in the wrong. They have been massively successful with the erasure of their incident.

Couldn't they have persuaded the YEP to not even run the story? Surely if Hardaker had to spend 5k burying this nonsense it would have been worth it for everyone concerned. I don't mean 5k to the YEP, I mean 5k to the student.

If Hardaker was hit in the pocket each time he was a moron he'd quickly learn to stop being such a moron. Just like a better way to deal with him would be for Gary to slap him around in front of the squad. I know it's not PC, but it would be effective.

So you advocate paying victims off to keep them quiet to save a criminal.

Does this happen a lot in Leeds and west yorkshire, as a quick fix it?

I haven't exactly followed what punishment he's got. But my recollection from the threads is that he's got to hand over 400 quid towards the victim and write him a sodding letter. In return he's got a slap on the wrist.

I suggested hitting him with a 5k payoff to the student as a lesson to him.

I personally think that the Leeds Rhinos, the student and hopefully Hardaker would all be better off over this.

The only losers would have been the oppo morons who who wouldn't be able to get on yet another high horse and pretending that Zak was some kind of out of control lunatic. Zak's wallet would have been lighter, but it would have been a great investment. 400 quid is a shrug of the shoulders.

That's just the legal requirement. The club are still investigating and may impose a heavier fine. if they do, that money may be offered to the victim as extra compensation, or may be given to charity, etc.

Throughout this thread I've always been very confident in my assessment that Leeds would see this as another none issue and just say one thing to the press and another thing inside the club. It was just my reading of events as I saw it. I know some people on here know I have a good source of info but I've never during his career ever used him to trawl for info. In total honestly I don't have much interest in the lives of the players, I support the 13 on the park and beyond that I'm not that interested.

I checked with my source just to check whether my assessment was right or whether the other people were right.

My source told me I was wrong.

So I hold my hands up and pretty much retract most of my comments on here. It sucks to be wrong. But it really, really sucks when you were really certain about something.

I'm struggling to deal with RL being so strict and harsh to ZH when everyone inside the game knows plenty of legends and Hall of Famers have done things 50 times as bad as Zak and still being accepted. The legend who was in the avatar. I love that guy because of what he did on the field. I know he served time in jail and as far as I'm concerned that's an issue between him, the police and the courts. I don't know the details so I don't judge. I also know some rumours and the only thing I can say about that is that I just hope someone lied. I hope the rumours were completely false. But if the rumours were confirmed right TBH I just don't even want to think about it.

I really think the world is messed up in 2015. People are so massively judgemental over things while the press and politicians are at an all time low. We have made lots of strides over racism, there's TV/twitter steps towards gay rights but the real world is completely different.

I think I need to start heavily drinking or get high because it's pointless thinking about things.

So what's the current state of play then, is Gotcha's version of events accurate?

I wasn't trawling for info. I was asking if I was right or wrong.

My source said I was wrong.

I don't like being wrong. I didn't have to make the post I did. But I felt that having been so arrogantly dismissive of how serious the club were treating it I felt I had to make a retraction.

This is the story that I’ve heard from an unusual but what I would consider reliable source.

Hardaker and Minchella end up at some student digs after a night out on the lash. They are with a group of other students who want to carry on the party, so to speak.

A student in a neighbouring apartment gets the hump with the rowdiness and kicks off with Hardaker, not knowing who he was. Hardaker/ Minchella (not fully known who) puts him on his arris, end of story.

This guy then later finds out the Hardaker is a pro Rugby player a few days later and approaches the club about the incident, presumably for a bit of compo. The club then take statements from Hardaker and Minchella, decide that there’s nowt in it and refer the matter to the Police, who also investigate the incident and also decide that no charges should be brought.

Hardaker is clearly stupid, the student clearly deserved it, the outcome was inevitable.