When a couple of deadly gangland shootings took place in western Sydney recently, and headlines rang out at the same time that junior rugby league matches would be scrapped "amid gang violence concerns", two stereotypes came crashing together.
NSW Police even went so far as to issue a statement refuting any link between a cancelled Penrith Districts match in early May with the bikie gang shootings.
Rugby league and the western suburbs both struggle to break free of negative reputations earned unfairly, according to those who both play the game and live in the region.
Kerby Breust has three sons who have grown up playing rugby league. She has volunteered her time for the past 12 years, currently managing the U13 team one of her sons plays in.
"You know what, it's a game of rugby league. Everyone's here to play, it's their friendships and mates and not getting into trouble, just really hanging around a good group of boys that just want to be there and have fun," Breust told The Ticket.
Speaking on the sidelines of her son's game over the weekend, Breust issued an invitation to those who hadn't been to the western suburbs of Sydney or seen a game of kids rugby league.
"Come out to those suburbs, have a look, they're not as bad as what you think. Yeah, they get a bad reputation because of their name…there's only a handful within those districts, I would say, that do wreck it for some kids. Everyone is pretty decent."
Amanda Cooper has been volunteering for 15 years and was watching the same junior game at Blacktown Workers Stadium. She believes the bad wrap sometimes given to the game and the western suburbs is unfair.
"Sometimes you get the odd one where there could be an issue, but honestly it's like 99 per cent good, one per cent bad from what I've seen in my last 15 years," Cooper said, adding it's a tight community that steps up when ever one of them is in need.
"Everyone knows everyone. Everyone has probably full-time jobs and then they volunteer their time on top of that…they'll hop in, they'll pick up kids, drop off kids, look after people's children. You've got trades people they'll often help each other out, that sort of thing."
Panthers leading the way
Penrith Districts and Junior Rugby League is the heartland of the code in Australia. Nationally, almost one in 10 who play the game are based there.
Penrith District boasts 25 separate clubs, operating 580 teams catering to under six years of age through to senior level.
Inspiring many of the juniors is the NRL team, the Penrith Panthers — currently on top of the ladder and on target to defend their premiership crown.
Unlike many other professional NRL teams, the Panthers overwhelmingly boasts local, homegrown talent. They also make up a fair portion of the champion NSW State of Origin team.
The club runs the Panthers on the Prowl Foundation, established 15 years ago to help provide opportunities and support for school age children from the area at risk of emotional, social or physical harm.
Thousands of kids have completed workshops, and according to one of the counsellors, Brogan Mulhall, the positive outcomes are measurable.
He says the issues faced by young people in Penrith are not any different to others of their age.
"In terms of the social issues and the issues that young people are facing in Penrith, they are exactly the same as what they would be anywhere else around the state," Mulhall said.
"There'd be idiosyncrasies around what each community faces but generally we are seeing at the moment, especially after two years of COVID, that it's very difficult for young people to feel connected and engaged at school or in the wider community or sometimes even within their family.
"We put them through a number of different programs…they are really about social and emotional competency and creating opportunities where in situations otherwise might not be there."
Linking with the PCYC
In the past week, Penrith was the first club to sign onto an NRL commitment to a new program established with the NSW Police Youth Command to offer young people at risk of anti-social behaviour or criminal offending, the opportunity to engage in sport through Police Citizens Youth Clubs (PCYC).
Other sports such as Aussie rules, netball, football and cricket have also signed on to the Sporting Partnership Industry Program.
Speaking at the launch NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said it was an extension of the Fit for Life program, an early intervention program designed to engage at-risk youths across the state.
"It gets them involved in sport, engaged in activities at a PCYC and divert them and offer them something different, a life possibly away from crime."
Retired rugby league legend, now boxer, Sonny Bill Williams is one of the athlete ambassadors, as is united lightweight boxing champion George Kambosos Jr.
"There are a lot of people that work in the community and PCYC that have a vested interest in the kids," Williams said.
"Not just improving them from a physical point of view but improving them as people."
Kambosos said the PCYC holds a special place in his heart given the difference it made in his own life.
"I'm very proud to say that I started my career at the Rockdale-St George PCYC," Kambosos said.
"Without having that place maybe I would not have become a world champion because that gave me a home, it gave me somewhere to be every day…and to not be on the streets and not be getting into trouble."
Stereotypes not borne out by facts
According to the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOSCAR) Penrith – along with some of the other local government areas often associated with crime in the mainstream media – showed no increase in any major offences over the two years to December 2021.
Criminal offending by young people was way down on historic levels with the number of young people charged by police considerably lower than for any year in the previous decade.
BOSCAR's executive director Jackie Fitzgerald says it is impossible to measure "gang related crime" but there are crimes that might loosely fit gang-related offences — such as murder, shooting, and offending by youths. She says on the most recent data there is no evidence of any increase in such activity.
"Certainly, many of them are at historic lows in NSW," Ms Fitzgerald told The Ticket.
"In terms of the relative level of crime in Penrith it is slightly higher than the state average."
When it comes to specific crimes, assault in Penrith is around 30 per cent higher than the state average and property crime is slightly higher than the state average.
"But [it's] certainly not an area that would be the highest concentration of crime but probably on the wrong side of the state average.
"I'm sure there are some local concerns in that area, but we wouldn't rank it amongst the top communities for crime."
Internationally recognised criminologist, Distinguished Professor Rob White, has presented often on the complexities of defining gangs:
They tend to form in working class neighbourhoods where economically life is tough and opportunities are limited…Certain neighbourhoods have foisted upon them negative reputations, while particular youths become targets for police attention and media vilification. Studying gangs is thus basically about studying communities, about determining who is connected to whom, how and why. It is about the ways in which masculinity is constructed on the streets, and how social respect is gained and lost through physicality and violence.
Sport is often held up as an alternative track for those who might find themselves mixing in the wrong crowd and making bad decisions. But how does sport guard itself from becoming another toxic environment?
"The way I see that is rugby league is a really healthy host and these types of gangs and violence that hover around the edges are kind of parasitical," Panthers on the Prowl's Brogan Mulhall says.
"They feed off people coming together. I can nearly guarantee you 99 per cent of issues happening around those games are not the players, and not the coaches, and not the people involved.
"It's the parasites around that attach themselves to that healthy host in looking to feed their own agenda.
"And their own agenda unfortunately is really about … lots of fearful, scared young boys that have grown into fearful, scared young men and feel like the only way they can exert their masculinity, and the only way they can really explore their masculinity is through violence."
Mulhall has spent several years working with aid organisations in areas like the slums of Sao Paulo in Brazil and in the southern African nation of Zambia.
"One of the key differences over there is the cultural connections are still quite strong. Things like rites of passage from boyhood into adulthood still exist in a very strong, cultural way.
"One of the biggest things I notice with our boys here is that they get lost once they get that age of independence and feeling like they need to explore their own identity, like all young people do but particularly boys.
"There is a real dearth of capacity for young people to really find out and connect with a broader group of men or other boys to explore what that looks like … what does that transition from boyhood to adulthood look like?"
"Because of that cultural void we have in our society, and it's not just Penrith, it's in a lot of white Australian communities.
"That void is easily picked up by things like gangs, or social media, and they look for another way to try to explore their identity and one of the things we try to do through our work is provide programs that offer that opportunity for connection to explore what that means to be a quality young man, explore what it means to be a young person with responsibilities and respect for the people around you."
It's a challenge Penrith's rugby league community continues to tackle head-on, often at odds with the stereotypes and headlines.
