Video transcript
Defining a high school debating topic – 1. Elinor Stephenson

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Hi. I'm Ellie Stephenson. I won the Premier's Debating Challenge for the Year 11 and 12 Premier's Debating Challenge in 2017. And, I was also on the state debating team and won the National Schools' Debating Championship.

I'm currently coaching at Kambala, and I'm studying political economy and environmental studies at uni. I'm in my third year.

So, basically, I'm going to be talking through how to prep a definition for the topic 'that we should punish sports clubs for the off-field behaviour of their fans - oh sorry - of their players. I can't read. 'That we should punish sports clubs for the off-field behaviour of their players.'

So, basically when I'm prepping this topic, I want to be thinking about two main things. The first is who is affected - how large or influential is this model? And then, secondly, I want to be thinking about how I'm actually going to enact it.

So, there's probably two key things I need to decide on here. I probably first of all want to decide what the punishment looks like - how we're going to be punishing these sports clubs. And then, I also want to be defining what the off-field behaviour of their players actually is, so that the other team, and the adjudicator, knows how this model plays out in the real world.

So, firstly, just to deal with the scope of the definition and the model, here we want to be thinking what kind of sports clubs are we hitting with this penalty, and, maybe, what codes - who is involved in this? So, I would probably say that this should be about professional sports clubs, because those are the sports clubs where the players are most visible, where they have some kind of duty as being a role model, and where they make a lot of money. So, I think that those are probably the most appropriate stakeholders in this debate.

It's probably not a debate that's very interesting when we talk about local sports clubs. I think we probably want to be talking about as many different types of sports as possible, if we believe this is a good idea. It doesn't make sense to limit it to just AFL, or just tennis, or something.

So, I think we should be suspecting that this is all sports clubs, all professional sports clubs. And, we should be listing a few codes. So, we might say we think this would apply to all sports clubs that are professional around Australia. For instance, we would hit AFL teams like the Sydney Swans. We would want to hit NRL teams like the Rabbitohs. And, we might go also for the Waratahs in rugby union. So, define it as wide as possible, and then we want to list a couple of examples, so that the adjudicator, and the other team, really knows what we're talking about.

So, let's talk now about how we might punish them for bad behaviour. So, I think we have a couple of options. We could impose financial penalties, where we force the club to pay a fine if one of their players does something wrong.

I think we could also do within the sport punishments. So, for instance, we could take a few points off at the next game. We could introduce a penalty of some sort, or we could demote them a few places on the ladder or something like that.

I think we could possibly do both. I think that's fine. So, maybe we could have a sliding scale of offences.

So, the first offence will just do within the sport punishment. We might dock them a few points in the next game. And then, if something is a really bad offence, or someone doesn't stop having bad behaviour, then we might just hit the club with a fine. But, I think either way, it's probably OK because the most important thing is just that those punishments really affect the sports clubs.

I think there's an argument to say that punishing the sports club via penalties, or via taking away points, is maybe more effective, because it means the fans will be really angry at that player because they want to win. So, let's maybe stick with that then. Let's say, we'll punish them via taking off points, via demoting them down the ladder, or introducing penalties like removing the player from the field.

Cool. So, let's now talk about what we would suggest would be off-field bad behaviour. So, I think one thing that can be helpful here is just to know the context of this topic. So, what kind of bad behaviour do sports players normally do? I would say that it's usually things like getting really drunk, and doing something violent or destructive. So, if you get really drunk at the team event, and you start throwing things off a balcony, that might be something that we would say is bad behaviour from the players.

I think, also, things like performance enhancing drugs or regular drugs, and maybe any assault charge. So, I think we could basically suggest that this bad behaviour is anything that's criminal, that someone would have called the police on you for. And, we'd give a couple of examples of that, so that everyone in the room knew what we were talking about. I think, obviously, this would not be something like being rude in a queue at the supermarket or something. This is, obviously, a higher range of offences that the sports clubs maybe deserve to be punished for, particularly because there might be some connection between that person being famous, and being at the sports team's event, and their bad behaviour.

So, basically, at the end of prepping this definition, what I would be thinking is, first of all, we're applying this to all professional sports clubs. We'd give some examples of what we meant by that. Secondly, the way we'd be punishing them is by imposing in-game penalties, like docking points, or like taking a player out of the game for a specified amount of time. And then, the third thing we'd want to know is what does this off-field behaviour look like. It probably looks like criminal charges or, like publicly, very bad behaviour that causes a stir.

So, yeah. I think that's basically all of the main considerations in this debate that help make it clear what we're actually debating about.

TONY DAVEY: Are you happy now to do an opening minute, where you do the context and, then, just give that definition, as if you were a human being in a debate?

ELLIE: Yeah, sure.

TONY: Cool. OK, excellent. I'll mute again. That's great.

ELLIE: Right now, sports players and sports clubs are getting away with bad behaviour. Sports players get a huge amount of fame, of money, and a public profile from playing sport, and that often leads to really bad behaviour. We've seen sports players regularly getting drunk, doing destructive things in public. And, it's simply not OK that sports clubs are unaffected by this, and don't ever have to be responsible for those actions.

In this debate, we defined the topic as being a policy that affects all sports clubs that are professional around Australia. For instance, this would occur in the AFL, in the NRL, and, for instance, in rugby union. We think that that's basically the clubs that deserve to be punished for the actions of their players. And, we punish them by imposing in-game penalties where clubs would lose points, where they would have to take a particular player off the field, or they might be demoted in the ladder of the sport. And, we think basically, that's a good idea because it means that those sports club's fans are directly incentivised to be angry at that player, and to not view them as a role model.

Finally, what we would define as the off-field behaviour of the players would basically be any sort of major offence that's criminal, that that player might be charged for, but also offences that create a lot of controversy. So, something like getting really drunk and doing something stupid in public, something like taking drugs, something like being disorderly or violent. Those would be the kind of offences that we'd hope to punish by this model.