While I'm on a roll I want to make a point about the times we live in. In 1999 the ex Arsenal football player Graham Rix was arrested for having sex with a 15 year old girl. She was a willing participant from what I gather, she looked way older, she went to his hotel to be with him. From what I heard her father went to his football club to complain what had happened. It's speculated he was trying to either get some cash, or get him sacked, who knows? Anyway the football club chairman, a man very popular among LUFC supporters I think, asked WTF he was coming to him for and told him to go to the cops if he had a problem. Go to the cops is what he did. Rix got a year inside I think.

I had a conversation with my girlfriend about this at the time. My opinion was that despite the age gap, he was around 50 I think, if she wanted it it was barely deserving of being a crime. I understood why the courts have to act if a complaint is made from a parent, but unless someone complained no one would have made any fuss about it.

But in 2015 the world has changed. In the US I've seen people being called out as paedo's if a 20 year old guy is hanging around with a 17 year old girl. I think we are in utterly mental times

Recently a 27 year old footballer has been arrested for the same offence as Rix. He is looking at the end of his career if he's convicted and the world is going to castigate him as a kiddie fiddler.

IMO kiddie fiddlers deserve to be killed. Rapists deserve to be killed. Genuine paeodophiles need help and removing away from children so they are never a danger to them. But the crime of having sex with a very willing 15 year old is still barely a crime. But he's going to be painted as a rapist and a kiddie fiddler for the rest of his life.

Whatever anyone thinks of what's happened, come Friday, if hardaker has that rhinos shirt on I'll support him just as much as the rest of the team!

IMO anyone that doesn't and claims to want the best for our club is talking rubbish, because whatever you think nobody can deny we are a far better team with hardaker in it! FACT!

Especially people that have supported the likes of Bailey, Walker, Morley, McDermott etc in the past.

Apparently no charge was brought (although guilty of the assault). Because both players agreed to pay £200 compensation plus a letter of apology. This was an easy way out, as the student would be rubbing his hands at the prospect of receiving £400 easy money for a few bruises. This is purely a way of reducing court time, as both would have had cases to answer.
If I were Leeds I would keep his registration, but not play him so that he could not be head-hunted, he would be out of the limelight and children could not idolise him, and it would show Leeds in a good community light.
There would be no loss of class as that lad Ashton Golding who played against Warrington looked a top notch recruit, had a real good game.

Well, that escalated quickly.

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.