Leigh Leopards owner Derek Beaumont wants the Rugby Football League to take action over chanting aimed at centre Tesi Niu.<\/p>\n
Niu was embroiled in drama in the off-season after allegations of physical abuse were made against the player by his partner, according to the text which accompanied the pictures.<\/p>\n
Those images displayed bruises caused by an alleged assault and were shared on Niu\u2019s Instagram, with the person posting them claiming to be his partner. Niu\u2019s social media channels were subsequently deleted.<\/p>\n
Leigh, via Beaumont, released a statement later that month, detailing the processes that had been overseen and that no official complaint had been made.<\/p>\n
Since then, Niu has continue to play but has been jeered by supporters. Speaking out on the ongoing matter, Beaumont said fans will be ejected if heard abusing the player.<\/p>\n
\u201cSport\u2019s sport and you can\u2019t control what people do on social media and what people want to say,\u201d Beaumount said in an interview with the club\u2019s official media channels. \u201cA lot of it is done behind aliases and nobody knows who anyone is. I\u2019m thick-skinned, it doesn\u2019t bother me, I\u2019ll have a bit of fun on there. But we\u2019ve got to remember the players playing this game, they\u2019re human beings. <\/p>\n
\u201cGenerally speaking, they\u2019re young men and one of our players, Tesi Niu, has been coming in for stick that I know is not right. Even if it was, it isn\u2019t right to abuse somebody in such a way, because it is abuse. I\u2019ve basically called upon the RFL to crack down on that because as a club we crack down on the flute song, we got rid of it. There\u2019s no place for it in a family sport. It\u2019s about entertainment. Of course we want the fans to sing and we want a bit of banter but to single an individual out over facts that you have no genuine knowledge about, when you\u2019re given a snippet, understandably people reach conclusions. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a country has a law and has procedures and policies that you follow that identify and prevent issues. You\u2019ve got to trust those processes and if nothing has come of that, it\u2019s because there is nothing to come of that. I just think the noise around Tesi, it\u2019s gone on for too long and it\u2019s too much. When it has a serious impact on someone\u2019s mental well-being, as the owner of the club it\u2019s my right to put pressure on the RFL to reinforce the message that we are a family sport, and we don\u2019t tolerate that kind of abuse of players or teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone coming to LSV that behaves in that way in the away end, they will be notified that it can\u2019t continue and if it does continue, they\u2019ll be ejected. It\u2019s a clear, simple message. If that\u2019s what you want to do when you come, don\u2019t come because we\u2019d rather you not be here. We will protect our players when we know the facts. When I\u2019ve spoke to a player\u2019s wife when a so-called issue has arisen, and I know the full facts and her facts, and her version, I\u2019ll support the correct outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leigh Leopards owner Derek Beaumont wants the Rugby Football League to take action over chanting aimed at centre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-523470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}