Josh Charnley opens up on Josh McGuire’s vile insult about his disabled son – “I wanted to quit”

Leigh Leopards winger Josh Charnley has opened up a year after he faced vile abuse from Josh McGuire about his son.

McGuire was given a 12-game ban – one of the longest in Super League history – after abusing Josh Charnley in a match between Leigh and Warrington, and the RFL minutes revealed he has used language “derogatory and negative” which was deemed to be “abuse and disparagement towards disabled individuals”.

Charnley’s young son, Axel, has a form of autism, and this was targeted by McGuire. Warrington parted ways with McGuire following the incident and he hasn’t signed on somewhere else since.

Speaking on the 5 Live Rugby League Podcast with Tanya Arnold and Kevin Brown, Charnley said: “We didn’t really want to speak about it, we tried keeping it quite close to our chest but the incident at Warrington, we had to come out and speak about it.

“We thought we were protecting Axel with people not knowing about it, we didn’t even tell our parents, just wanted to keep it to us until Zoe was comfortable speaking about it.

“But ever since the incident it came out, and it was in all the press and it was getting leaked everywhere that we had a disabled kid, we had to actually voice it ourselves.”

Josh Charnley: “I wanted to quit the sport”

Elaborating more on the incident and the impact it had on him and his family afterwards, Charnley said: “It was horrible. I’ve never experienced anything like that, I don’t think any other player will ever experience something that another player has said about his son.

“I actually wanted to quit the sport and be away from it all because you don’t target someone’s kid.”

Charnley then had to take a moment, as he was audibly upset thinking back to the time.

Kevin Brown then added: “There’s some stuff on the field that should never get thrown at players, and abuse to families and children is an area, for me, that should never be touched.

“Rightfully, I thought, Warrington handled the situation perfectly, getting rid of the player.”