The dilemma over Israel — no, wait, come back it’s not that Israel! — over Israel Folau brings together just about everything going on in our society and culture in one handy package. For those avoiding something combining sports and culture wars, Folau is a rugby superstar, who has circulated some religious fundamentalist comments about gay men and lesbians — that they’re going to hell — on his Instagram account.

He is now finding out what hell looks like, as his multi-million dollar contract comes under scrutiny, league advertisers arc up, and some fellow players round on him. Inevitably, he’s been made a free speech martyr by the right, who are constructing the issue as one pushed by cultural left blah blah blah. It isn’t, of course. No-one is marching to have Israel Folau disciplined or sacked. The pressure on him has come as a commercial issue; the league and its teams acting before anything happens — which might never have happened — out of fear that the vast amounts of money they earn might be affected.

Hence the construction of Folau as a piece of property. All workers are property, commodities, of course, but celebrities are different, and genuinely talented celebrities even more so. Labour is usually exchangeable — sack and rehire — but celebrity labour is the reverse. Not only can very few people do what Folau does, but he now has a unique following attached to his background, his persona, and now his willingness not to be bullied into submission.

The power paradox: the leagues and clubs are full of executive mediocrities, instantly replaceable; the teams are full of players of unique and rare skills, which earn billions of dollars for the league. Yet the players are treated like children, pets, a set of spare cleats, and sometimes as an aristocracy. When accusations of sexual assault are made, the entire legal system appears to be suspended — by common consent it seems, major sports has some defacto legal status where accusations up to and including rape can be treated as an internal matter. But the second half of that is that players are pushed, prodded, corralled, marketed and owned in such a way that accepting a sports contract has become tantamount to handing in your citizenship rights. The league and clubs will say that this is part of their contractual arrangements; the question would be whether these contracts are fair, or onerous, and whether players’ organisations shouldn’t challenge the purview of them.

Beyond that, the Folau issue reveals some of the contradictions that are tearing apart competitive team sport around the world. We go to team sport for an experience of solidarity-in-motion: a group working together to achieve something extraordinary in the battle of mind, body and the interaction of humanity and nature. When team players become superstars, bigged up, with agents, endorsements, and media profiles, the solidarity starts to come apart. Sport then reflects back to us the atomised society we went to it, to get a break from. Social media combusts that, of course.

You could say that this is a new thing — players falling out over cultural issues — but conflict as such isn’t. The left-right conflicts of the twentieth century were present in team sport, with communists and fascists present in the same VFL teams at one point, and getting into fist-fights before and after the game. But the social form they lived in — industrial class society — made the resumption of teamwork a “natural” process. A football team was, after all, a bit like a factory, a Taylorist game, specialised.

Quite possibly, players should consent to some voluntary code of restraint during their careers, as the mixed public-private world of social media extends its reach. But the emphasis on voluntary suggests what the real issue should be here. It’s time that players took greater control of the leagues that depend on them for their profits. Such leagues started as intangible partnerships, and then became corporations and hence capital. Why should not the players, as a collective, own a fair slice of that? Why should they not have seats on the board, representation in media negotiations, and the rest? They more than any other workers, could get that in a heartbeat – one whiff of a players’ strike would send a wave of coronaries through the leagues’ offices. They should try for more than being just mega-salaried performing seals, getting the whip and the chair when they step out of line. Folau’s comments may be silly one-dimensional fundamentalism — but the beliefs expressed would be shared in their exact form, by about 15 federal MPs. The former will get treated more like the latter, when they assert the collective power which lies at the very heart of the main game.