On the TV news last night we saw footage of AFL serial offender Brendan Fevola vomiting during a night out. As could be expected this is dominating the news in Melbourne at a time when Fevola was seeking to make a first grade comeback.
The football codes in Australia seem to be endemic with this type of thing. Nightclub incidents, sexual assault, tattoos, silly newspaper columns. Winter just wouldn't be winter without it.
I'm getting sick and tired of this. These men are paid a lot of money to ply their trade on the football field and their employers shouldn't be expected to tolerate bad behaviour.
In many ways the players have the clubs over a barrel. They can gang up and force coaches out, they (or their managers) can run off to the media threatening to walk out if they don't get more money, and they virtually have carte blanche to do what they want because of the easy-going Aussie attitude - "hey, they're footy stars. They're legends".
Brendan Fevola has a counterpart in Sydney - Todd Carney. Rugby league has been fortunate this year in that the constant procession of unfortunate incidents we saw last year hasn't been repeated, but Carney is the exception. Rugby league not only tolerates ratbag players, the sport encourages them with awards. Serial alcoholic Carney last year won the Dally M award for best player. Drug dealing brawler Jake Friend won this year's Jack Gibson Award for the Roosters' best and fairest player.
Then there are those tattoos. I was watching the Rugby World Cup over the weekend, and the thing which struck me about the Romanian, Italian and Argentinian players was how clean and healthy they looked with no tattoos. This tattoo craze is only confined to Australia. I really shouldn't condemn this - I had tattoos done in 1987 and 1989 long before it became trendy but I had valid reasons for doing it. It wasn't a trendy fashion statement.
Let's just hope that when the football season ends in a few weeks, the players will do a lot of thinking about their attitude and reputations. We need to get a new attitude into the game and the players should be mindful of their obligations to the community and their standing as role models to - in some cases - very young children.
