Role model this

by RICK KANE

MORE than once or twice, before he was captain of the Australian cricket team, Ricky Ponting got into a spot of bother at the pub or track. His career survived as did the Cricket Australia brand, the Tasmanian economy and the rectitude of a generation of cricket tragic Aussie teenagers.

fev

Fev...he did a stupid thing, that's all. Get over it.

Today you can't open a paper without reading about another sportsperson who has let the side down with his drunken antics and poor role modelling. I'm never quite sure just whose side has been let down. More than that, what role is the player supposed to be modelling? For 120 minutes each week a footballer will excite and entertain, raise us like winners or batter our thread bare hopes and dreams. For the other six and three quarter days he is just a kid or a bloke, a yob, a git, a lad, a bunny, a larrikin, a doofus, a knob, a clown, a face in the crowd. Albeit, a well known face.

That he is well known, a commodity, is what leads to such intense questioning and moralising of his behaviour. So men with puffy eyes and cheeks so red you'd swear they had no more capillaries to pop, shake their heads and talk solemnly about an alcohol problem.

Then the dreaded 'role model' argument gets rolled out. It's placed front and centre in the debate by commentators and officials (people that should know better), suffocating and blinding and staring down any other explanation or idea. Not to raise the awareness of the community and inspire us to be the best we can be, oh no. But in some illogical, almost Carrolesque attempt to protect the brand. What a web we weave, relativising sportspeople's behaviour, role modelling and branding.

I'm talking about poor old Brendon Fevola of course. Fev was filmed, on a mobile-phone, pissing on a window, in the wee hours - no way you say, yes way, my oh my that wouldn't have happened back in my day. Hey, here is another way of looking at it - he was out on the tear and he did a stupid thing, that's all. Get over it.

For all the pontificating and harrumphing going on about the latest footballer's latest indiscretion it took one simple comment by Glenn Archer (who over the years I have warmed to immensely) to bring it all back to a bit of reality. Caroline Wilson and Garry Lyon on Monday night's episode of Football Classified were tut tut tutting their tutting heads off about one or two or 10 weeks suspension for the hapless yet magnificent full forward. Archer was sadly shaking his head at all this. When brought into their cone of seriousness his comment was, 'why punish the team?' Why indeed. Come to think of it, why punish the player? What exactly has he done wrong? How many among us haven't done something similar or worse?

Every week there are people with far more important positions of authority making drunken, stupid, in the moment decisions. From MPs to judges to merchant bankers to football administrators to dads and mums, each and every one of them (or us, depending on whose side you're on) has, is and will make dumb decisions and NOT have to pay the moral, public, appease the lynch mob price our sportspeople have to pay. It is a sobering thought. One of the more telling images of the last six months was Benny Cousins grin as he was being led from his vehicle to the police car. O his stomach may be tattooed Ned Kelly's immortal last words, 'Such Is Life' but his grin seemed to say, 'Role Model This'.

As we kick off another year of God's own game I hope that we don't get too tangled up in the tawdry, inane, oafish, off field goings on. I'm not at all suggesting that gross behaviour be condoned, just pleading for a little perspective or as Hamlet instructed the players, 'Suit the word to the action and the action to the word'. Because on the field, it is players who observe that simple but profound homily in the way they play the game that excites us the most.

21 March 2008

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