Scarcely a week goes by without some headline about yet another football hero turning out to be nothing but a thug and a disgrace.
The NRL seems to be the worst code, which is hardly surprising because it seems to me to be about 10% skill and 90% thuggery.
And the worst part of it all is that more often than not these football heroes have gained theit notoriety by thumping into some young women who has been silly enough to get mixed up with them.

But they will be OK. A phalanx of character witnesses will be trotted out led by the most expensive lawyers. There will be a visit to the Childrens' Hospital where autographs will be signed, soft toys handed out and nurses will swoon. In the meantime the young lady will be nursing a black eye, a broken nose or the trauma of a sexual encounter otherwise known as a bit of fun.

And the crowds will cheer them on again and curse the trouble makers who told "lies" about the football heroes.

link? . . .link?

You only have to read a paper once a week or occasionally look at TV news and there it is! And you ask me for a link?
Are you by any chance one of these rabid NRL supporters who thinks ANYTHING they do is OK?

Funny how people make a song and dance about tarring all abos with the same brush, yet are quite happy to do the same to other 'acceptable' groups like sportsmen, despite their rate of offending being much much lower.

The significant difference is that these thugs are supposed to be and are role models for adolescent boys.
That's a joke isn't it.

For a start it's a sad reflection that some of them get paid more than the PM. And that's part of the problem, the fact that they have all this spare time & money to get themselves wasted and into strife.
The game itself is a bad lesson to youth on how to behave. What would it be? 50% playing a brutal contact contest and 50% turning on a biffo for the fans?
Now take soccer, the beautiful game. Admittedly there are occasional, very occasional lapses of behaviour but not many. And to my mind that has to do with the fact that brutal contact is severely dealt with if it does occur and anyway it is not an inherent part of the game as it is in rugby.

nichy wrote on Apr 18^th, 2011 at 12:49pm:



A big call to make, when you consider theres a few hundred young men on the playing roster at any given time... how many are involved in these 'scandals'?  A dozen?  2 dozen?  Not very different to the offending rate for the young male population at large is it?

The NRL and ARL are having a competition to see who gets the 'worst' trophy.

I think they are neck to neck this year.

They are taken away from the family environment at a vulnerable age ( 14-16) and put into this absurd footy culture where they learn the outrageous lifestyle that becomes normal behaviour to them.

If we, the public keep promoting them as heroes, and keep paying homage to the media that feeds on it, the problem will be here to stay.

It's called brand equity.....they are made to do good deeds within the community so that they have something to fall back on when they stuff up.......he's not such a bad guy because he did this and this lol

I think that Australianised Sport is possibly one of the most 'aggressive' in the Southern Hemisphere, which is always more physical than the Northern Hemisphere. Whereas the Italian Soccer players would take a dive, the Australian players would rather go for a vicious hack/slash and just take it like it is.

But.
I think there is a growing rift amongst Australian Sportmen regardless of Code.
There are those who allow such aggression and physicality spill into their private lives rather than put it onto the field. These players tend to lack any ability to put their 'gift' to the grace of rescuing people from being bullied or drowning in the surf as other Sportsmen have done - regardless of Code.
It doesn't help when we also see the Sporting Codes clamp down upon such aggression/physicality ...upon the field.

If they smash each other to bits barbarically for the world's entertainment - so be it, they get paid for it ...or in Australia's (Cronulla's) case - get laid for it.
Maybe the supress such aggression/physicality upon the Field because they don't want sportsmen being tougher than the Australian Military personel who seem to be the real grubs when it comes to women in their ranks.


Keep the violence on the Field, not the streets.