A WONDERFUL tale has emerged in my Sydney street this week about a trio of Sydney Swans stars celebrating on Mad Monday, just two days after winning the AFL flag.
Swans captain Jarrad McVeigh lives several doors up from me and about 50m closer to our local pub. He and his mates, defender Ted Richards and Brownlow medallist, Adam Goodes, were arriving home from a day and a half of celebrations when they waved at a local Swans fan outside the hotel.
This retiree never misses a game so he broke into a gallop to meet them, running down the street to pass on his congratulations. All three dropped their kit bags and embraced him in a huge bear hug. Witnesses tell me it was a joy to behold. Our Swans fan says if he dies tomorrow, it will be as a happy man.
Across town, at exactly the same time, several drunken members of the Canterbury Bulldogs were swearing at a female Channel 9 reporter and making lewd remarks which led to the club being fined a paltry $30,000 to charity for their appalling behaviour. They have remained unrepentant since the incident, blaming the media for blowing it up and claiming they were entitled to privacy on their day of drunken idiocy.
Calls to ban Mad Monday come thick and fast at this time of year because there is always one club (predominantly league) that oversteps the mark. The bad behaviour usually features several players dressing up in a ridiculous costume, becoming abusive while drunk and threatening anyone who dares to invade this most sacrosanct of male rituals.
Club bosses grin and bear it (or partake themselves) and then turn the blowtorch on the media. They say this is part of "boys being boys" and that it is something these "kids" deserve after such a tough year. The coach, too, invariably goes AWOL, leaving the club chief executive to pick up the pieces (or not, as the case was with the Bulldogs).
Imposing a ban on Mad Monday is not the solution to a problem that is now way beyond being passed off as a single day of nonsense. Telling men, yes MEN, in their mid-20s that they can no longer have a big drink the day after they finish their footy season is simply not an option.
The Sydney Swans culture has been well documented in this column. Theirs is a club that does not tolerate fools, believes innately in the value of nurturing new recruits and encourages young men to behave with sensibility. In short, if you want to be a dickhead, don't sign up.
By contrast, the Canterbury Bulldogs possess an innate culture of anti-social, macho behaviour that does not challenge boys signed up as 18-year-olds to ever become men. Club bosses and coaches always refer to them as "the boys". No matter that the average age of a first-grade footballer is around 25.
The new Rugby League Commission's only female representative, Kathryn Harris, believes that actually calling players men is a way to start stamping out the terrible behaviour we saw on Mad Monday from the Bulldogs. She might have added that asking them to behave like men should also be on the agenda.
Coach Des Hasler has been mute since the events of the day. He has not offered an apology on his team's behalf and has distanced himself from the entire affair, refusing to take calls for nearly two weeks. He did the same at Manly when the player group behaved dreadfully on more than one Mad Monday and bonding session.
Hasler might be a hard taskmaster when it comes to how he coaches his team to play, but he has no interest in grooming these men off the field. I can bet my last cent that the Swans' John Longmire would have demanded a confession and apology if any of his players or officials had been involved in the sort of tirade that came from behind a closed door at Belmore on Mad Monday.
These end-of-season celebrations and the way they are conducted invariably reflect who a club really is. They tell us a lot about the coach, the captain and the club administration. Sadly, they tell us that a large chunk of the league community still has a way to go before it can claim equality with the AFL and its superior culture.
Inflicting such a ban on all league clubs is punishing those who do the right thing and have learnt how to behave like real men from mentors who care about them. Mad Monday is not the problem. It's just the one day when we get to see whether our club is one of the grown ups.
![:[]](./images/smilies/th_iwstupid.gif "With Stupid"){kind=small}
brainwashed merino derp derp derping like its a new disco dance 