Its about time you took a stand tubby
http://foxsports.news.com.au/story/0,86 ... 11,00.html
Growing rap sheet something to arrest
By Patrick Smith
July 21, 2006
THE AFL publishes a weekly injury list. It details the health of the competition.
The league might soon consider publishing a welfare list which would chronicle players who have fallen foul of the law.
Soon one might be as long as the other.
This season more than 20 players have faced investigation over matters ranging from assault, possession of dangerous weapons, bolting from police, drink driving, recklessly causing serious injury, drunken brawling, indecent language, damaging property and assault of a public officer.
The football world waits on a court decision whether the media can report the names of players who have tested positive to the use of illicit drugs.
Just yesterday The Australian reported Hawthorn's Mark Williams' conviction for unlicensed driving and former Kangaroos ruckman Corey McKernan was fined for the same charge.
Then, of course, Michael Gardiner was charged with drink driving by West Australian police after he crashed his car late on Monday night.
Not to mention Port Adelaide's Dean Brogan who was charged yesterday with an alleged assault on an Adelaide surgeon. The ruckman is due to appear in Adelaide Magistrates Court next month.
AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou is blunt about it.
"It is unacceptable. We are concerned," he said yesterday.
However, Demetriou said that he did not believe illegal behaviour was on the increase.
"Actually, we don't think it has got any worse over the past three or four years," he said.
All this despite the AFL allotting the competition's player association many millions of dollars to provide courses on all manner of social issues. Each year the association sets aside a minimum $1.5million on player education.
Workshops include players and the law, family planning, gambling, drink driving, speeding, anti-doping, cross cultural awareness and racial vilification.
The players association says these workshops "aim to address these activities from the perspective of positive enforcement of appropriate behaviours, short- and long-term health effects, effect on athletic performance, peer influence on social behaviour and the consequences of the public and media spotlight (role models)".
Not even religious orders prepare their students so thoroughly.
There is also a 24-hour helpline.
Yet the players continue to misbehave in a violent and regular manner.
You might think the AFL has dropped plans for players to make community service visits to prison just in case they don't come out.
"We would prefer it doesn't happen but it does happen," Demetriou said.
"I'm sure the fact that they are young men with high disposable incomes and with time on their hands is part of the problem. But for all the programs and education the league, the players association and the clubs provide, at the end of the day players will make decisions.
"Things like unlicensed driving, well, that's just crazy stuff."
These are embarrassing statistics for the AFL, which so desperately wants to be a community leader.
The league has introduced an expansive illicit drug policy to work alongside the already unforgiving World Anti-Doping Agency code.
When all football codes faced damaging claims of sexual assault and abuse, the AFL rushed to put together its controversial code called Respect and Responsibility - an AFL social policy.
Unfortunately, it was a document drawn up by zealots and it proved unjust, unrealistic and unworkable. The AFL Commission has yet to pass umpteen attempts to refine it.
Brendan Gale, chief executive of the AFL Players' Association, said the organisation could do little more.
"Part of what we do is provide opportunities for these guys to develop skills to make better decisions outside footy," he said.
"Also what we do is get them to take full responsibility for what they do.
"No one is above the rule. They can't pass the buck or make excuses. Like the population at large there are going to be people who transgress and make errors of judgment.
"Look at the sample of the population we deal with. They are young guys who are by nature aggressive and risk takers, otherwise they wouldn't have got this far in AFL footy.
"When they leave the field there's going to be people who make poor decisions and take unnecessary risks.
"Of course it is a concern but there is only so much we can do.
"We have to focus on the guys who do get the message, who do the right things. There's a lot more of them."
But for all the goodwill of the AFL and the association, some players are proving as unsophisticated and crass as those in the NRL, a competition the AFL has sneered at in the past.
One is as bad as the other.
Research has shown 2006 to be worse than last year.
Then football only had to deal with drink-driving, drug abuse and alleged links with underworld figures.
None of this, of course, has stopped the players from lining up, tongues lolling to the side, arms outstretched and hands open to secure a rich slice of AFL revenue. Even before this next pay increase the average footballer's wage is around $200,000.
Double standards are everywhere.
Asked whether Gardiner would be welcome at Collingwood, Anthony Rocca said: "I don't know what sort of bloke he is ... but with his past history I don't think you would want to recruit that sort of bloke."
Why not?
Will he feel uneasy in the company of Brodie Holland, who last year was found guilty of unlicensed driving and faces charges of intentionally and recklessly causing injury, assault and assault in company? The case will be heard in October.
Holland's teammate Cameron Cloke was infamously caught driving at 144km/h in a 100km/h speed zone, and Chad Morrison was fined $20,000 after he was found guilty of drink-driving. Club sponsor TAC fined Collingwood $200,000 as a result.
In football in 2006, it doesn't pay to be too precious or pious.
Actually I really dont think that needs to be a question 
