The Adelaide Crows football team impressed the fuck out the general populace last week by indefinitely suspending one of their players, Nathan Bock.
Young Nathan, one of their best players, was involved in a drunken kerfuffle with his girlfriend which lead to assault charges being filed against him by the police.
He beat up his girlfriend.
The AFL over the past years has done an excellent job in promoting healthy (and may I add, 'normal') attitudes towards women in both their own gated community, and the wider community. Their work is exemplary. They even appoint playes such as Adam Goodes to be spokespersons, ambassadors if you will, for causes such as this, and it has worked a treat because not only has this infiltrated down to grassroots footy teams (recently in a Victorian country town, a player was kicked out of the club for a similar incident), but it has also seen women and girls taking a greater interest in / making a contribution to footy in general. 43.1% of footy's audience, according to the AFL, are women.
So of course when an elite high-profile player such as Nathan Bock beats up his missus, he had to be made an example of. The Adelaide Crows said (paraphrasing) "You violent and misogynistic wanker. This is not good enough
You are indefinitely expelled from this great club - and you have to attend counselling as well!"
And I said, and so did Phil Cleary, and so did everyone, "Good on them."
Today, the club proudly announced that his indefinte suspension is over and he will play this weekend.
He missed one match.
One match.
One.
One. Match.
Sigh.
To quote Bob Dylan:
"...bury the rag deep in your face
For now is the time for your tears."
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8 comments:
They said 'indefinite', not 'infinite'.
As long as they didn't ever say 'one match' it was indefinite, at least for a short period of time, until it became definite of course. So at least they didn't lie. Or did they?
These stories about football players who are violent towards women is sickening. Why are there so many of them? Who would want their child to have these guys as role models?
They are, almost invariably, bogans who have been raised on a strict diet of football. Nothing else. At school they concentrated on football. After school, football. Weekend pursuits? Football. Literature? Nuh. Music? Nuh. Worldiness? Most definitely not.
This is by no means an excuse for their behaviour. It's just that they are often uneducated, naive individuals whose fathers were into, you guessed it, football.
(The above comment could be deemed a rash generalisation and many footballers are probably good blokes.)
This is what comes of idolising sportspeople.
If everyone idolised office-bound computer geeks as much, the world would be a much better place.
95% of AFL footballers are decent role models in a way. They are very fit, eat properly, live healthily and display great skills.
The bad apples get the press.
They shouldn't be cultural role models as such, but if kids look up to fit and healthy sportspeaople, I think that's good.
This is what comes of idolising sportspeople.
If everyone idolised office-bound computer geeks as much, the world would be a much better place.When I worked in schools for a couple of years many moons ago, I discovered that there appeared to be a large proportion of teachers who abused alcohol (EMS could probably confirm this - maybe as exhibit A?), who beat their wives and girlfriends, and who had extra-marital relationships.
Imagine if they had 25 pages devoted to them in the Herald Sun every day. People would be demanding schools be closed down.
Excellent point Fad. Perhaps the incidence of mistreating women is the same in all industries. Perhaps accountants are the worst.
"What! Bad debts are up by 31%! Oh, my wife's gonna cop it tonight!"
These days most teachers are women anyway.
Does this mean they go home and abuse their boyfriends/husbands?
EMS could probably confirm this.
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