Sabbatical From Scrutiny
There will be a brief lull in AFL player scrutiny as I take a couple of months off to travel abroad. I'll be leaving this wide brown land to travel through Thailand, Vietnam and India, leaving the rest of you poor bastards to deal with the nonsense from our feted sporting heroes. (That said, somewhat worryingly, Thailand is a favourite destination of the players, and we've seen that international boundaries are no barrier to AFL players going the biff.)
No doubt footy players will continue to wreak their special blend of drunkenness and self-centred arrogance in my absence. I'll try to monitor developments, but for Speccy readers so inclined, a brief comment on the end of this post will ensure that matters are dealt with properly in the New Year.
Owing to this temporary reduction in scrutiny, we'll keep the AFL Player Threat Indicator on a Red Level for the time being. Please, people, safety first! With that in mind - and Christmas coming up - remember the Speccy Shop for your AFL player threat mitigation needs.
Lastly, please note the AFL Misbehaviour Market has closed out for the year, with all trading ceased and the Pies contacts paying out $100 (all others are worthless). It had to be said that with four current and former players in court in the one month, Collingwood set a new bar for lawlessness. Thanks to all those who played and we'll look at setting up another market for next year.
Word Count: 254
Labels: footy
| Contribute | ↑ |
8 Comments:
its a good thing ur gone.
u are very arrogant, u take the easy option. football is australia, while there might be alot of negitive news about current/ex players or media personalities dominating the new that does not make footballer a target of ridicule. like all sports world wide football offers a rags to riches tale for many who would other wise be over looked by society.
im not making excuses for the actions of people like fevola but this negitive way u look at the social aspects of the are wrong.
clubs offer a family network to players and through this player learn values and virtues.
its easy to say ablett had a negitive impact on society and i agree that he played a major role in the death of Alisha Horan and for this there is no excuse, but how many people took up football because of the magic gift this man possesed. how many fathers and sons shared there fist beer watch ablett embarrase opponents. how many smiles and how much inspiration did he bring to our counrty. im not excusing hispost career actions but simply asking in a qunatitative scene: how many people directly or indirectly benifit from the joys of our game and how many suffer. yes some one died in this instance but for every ablett there is a voss or a hird or a buckley to talk bignames who are role models for all. and there are other players who u will never hear about cos they float on the cusp of clubs training every day andliving a moral life as set by the standards of there clubs.
im sure u disagree with my but i have experince u dont. i hope to be playing in the afl in the 2007 season and i will keep an eye on this page and if i find that football is a negitive thing i will walk out on the goal which i have spent every day dreaming about. i can only hope u r worng
my advice for u is to look on the bright side of life
appologies for the numerous spelling errors i suffer from chronic dyslexia.
By
Anonymous, at 12:43 am, November 07, 2006
Here here Anonymous! Best of luck on getting into the AFL. Drop me a line and let me know how you get on.
Don't let Greg get you down. Jealousy is a curse and unfortunately for him he is Cursed!
GO HAWKS.
Molly
PS. Oh, Greg, Safe travels! Have fun and maybe a trip will mean you won't be so bitter on your return!
By
Anonymous, at 1:38 pm, November 08, 2006
Well, anonymous, I hope you can be the first to spearhead the new enlightened model of professional footballer. But I reckon that three weeks in boot camp and you'll have all those lofty notions beaten out of you.
You see, the club is not a "family network" to teach players "values and virtues". It's a business to survive longterm through winning memberships and premierships. You and dangerously misguided if you think otherwise.
For someone not making excuses, you're offering a few. I don't doubt that football brings significant benefits to Australia. It's just that we could have all of that without the bashings, rapes, corruption, drug abuse and even deaths that seem to come with it. We shouldn't just accept it by saying "you can't make an omlette without breaking eggs". We should say "we want to keep the game great, but not have so much fallout from these maladjusted dickheads".
How can we get that? Through changing people's attitude. We have to let the footballers know that we expect more from them. They're overpaid to a huge extent; the least we can do is make them obey the law and know that they will not get any special treatment, privileges etc In fact, they will get extra scrutiny since they are (like it or not) role models. Hence this blog.
Lastly, I wish you all the best for your career and hope that you can turn things around. But - realistically - I doubt you would "walk away" from a career where you could earn $100-$500K just because you saw some "negative things" happening. Maybe a muffled girl's scream from the back room at a party? Looking the other way when some bloke gets his teeth kicked out in a carpark? Honestly, unless your fallback plan is to become a stockbroker or dentist, I'm afraid the money and footy culture will just suck you down.
-Greg.
ps. Molly, I'm not a bitter person at all! Just community minded. I'm certainly not jealous (I think you actually mean envious, but never mind) of footballers. Travelling is going brilliantly, so thanks for your good wishes.
By
Greg, at 11:16 pm, November 22, 2006
If the current strike rate continues you'll have an awful lot of work ahead to bring the site up to date - Mitchell, Farmer, Dodd and the usual suspect Cousins all managed to involve themselves in some form of drama over the weekend of 2nd/3rd of December.
Hope the break is going well and that you're spending it far enough away from any footballers to avoid indiscriminate violence.
Cheers,
Paul
By
Anonymous, at 12:55 pm, December 06, 2006
If anyone was going to be envious of the achievements and desirability of an Australian sportsperson, why would they aim so low?
There are Australians out there who totally bloody dominate their sport, in the face of competition from across the world and resources and budgets of which the AFL business franchise can only dream. And they do it without brandishing their achievements as a license for public arseholery. You want a role model to envy and emulate? Pick Thorpe. Greg never writes about Ian Thorpe on Speccy.
Frankly, you can't blame the footy players too much - shitty behaviour is almost expected from them, even almost celebrated as some archaic part of Australian culture that deserves to be treasured. And with some exceptions, it's almost entirely restricted to football. The media and people of Australia had no qualms shuffling teenaged world-top-10 tennis player Jelena Dokic out of the country because of idiotic but otherwise legal brainfarts from her _father_.
By
Anonymous, at 9:43 am, December 09, 2006
At least it's a local culture (predominately S.A and Victoria) and one that does not represent Australia globally. Why does Vic football dominate news 24/7 when other more imporant global issues are news worthy i.e Page 1 - footballer's wife spits out a kid -footballer gets new fraggle rock hairstyle - page 15, ummmm, some important world event. Maybe Tullamarine airport will get more than three direct international flights into Victoria therefore this quirky local football culture will dilute with the onset of global tourism! Its just a game.
By
Anonymous, at 6:03 am, December 12, 2006
Not sure it is 'predominantly' an S.A. and Vic problem, I recall reading recently that the WCE have the largest number of convicted crims on any afl list.
By
Anonymous, at 3:47 pm, December 12, 2006
Hello.
I speak Spanish, English so so.
Please. Help me.
About recent comments, please.
Bye.
PD: xml comments
My e-mail is: andrewmusic1@hotmail.com
By
Andrew, at 3:15 pm, December 15, 2006
Post a Comment Comments:
<< Home