Players need crucial off-field behaviour education

Professional sports people are often regarded as public property and they are closely watched by the public for the slightest misdeed. Players need to realise that being a star footy player sometimes means living in a goldfish bowl. 

So clubs need to ensure their players are fully briefed on what could happen to them if they get into situations off the field, it could save a lot of heartache later. After-match parties, Mad Monday revelry and late night excursions around bars and nightclubs all make for a volatile mix of risks.

Add some young women to the mix and all the ingredients for trouble are there. Do clubs drill into their players’ minds their responsibilities off-field, in pubs or nightclubs or at parties or after-match functions?

Drunken revelry or a sex scandal could ruin lives and end careers, especially with today’s trend for incriminating images and videos to be uploaded to social networking sites like You Tube and Facebook .

This is where another issue arises. The 17-year-old girl, who made headlines last year after posting nude photographs of St Kilda players on the internet, was able to do so because such photographs existed in the first place.

How she acquired them is secondary to the fact the players themselves seem to have this underground culture of having explicit images of themselves and colleagues stored on mobile phones or computers.

Not just players but also their bosses with the AFL’s most powerful manager, Ricky Nixon, facing a dodgy career future after also falling foul of the same girl who has single-handedly torpedoed the prestige of Australian footballers’ reputations’

The AFL Players Association enlisted high profile QC  David Galbally to investigate the Nixon affair  and he saidsome valuable lessons should come out of the saga.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported Mr Galbally as saying it should help the AFL better understand modern issues affecting sportspeople, such as drug use and the taking of photos with electronic equipment. He could have been speaking for all of the players in the different codes whose behaviour has tripped them up.

The 17 year old whose anti- St Kilda attacks were so devastating, has become a media darling with her provocative remarks, most recently bragging her new claims could "demolish" a different – unnamed AFL club.

“I have so much evidence this time. I have gotten better with my spy skills," the girl reportedly told AAP.

Irrespective of her motivation – she claims her goal is “to show people what the AFL culture is truly about. Sex, drugs and lies” – the fact she is a runaway torpedo among AFL clubs is driven by the fact that incriminating photos and videos seem to exist and be cloned from mobile phones or laptops.