The Football Culture.

It’s really – REALLY – time to stop glorifying footballers in this country. I appreciate that sport is important to a lot of people, and football particularly so. Kids in the playground at school make and break friendships on the basis of which team they follow, workmates bond over the latest win or loss of their team, and footballers are held up as the highest possible order of humanity. They are treated like gods, and it has to stop.

Apparently, there’s a type of woman who makes it her main aim to sleep with as many footballers as she can. If that’s what this sort of woman wants, then sure, more power to her I hope she’s having safe sex every single time. However, there’s a breeding culture in footballers themselves that seems to state that ALL women want to have sex with them at ALL times.

Yet accusations of rape, violence toward women and other men, taking a shit in hotel hallways, binge drinking and god knows what else don’t make a dent in the worship of these sportsmen. No matter what disgrace they bring to themselves or the team, it’s all forgiven when they kick a goal or take a high mark.

And the rot is clearly setting in for suburban clubs. Three members of the Monty (I call it Monty as it’s a local team to me) Footy team have been charged with the gang rape of a woman at Philip Island earlier this month. There were actually two women involved, but one has dropped charges. Add to this $10,000 damage done to the house the young men were renting, and you basically have some honest to god AFL footballers coming up the ranks.

Depending on which source you believe, these three and the other under 20′s out trashing rental houses over a drunken weekend either had or had not attended “education sessions about the proper treatment of women”. I’m sorry, but if as a sports culture you need to be telling 17 year olds it’s NOT okay to rape women, then clearly something is very very wrong.

Which brings me back to hero worship. I really do understand the importance of sport to society, although I don’t watch much of it myself, but this blanket forgiveness and acceptance of what amounts to dickhead behaviour cannot go on if we want young men and little boys to understand it’s not okay to do these things.

I’m not saying these guys should be staying up all night knitting socks for the homeless (though it might help) and i’m not saying they can’t enjoy a night out. They are, despite what the newspapers might tell you, only human. I can understand speeding tickets etc, these are mistakes people make all the time. Rape, violence and basically acting like a shit is not a “mistake” that normal people get away with. If they can’t act like the role models they are supposed to be, then they should be dropped from any team they are involved with. No press coverage, no draft picks, just back to nobody land working for a wage like a normal person.