There’s no avoiding the public gaze

If you are a professional athlete, if you make a living out of being in the public eye, privacy is a word which you should strike from your vocabulary. Because if you are a professional athlete in 2009, it just doesn’t exist.

Let’s say you go out for a nice quiet dinner with your family. Other customers at the restaurant or people who work there can take your photo with their mobile phone. They can tweet or blog about it as well. In this day and age we live in, everyone has the capacity to be a news service.

When it’s about how their day went, you couldn’t care less, but when it’s about how they bumped into a footballer in a restaurant and how he carried on like a jackass – now that’s news.

We are a voyeuristic society, how else can you explain the presence of a television program where all it is, is strangers sitting around a house and talking?

We crave gossip and finding out about other people’s lives. Our jealous streaks give us a buzz out of knowing that celebrities’ storybook lives aren’t that perfect.

The media used to have a gentleman’s agreement with athletes. Certain things were off limits. You just didn’t go there. No more. Now it’s open season where anything and everything goes.

How open? How about News of the World reporters setting up both Lawrence Dallaglio and Sven-Goran Erikkson? Pretending to be people they weren’t and taping the ensuing conversations.

Things currently aren’t as bad in Australia as they are in England but they’re heading that way.

The rule of thumb is that you go after the Big Fish. Matthew Johns is the big fish as far as this story goes, just as Alex Rodriguez was when his named was leaked from a list of players who tested positive to performance enhancers in a drugs survey.

104 players tested positive and his was the only name leaked?

So what to do if you are a professional athlete in 2009? Trust no-one. Have people you trust deal with others so your interaction with people outside your circle is limited.

Never ever do or say anything that you wouldn’t want to end up in the public domain. Don’t go outside.

Be very careful who you date or have a personal relationship with – the moment you break up with them could be the moment they run to the press and hang all of your dirty laundry.