Last week I revealed to you that I was not always the wise, professorial guru type figure that I publicly project.
In fact my stern, academic airs are a mask, a beard, a betrayal of a wild youth spent in the wrong places at the wrong times, sometimes.
I was once a feared and respected athlete, a first grade rugby league player. With that kind of power comes enormous responsibilities – and I shirked every single one of them.
So in light of yet more sensationalized reporting about footy players misbehaving, I thought I’d give the inkhounds something to really get the outrage glands going.
I thought I’d tell you more about my Summer of Shame.
Belly Laugh
As one of the younger players in the squad I was regularly the butt of jokes and pranks on the training paddock and in the locker room.
Every day I’d look forward to what new practical joke the lads would cook up for me, such as throwing my entire kit on the dressing shed roof and leaving while I was still in the shower, or writing abusive graffiti on my locker and my car and my mum’s house, or repeatedly punching me in the face: these were great days.
One magically shameful summer’s day I decided to show the boys I could have a laugh too. After retrieving my kitbag from the roof, I snuck one of the team’s drink bottles home.
The next day, I surreptitiously returned it with the others. We ran a drill and did sprints under the scorching sun and we crowded around the drink bottles to cool off.
I could barely restrain myself as our fullback eagerly popped the top of “my” bottle and greedily squirted it over his face and into his mouth.
I howled with laughter and he howled with pain as the bleach went to work on his eyes, throat and stomach.
I was still chortling when the ambulance took his body away but then I felt ashamed. The training paddock is a place of work and that type of tomfoolery has no place there: I had to learn this the hard way.
It’s a lesson I carry with me and nowadays I never use my bleach prank at work, except at the Christmas party and Melbourne Cup day.
Community Service
Part of every pro footballer’s life is spent mixing with the punter, the fan and the little people. In my case I mixed a little too much with the littlest of all people.
Touring hospitals talking to sick kids and cheering them up is a wonderful, uplifting experience that brings a man back to earth and reminds him about what’s really important in life.
This is what I’ve read in plenty of footy players’ autobiographies but my own experience was quite different.
I was doing the rounds in the Children With Cancer ward. I’m not a natural at telling jokes but my quip about lying in bed dying of cancer as being “as funny as cancer” went down a treat.
Perhaps I was being too generous with my time, too giving. Caught up in other peoples’ problems, I was too distracted to prevent a problem of my own.
Tripping over a 4 year old’s heart monitor power cord, all 110kg of me stumbled and fell. I crashed down on top of all sorts of medical equipment and kids.
Trying desperately to stop myself I grabbed tubing, pipes, IV drips, kids: anything to slow my descent. As I stumbled about the room, falling, I became a one-man hospital ward wrecking machine and no one was safe until I finally came to rest.
As the dust settled I realized with horror the great pain and suffering I had just caused. The worst had happened.
I had slightly injured my leg.
Tearing myself away from the annoying screams and cries of child cancer patients, I limped to a hospital payphone and called the coach. Let’s just say he wasn’t happy.
Still, I was determined to learn something from all of this and I did: I learned the value of not visiting people in hospital. Seriously don’t bother, it sucks.
Misc.
Plus I did a bunch of armed robberies, stood over some local businesses and was banned from going within 300 metres of the local girls’ school for reasons that aren’t important.
These taught me many lessons, not the least of which was don’t spit on a judge in his own courtroom.
So why am I telling you all this?
Every day we see some media beat up about this player doing that and that player doing this but we should all remember that we were young, handsome, fit first-grader footballers once and we shouldn’t be so quick to judge or words to that effect.
Boys will be boys and we should all be a bit more tolerant of the things that horrify us to our mortal souls.
They will learn from the carnage they unleash on society and will one day be productive members of society.
Just like me.
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