Mike Tindall: beware of the rats in packs

When players of any code reach a level where they are considered a national celebrity, their lives change forever. They are no longer an obscure member of society, hidden in the crowd, but one where every twitch of their nose or scratch of their bum is reported or seen by the public.

The public may never know this person, yet drools and drips copious quantities of saliva over any tidbit that may be offered to them.

The baying hounds of our media, snarl and bare their teeth like hyenas on the kill that tear whatever morsel of meat they can find, to satisfy the hunger of those waiting to be fed.

The celeb is considered fair game to be hunted down, spot-lit in headlights, mauled and then shot down like a twenty-six-point stag, roaring from a craggy hilltop in a swirling mist.

This high achiever, walks among tall poppies, having earned the right by sheer hard work and determination to do so.

The underachievers are those who will never achieve the heights of this superior being, who move about obtaining information from within dark shadows and then express to others their right to provide the public with information that shows the weaknesses and underbelly frailties that the achiever has left exposed or uncovered.

These losers provoke, harass and entrap our sports people, who show, in any unguarded moment, that sports people are just like you and me, decent, honest, focused and enjoying life.

They transcend and excel above our standards by natural talent and determination in their chosen fields and by their sporting accomplishments, we revere and throw accolades on them when they display it before us.

We pay homage to them, applauding their attributes and gasp at their feats, while the losers show theirs by provoking and enticing these splendid athletes to do frustrated reactive acts that are then seized upon by other losers, who then exploit these indiscretions for profit.

It happens over all sports, Benji Marshall of rugby league, Riewoldt, Dal Santo and Dawson of the AFL St Kilda club, Tiger Woods of golf, and now Tindall of Rugby; any personality is vulnerable to the exploitation of these horrible people.

It has become a sport in itself, in that it is open season to tear down, disgrace, embarrass, and destroy lives and lifestyles of these tall poppies by the snivelling, underachieving wannabes if they could.

These losers don’t have the necessary talent to achieve, like those they endeavour to drag down.

They justify their actions with drivel and pictures purely to make a name for themselves or to profit, using cloak and dagger methods to obtain the information to discredit or humiliate.

The everyday excellence in the individual is sold for eight pieces of silver.

How the decent among us often pray that we too had a facility to expose the indiscretions of this underachieving scum, and the shameful secrets they too must have hidden away in some darkened closet.

Do they feel secure in believing that nothing will ever jump out of the woodwork and come home to bite them, or do they feel too invincible, too powerful, too protected?

This is not an attack on any one individual, but simply the voicing, by comparison, of how people view the inequality of those who achieve so much in life, who make mistakes because they are human, and then have that achievement taken from them by underachievers who write, expose and profit by it.

It is bullying in its nastiest form, mentally not physically and very difficult to counter or defend.

I have so much admiration for those who have the skills and the determination to simply be the best, throughout their lifetime.

Maybe, the time is fast approaching, when those who throw the bricks, may find the mouse turns into rat and sets out to seek revenge and counter-expose those who make life a misery for them and many others.

The disclosure of a shameful secret or indiscretion of a paparazzi or media writer carefully covered and never wanted exposed from their personal life file, may soon become no longer hidden if a retaliatory ferret suddenly turned weasel.

Malevolent writers are no longer able to have their words unchallenged.

The inter-social networks of the internet have fast become a vehicle for the warts and all exposure of people’s lives and undoubtedly, there are other ferrets, weasels or stoats that are willing to expose for profit, the rat who perpetrates.

It may be time for the perpetrator to tread a little softer.