Every week there seems to be a new scandal with these blokes , either something to do with sexual assaults , fights in pubs , drunkeness and just generally bad behaviour .
If you were the boss of the N.R.L you must wake up every Monday thinking " Which one of these morons has brought the game into disrepute this week ".
Its a complex issue but there are several factors as I see and some of it is endemic to the wider Australian culture . The biggest factor is alcohol , ban them from drinking , why do so called elite sportsman have to go out and get themselves hammered at the local pub.
Surely there must be other ways of celebrating , why not go to a nice restaurant or something. Would it be too much of a sacrifice when you are paid the ridiculous amounts of money that they are paid , to not drink alcohol at all.
Another thing apart from the obscene amounts of money these people are paid is that they think they are Gods , they have a talent that enables them to run around on a field very fast whilst carrying a leather ball . Its not as though they have discovered the cure to cancer or anything , the amount of hero worship they get from the media and the public is quite disturbing at times.
A lot of these guys are very young , and when people are throwing huge amounts of money your way and everywhere you go people idolise you , then you probably would start to get around thinking you are a bit of a demi God.
As well as banning them from the drink , they have too much free time to get into trouble. In the old days Rugby League players had day jobs as well , so you couldn't be out drinking all night if you had to be up by 5am to be on the construction site etc .
These days I think they train twice a day and then after that they seem to spend most of their time in pubs and niteclubs. These people whether they like it or not are role models and they should conduct themselves as such and understand that in exchange for all the benefits that they get , there is a price to pay and that price is public scrutiny.
Another factor in this issue is the women themselves , lets not be so naive as to believe that there are not some women who target these guys because of their celebrity and status. I watched a documentary about this a while ago , where the ladies were bragging that they specifically went to certain pubs or niteclubs where the footballers drank in order to deliberately try and get one as a boyfriend or sleep with them.
One wife of a footballer has even said that women come up and try and hit on her husband while she is standing next to him and in her words she said " Soon as a footballer walks in the room the chests go out and the skirts go up ".
So we have a combination of young men with huge egos and even bigger bank balances , rampant testosterone , too much alcohol and young pretty women virtually throwing themselves at them . You can't condone what these guys did , It is abhorrent to most normal people.
But some of these ladies have to have more respect for themselves as well , and not place themselves in situations like this . They probably think they are going to become one of these guy's girlfriend or something , but the stark and ugly reality is that these thugs only think of them as just another piece of meat in just another town to be used and then discarded like yesterdays newspaper.
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