The trouble with schadenfreude – apart from that fact that it is a hard word to spell, and using it pegs you as a bit of a showpony - is that it has a nasty habit of coming back to bite you on the bum.
It’s actually a pretty nifty term, a German word for which there is no English equivalent, meaning to take pleasure in the misfortune of others.
The AFL is currently suffering the unpleasant after-effects of years of gleeful schadenfreude, particularly towards those once-unmatchable boofheads within the National Rugby League.
In his first year as Prime Minister, a jammy John Howard won the Parliamentary Press Gallery AFL tipping competition. As a fan of the NRL club the St George Dragons, and so vehemently opposed to being a fair-weather fan that he even refused to support the Sydney Swans on their 1996 Grand Final debut, Howard’s victory was proof that the less you know about a code, the better you can go in the tipping comp.
In accordance with competition rules the PM was compelled to put some beers on at the non-members bar and, of course, all the journos turned up. He gave a nice off-the-cuff speech where he noted that the AFL was the most national of the codes, in that it transcended class and ethnicity, having none of the race-based heritage of soccer, none of the working man machismo of rugby league, or the tally-ho-chaps toffiness of rugby union.
His assessment still stands as an accurate one today. But it’s an assessment which, in the hands of the AFL’s most ardent supporters, has become an unpleasant one, possibly even a dangerous one, as it has let people within the game ignore or suppress evidence of rotten behaviour, convinced they are of the code’s peerless brilliance.
Over recent years as the code has grown bigger and more valuable there’s been a commonplace view among AFL fans, and many people who run the game, that it’s somehow morally superior to its rivals, none more so than its biggest rival, rugby league.
Whenever a league player has made a goose of himself, broken the law, done something improper involving a woman, or in Joel Monaghan’s case, worse, the more rusted-on AFL tragics roll their eyes as if to say, there go those league boys again. There’s been a real elitism to it. You often hear that league is a sport for plebs and derros, or for housos, to use that evocative if appalling Sydney slang term for people from public housing.
As the league-loving journalist Luke McIlveen wrote this week, it’s starting to look like the AFL should turn to the NRL for some moral guidance.
The AFL’s problems haven’t let up since the week after last season’s Grand Final replay, starting with sexual assault allegations (later dropped) against two premiership Collingwood players, continuing into this year with the unravelling of St Kilda over an utterly bizarre nude photo scandal, and reaching a new high (or low) this week with Ricky Nixon’s admission of “inappropriate conduct” with the 17-year-old girl at the centre of the Saints’ photo scandal, amid hotly contested claims of drug use and sex.
Nixon, who has represented some of AFL’s biggest (and most troubled) stars is 30 years this girl’s senior and appears to have acted with a lesser degree of maturity.
The thing which has interested me is the readiness of so many within the game to nail their colours to Ricky Nixon’s mast, at a time when you’d think some circumspection as the allegations are sifted might be the best course of action.
He’s had texts from players pledging their support, which have been made public. In the eyes of many fans, he’s been held up as nothing more than the victim of this conniving and clever young girl who will stop at nothing to extract her revenge.
He’s been held up as the victim of tall poppy syndrome, the victim of a media beat-up, the victim of prejudgments from the likes of veteran AFL journalist Mike Sheehan.
The AFL has ducked the mother of all hospital kicks by letting the Players Association determine whether his conduct should see him removed from the game, providing him with a huge favour in the form of silence.
The Players Association are such a pack of blouses that even they have squibbed responsibility for adjudicating on the fate of a man who’s been photographed in his jocks with a teenager, opting instead to refer the matter to independent assessment.
It’s been a powerful demonstration of the old mates act at play. It reflects the very strong conviction in Melbourne that anyone who dares expose or criticise bad conduct within the AFL has a broader agenda against the game. Nick Riewoldt, who’s spent much of this year perfecting his angry face, explicitly put this view when he said there were people who were out to destroy the St Kilda football club. Riewoldt was right, it’s just that he plays and works with some of them. It’s the lack of personal accountability for bad behaviour which is damaging the game, rather than any external criticism by intelligent observers who know bad behaviour when they see it.
A couple of weeks ago Peter Costello wrote a column which was long on generalisations where he questioned the wisdom of parents leaving their kids in player-run coaching clinics. At the time he looked like a bit of a snob for saying such a thing. With the passage of time, Costello is probably feeling a little ahead of the curve on this and has dusted off his trademark smirk.
Costello went too far with his criticisms, in that he inadvertently besmirched the name of good men within the game who are genuine leaders for the community. But you can see where his words come from – a justified sense of frustration at a code that has acted for too long as if it doesn’t have a trouble in the world.
Facebook Recommendations
Read all about it
Punch live
Up to the minute Twitter chatter
RT @Colgo: Read this article on commas. Then see the correction at the end. Ooof! http://t.co/ZkLs6494
RT @cuisinemagazine: Yep, there's always a time for rubbish bread “@ToryShepherd: Imagine a world with multigrain at the sausage sizzle... http://t.co/0K4JyWKH”
Recent posts
The latest and greatest
Protecting the Barrier Reef is the Fin end of the wedge
When you take on a job like being Environment Minister there’s some hits you can see coming. …
ICB: Is white bread the worst thing since sliced bread?
Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit column. It’s a regular column that looks at skulduggery…
Sometimes, you’ve just got to stick it to the bloody ref
We are taught early in life that we should not question authority. We must listen to our parents, our…
Nosebleed Section
choice ringside rantings
From: They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
Michael S says:
"A teacher at Geelong Grammar had criticised her for using words that were too long, which had left her confused and had made her doubt her ability to write essays. She became ''quite distressed'' when her English marks began to fall." I can sympathise. My scholastic mentors conveyed to me a causal relationship… [read more]From: Welfare for breeders is a bonus for everyone
Change Up! says:
I have no problem paying my taxes. As a single, childless person on a very decent income, I can afford it and not have my life severely altered. Plus I understand that my taxes paying for things like schools, childcare and infrastructure is ultimately a good thing. A better community is better for me… [read more]Gentle jabs to the ribs
They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
A private school girl’s family is sueing her elite, extremely expensive private school for not… Read more
Most commented