As Lainie Anderson wrote in this piece yesterday, it’s wrong for anyone, let alone the likes of Peter Costello, to cast aspersions on the character of all footballers based on a few sporadic incidents. Because really, when you’re dealing with up to 1,000 blokes between 18 and 32, a bit of Tony Abbott’s favourite phrase is going to happen from time to time.
But this stuff with The Girl at the heart of the St Kilda facebook pictures scandal, and her allegations about big time player agent Ricky Nixon is a bad business. This is some seriously low rent theatre we’re watching now.
Let’s start with the girl first. The 17 year old schoolgirl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, first came in contact with St Kilda players who visited her school on a footy clinic.
She later bedded one of them (legally, as she was 16 at the time), pinched a bunch of nude pics off a player’s computer, then posted the pics to the world via Facebook.
Allegations of extortion and improper behaviour then flew back and forth between the girl and the club like a ping pong ball. And now, a full year after the whole sordid saga started, the girl is living in a hotel room paid for by the club.
The Girl, who for legal reasons cannot be identified, has been variously portrayed as “foolish”, “mentally disturbed” and as “a victim”. The first term is beyond dispute, as her unannounced visit to a certain newsroom recently would suggest. The second is not mine to comment on. As for her victimhood? Unlikely. Very, very unlikely.
To all appearances, the girl appears to be revelling in the publicity which so many children of the social media revolution crave.
Inspired by their charismatic Che Guevara figure, Corey Worthington, the aim is to get your face out there any old how. Or if not your face (that legal thing again) then your perfectly shaved, tanned legs, your little black dress and your pert cleavage.
Then one day, whammo! You turn 18 and you can really milk this notoriety thing for all it’s worth. Corey Worthington’s apparently just landed a role in a Hollywood flick. I don’t know what exactly. Maybe’s he’s playing a meerkat in Madagascar 3 or some such.
She may even be lucky enough to have a certain radio network not exactly known for their high moral standards regarding minors come calling.
But the point is, even if she seeks nothing, and was really really, truly in lurv with a football player several years older than her very young self, she has still been a long way from what you might call retiring.
Now to Nixon. The 47 year old was Australia’s biggest name agent in any code in the mid 2000s, with the likes of Riewoldt and Cousins on his books.
I first met him in 2005, at the height of his success, and ran into him a couple of times thereafter, always at photo shoots for big name players. He was, it must be said, no more arrogant than any other agent but he wasn’t warm either. With his phone virtually glued to his ear, he sometimes had a way of making you feel you were wasting his time.
By 2009, Nixon’s lot started to unravel, when he crashed his sports car into a tram and fled the scene. He later lost his license for 10 months. And now all this. Nixon denies he has had sexual relations with the girl, but admits to “inappropriate dealings”.
Nixon will this week be hauled before the AFL Players’ Association, who administer the AFL’s accredited agents scheme. It is uncertain what will come of this, though the most likely outcome would appear to be nothing. The Accredited Agents’ Code of Conduct is long on an agent’s obligations to the client, but relatively light on their general conduct.
By contrast, the NRL’s accredited agent’s scheme is run by the league itself, and contains a tougher code of ethics.
Of course, no amount of fine print will ever make every player agent the type of person you’d take home to meet your mother. Like real estate agents, player agents are very good at making money – and that, when all is said and done, is all that most players want.
Let me say this, though. I have known several terrifically proactive agents. I once went to a nightclub with a really bright young star of a major national sporting code. The agent went too, and gave the star and his friends a big, stern pep talk on behaviour before he cut them adrift for the night. To this day, that player has never been in the headlines for the wrong reasons, give or take a silly tweet.
That’s the the type of agent you’d love to see more of. The sort of person who’d rather act like a parent than be one of the boys.
If Ricky Nixon isn’t debarred this week, here’s hoping he gets the fright of his life, and his colleagues in the industry likewise.
As for she who cannot be named, well, let’s just hope her parents ground her. If that punishment carries any weight anymore.
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