Kylie Orr
I couldn’t give a flying football about elite sports. I used to play team sports as a teenager and was actually quite skilled. Or so I like to tell my sons. However, as an adult, my interest has waned along with my athleticism.
AFL, in particular, holds little significance to me however I married into a one-eyed Carlton family and have drowned in a house of blue. All our boys were signed up as members from birth, own the garb and know the players’ names and numbers. My seven year old has just finished his second season of Auskick and is obsessed with the oblong shaped pigskin ball. He kicks a footy in the backyard accompanied by his own commentary. In the house, it is a balloon, a pair of socks or even an unfortunate teddy that gets belted around the head. He asks my husband endless questions about the players and the teams and the strategies and the ladder. I tune out. In fact, my son described my support of the team as such: “My mum goes for “Go Blues”, but she doesn’t really go.” Correct. They go to the footy, I go shopping.
As Carlton bowed out of the finals last year, we mopped up some tears from the eldest and reassured him there was always next year. There were more tears when my dearest first born heard they were going to trade Carlton’s star player. His concept of how the business side of football works is non-existent so it came down to a simple explanation of “we have to share the good players around.”
The seedier side of the sport: drunken incidents and drug controversies, sexual indiscretions, violent outbursts and infidelities are thankfully completely outside his sphere of exposure. Yet I am left in an awkward predicament of where sports heroes fit into the world of a child when they fall down in their personal lives.
One part of me thinks we have put incredible pressure on young sports stars to be both elite athletes and elite humans; never giving them a moment to make a mistake – on or off the field. When I say a mistake, I mean a slip of the tongue (euphemism, not literally) or a poor decision. I am not referring to illegal behaviour.
Should we care what they do in their private lives? Are we revving them up with handsome salaries, notoriety, sponsorship deals and sex god statuses when they are ill equipped and immature? Only then too quick to condemn and punish individual sports stars for acting as poor role models? Perhaps we should be more accepting of human frailty and acknowledge these are real people, often with real problems and real vulnerabilities left to work them out in a very public arena. Ben Cousins’ documentary was a controversial account of his drug habit and how it affected his life and career. I’m not sure if it was a gratuitous PR stunt, or an honest lesson to our youth but what it did show is our expectation that these stars have the athletic ability of Superman with the temperament of the Dalai Lama, can often lead to their downfall.
The other side of me considers it’s all part of the territory. They are paid big bucks to kick big, the least they can do is act professionally and represent their team in a socially acceptable manner when in the public eye. A teacher getting drunk at the Year Twelve formal would be severely reprimanded, if not potentially sacked. Why should a leading sports person be excused for unsavoury deeds? Is it possible to be rich, famous and scandal- free? Plenty of great athletes have managed this. Maybe it is a simple case of a few bad apples…
So, as I sit on the fence with a paling firmly embedded up my rear unsure what to think, I turn my line of questioning to the responsibility of clubs and management. It would be disingenuous to lay the blame of off-field player behaviour entirely on the individual. The players are employees. Their clubs need to support and nurture them just as any business does, and when one of the players derails, surely it is up to the club to help them back on track?
Who is responsible for the bad behaviour is something you can argue in your own lounge room. I am more concerned with what image we portray to our children.
Being a sports star is not all about kicking big goals, having 100,000 people scream in your honour, and owning fancy cars. It is about drive, commitment, fitness and determination – all positive and inspirational attributes we can offer our children.
As parents, it is up to us to guide our children in the ways of wrong and right. A sports hero they adore who behaves recklessly, immorally, or illegally may well present a perfect opportunity for us to teach our children the legal, moral and ethical consequences of behaviour.
For now, I’ll shield my child from the ugly side of sports and let him enjoy the innocence of kicking a ball around the backyard as he scores the imaginary winning goal.
Athletes live their lives in the public eye – does this make them public property? If they are prepared to accept large paychecks, should they also be prepared to accept the responsibility of behaving appropriately? Or are we expecting too much in terms of responsibility as role models?
