Paul Thomas: Double standards for rugby 'role models'

Last weekend rugby player Chris Masoe did something unusual for a public figure - he showed shame. When called to account for his loutishness by team-mate Tana Umaga, Masoe shed tears. Given that he's nothing if not tough, we can safely assume his tears weren't caused by getting whupped upside the head by a passing handbag, unnerving as that must have been.

No, it seems Masoe wept because he realised he'd made a goat of himself, let people down and earned the vehement disapproval of someone whose favourable opinion he values. There might also have been a vague awareness that opponents will ensure he'll never hear the end of this incident. Compare Masoe's shame with the behaviour of disgraced former MP and convicted fraudster Donna Awatere Huata on her return to Hawkes Bay to serve out her sentence in home detention.

Did she get out of her car to tell the schoolchildren giving her a heroine's welcome that she was unworthy of their homage? Hardly. She sailed past waving regally, like Elizabeth Regina acknowledging her loyal subjects' cheers from an open carriage. The following day she was guest of honour on a radio show.

But neither Masoe's shame nor the comparatively trivial nature of his offence could stem the tide of media censure. Newspapers and airwaves were filled with sanctimonious clap-trap on the theme of footballers behaving badly and poacher-turned-gamekeeper Norm Hewitt was wheeled out to administer an entirely redundant rap over the knuckles.

The Dominion-Post ran a shame file cataloguing every atrocity perpetrated by our muddied oafs. Thus we were reminded that in July 2001 Jerry Collins "admits punching a member of the public at a Wellington bar".

There was no mention that the member of the public in question was the attention-seeking sports tragic Sonny Shaw, one of the most tiresome creatures in the known universe; nor that despite Shaw's bluster about laying charges nothing came of it because there was nothing to it; nor that most normal people would strenuously object to having Shaw in their face at the end of a long night.

If proof were needed that rugby players are being held to higher standards of behaviour than the rest of society, it came with the media revelations that on the night of the handbagging, another Hurricane - Ma'a Nonu - was involved in a "verbal confrontation" with a taxi driver.

Sergeant-major, assemble the firing squad! Every night up and down the country people get into verbal confrontations with taxi drivers. The origins vary: sometimes the passenger is drunk and unreasonable; sometimes the taxi driver is at fault in refusing to put out his cigarette or turn his horrible music down or in not having washed for a week or in failing to carry out his side of the transaction in a professional manner.

Winston Peters had a verbal confrontation with a taxi driver. His punishment was to be made Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Far and away the most sensible comment on the Masoe incident came from the woman whose handbag was commandeered: "In a normal bar fight we wouldn't have got an apology, let alone a new phone," she said, "so I think we're doing rather well."

She could have added that if the other parties had been run-of-the-mill 7am drinkers as opposed to a couple of All Blacks unwinding after a gruelling competition which had just ended in frustration and disappointment, the second man on the scene would probably have joined in the stoush rather than admonished his mate and the incident would have been a lot nastier.

That's all very well, say the moralisers, but it doesn't alter the fact that rugby has a booze culture. Even rugby people now acknowledge that.

Up to a point. This claim was given impetus by former All Black manager Andrew Martin and team doctor John Mayhew referring to the tendency to neglect recovery and rehabilitation in favour of prolonged drinking when the team had another test the following week. A specific instance took place after a game against Scotland in 2001 and resulted in the All Blacks boarding a plane for Argentina for a test six days later in a state of advanced and embarrassing disarray.

Well, I've got news for the moralisers: Parliament has a booze culture; journalism has a booze culture. The entire Western World and Russia, whatever category it falls into these days, has a booze culture. Booze greases the social wheels and fuels the celebrations to mark our milestones and achievements, major and minor. Booze is most people's recreational drug of choice.

Ah yes, say the moralisers, but most people aren't role models.

Assuming that's the case (and if rugby players rather than parents, teachers, doctors or caregivers are role models, whose fault is that?), then it might not remain so for much longer. Who'd be a prominent rugby player when you can be hung out to dry and fined $3000 for an indiscretion that would earn Joe Blow a slap on the wrist, in the extremely unlikely event that it went any further?

Far better to go into politics where wrongdoers can portray themselves as victims and betraying public trust means never having to say you're sorry.