Kerre Woodham: Penalty too stiff for puny offence

Photo / Hawkes Bay Today

I certainly don't want to be seen to be endorsing indecent exposure but the banning of New Zealand bowler David File from New Zealand greens for 10 years seems massively over the top on the part of the Gisborne East Coast bowls administration.

Maybe I'm inured to the sight of todgers being whipped out and waved about the place - working as a maitre'd for years, I saw more than my fair share. You could spot the would-be willy wavers a mile off.

Take one slightly overweight young man, add a liberal amount of alcohol, put him in a Waikato or Speights T-shirt and place him among a group of friends. Voila!

I could have offered a money-back guarantee that his willy would have been out and about before midnight.

Funnily enough, it always seemed to be the less-endowed man who was prone to exhibitionism. If they'd been fish, you'd have thrown them back.

A colleague of mine, waiting for a bus in Wellington's Courtenay Pl, was called over to a car by a well-dressed man. He wound down the window, pointed to his crotch and said, in a breathy rasp: "What do you think this is?" My colleague took a long hard stare.

"Ummm," she said tentatively. "It looks like a penis, only its smaller." The creep was off in a flash, as it were, and was visited by the police a couple of days later as my colleague had noted down his licence plate.

The policeman later reported the gentleman was suitably humiliated and would be keeping himself to himself for the foreseeable future.

Another night at work, a crowd of young men came into the bar after a one-day cricket match. One of them recognised me from my Fair Go days and asked me to sign his bat.

Another wanted his shirt signed, then another asked me to sign his chest and - inevitably - the overweight one in the Speights shirt pulled out his old fellow.

"Sign this," he leered. I peered at it. "Oh, dear." I said. "Just my initials for you, then?" Amid raucous laughter from his mates, he tidied himself up and they were as good as gold afterwards.

Really, given the acts of violence and thuggery and the drug-taking and the match-fixing that takes place throughout sport, exposing yourself to your team mates to emphasise the point that you are playing like a pack of dicks is a relatively minor offence.

It even appeared it happened in the locker room, not on the green. There were no small children or women around, horses weren't startled and apparently those who were there found it funny.

It's not clear whether those who complained actually saw the incident at all.

David File himself is bemused by the severity of the punishment, which would effectively end his involvement in a sport he's been playing since he was 13. And, to be honest, so am I.

Give the man a stiff punishment by all means, to discourage any further incidents, but let the punishment fit the crime.