AFL’s handling of GWS Wacky Wednesday incident was too preachy | David Penberthy

Some of what the punished GWS players did on their infamous Wacky Wednesday was appalling. But as David Penberthy writes, the AFL’s handling of it tells us much more.

Many years ago there was a very funny Australian gentleman by the name of Rodney Rude who shot to prominence in the early 1980s with a red-coloured LP entitled Rodney Rode Live.

Rodney had all sorts of adventures. He befriended a woman at a rock festival in Narara. He went to his local pub and saw a man nicknamed “Head” competing in a darts competition.

He went to the cinema where his vision was obscured by a patron in front of him who had nits.

The film he was watching was the James Bond movie Octopussy, the plot of which he summarised with a pithy one-sentence review.

If I told you all of these stories in full as originally recounted by Rodney this would be my final column.

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If Rodney tried to release his album today he would be probably laughed out of the office by every record label in the land.

All of which brings us to the AFL.

I grew up in an Aussie Rules state and still follow the game. But the older and more politically incorrect I get, the more I find myself being drawn to the bogan authenticity of the NRL.

Unlike the AFL, the NRL has not confused itself with being a preachy vehicle for social change. The NRL knows it is a football code and acts accordingly.

While the NRL focuses on playing footy the way it has always been played, the AFL busies itself thinking of new ways to change the rules of the game and new ways to change society.

Several GWS Giants players landed themselves in hot water over a controvesial ‘Wacky Wednesday’ function last month. Picture: Phil Hillyard

The NRL brought us one of the great recent moments in sports administration. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting where league’s finest minds signed off on this crazy-brave idea.

“So fellas, clearly our code is one which has had significant historic challenges involving alcohol and drugs and generally bad behaviour. So we were thinking, how about we put all the boys on a plane and play Round One next year in Las Vegas?”

What could possibly go wrong?

This reminded me of an exchange I had many years ago with David Gallop after he wound up his long tenure as CEO of the National Rugby League.

I suggested that given the many earthy media management challenges league had given him, he could start his own crisis management and PR consultancy with the name “Everything’s F … ed Communications”.

I’m not sure if he ever took top the suggestion but there was no better man for the job, especially given his adept handling at the end of his tenure of a news story involving a party trick known as “The Bubbler”.

AFL boss Andrew Dillon. Picture: Wayne Taylor

NRL Vegas round is a stellar example of a brand that knows what it is and is really leaning into it.

This is the sporting equivalent of those genuinely excellent “I Don’t Care” KFC advertisements, proudly selling a salty, fatty product as an illicit thrill on the grounds that life’s short and you might as well have some fun while it lasts, even if a regular three-piece feed hastens your meeting with your maker.

The AFL in contrast has been overrun by worriers and straighteners. In trying to render the world a perfect place it also invites accusations of hypocrisy.

Under the AFL’s bizarre illicit drug rules every player at the Greater Western Sydney Football Club could have gone on a 15-day cocaine bender and none of us would be any the wiser.

In contrast, GWS has been thrust into the headlines over a ribald party which was probably as offensive as those bad taste parties many of us attended in the 1980s and 1990s.

An important caveat here.

What some of those GWS players did was not just dopey, but really quite appalling.

It was especially appalling given that GWS had taken the commendable step early this year of staging an in-house presentation by the important organisation Our Watch to make them aware of issues surrounding violence against women and how such violence cannot be trivialised.

Against that backdrop, the club itself (which staged the private event) was right to haul them up over their conduct, which I am sure they all now regret deeply and sincerely.

But here’s where things get weird. With typical self-importance the AFL comes charging in on its white steed and turns the whole thing into some tiered fines fiasco, as per a melee on match day, meting out punishments which invite ridicule.

Blokes being tut-tutted for making gallows humour gags about September 11 (whatever) and Toby Greene being punished for (shock horror) going dressed as the hapless hip-hopper RayGun, as if this was some moral breach in his role as captain. (In passing I would note that Toby Greene seems to be punished annually simply for being Toby Greene.)

GWS captain Toby Greene, who was fined, is a lightning rod for punishment, Penbo says. Picture: Phil Hillyard

It is only a few weeks since the AFL hit Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley with a fine for impersonating an aeroplane in some pointed post-match banter against Hawthorn.

What a po-faced bit of nonsense that was.

People like passion. People also do stupid things. The AFL has gone to war against passion, lest things get out of hand, and believes first-offence stupidity by the young should result in fines and public shaming.

Even when what we are ultimately talking about are misguided attempts at humour by young people who didn’t think things through.

Well, don’t despair, the AFL’s newly formed bad comedy unit is on standby to act against offending material.

Different, though, if you go out after a game and get smashed and wasted on booze and drugs and are found asleep in a nightclub. You’re free to play the following week.

In its own depressing way the AFL is becoming the perfect organisation for these buttoned-down times, a far cry from the 1980s when the Rodney Rules ruled the world.