Cameron Munster and Valentine Holmes have embarrassed new Maroons coach Kevin Walters

COMMENT: Cameron Munster and Valentine Holmes are more brazen than stupid and they’ve shown Kevin Walters serious disrespect.

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BECAUSE it’s tennis time let’s start by stealing a line from John McEnroe.....you cannot be serious.

That’s right Cam Munster, Valentine Holmes and the rest of you.

We know you are not Jesse James and Ned Kelly but seriously....

How you could possibly cop a little lecture about the Mitchell Pearce episode from your new coach and hours later go out and break a team curfew with a big night on the town?

We’ve all seen Dumb and Dumber. Now please meet Dumbest.

No-one is saying it’s the crime of the century but nor should it be trivialised, particularly Holmes’ effort to squabble with police.

In the list of atrocities in rugby league’s rapidly expanding hall of shame, this incident would not poke its nose into the top 50 but in some ways it is as revealing as any of them in unmasking the challenges the game faces managing players use of alcohol.

All of these players would have seen the pictures of a distressed Pearce facing the cameras in Sydney last week and if they hadn’t they were reminded about him at a team talk about making the right choices.

Yet still, just a matter of hours later, they couldn’t take the tip.

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The first reaction when news spread of the broken curfew players was “what boofheads?’’

But boofheads is not the right word. Even players who are as thick as besser blocks understand a curfew.

Brazen is the better description. They knew the rule and actually had to make a considerable effort to break it.

It would have been so easy for the curfew breakers to go to bed when the team bus rolled in to their hotel at Mt Gravatt just after midnight but they somehow summoned up the steam to sneak all the way back to the Valley.

Munster will not be considered for Origin in 2016.

This issue is the first test of the mettle of new Origin coach Kevin Walters.

You wonder whether any of the players uttered the sentence “boys, this is Kev’s first month of his big gig — let’s show him a bit of respect and go to bed because it would look dreadful for him if something happened.’’

It would and it did.

The main back page story in the weekend’s Sunday Mail was about Walters ambitious plans for the future under a giant banner headline; I’ll Do It My Way with a picture of him in charge of the boys who later broke the rules.

It was strong, confident stuff but while the story was being printed Holmes, Munster and few others were doing things their way as well.

Walters sounded strong and measured last night but this is still a humbling, chastening, embarrassing experience.

The incident vividly underlines the gap between the role of the assistant coach that Walters was and the head coach he now is.

The joy of being an assistant coach is that you normally get to be the good guy, the peacemaker, the consoler, the comforting voice.

But the head man must be a headkicker as well.

Walters tenure as Origin coach has gotten off on a bad note.

Walters suspension of Holmes and Munster is a solid start and he will not lose a minute’s sleep over the penalties.

“What this proves to me is that they just are not ready to show the discipline that Origin football requires,’’ Walters said.

Walters knows all the tricks because he was raised in a more carefree era where players, himself included, drank more and led freer lives.

In fact his awareness of “the morning after’’ syndrome was a key factor in an early detection of the curfew breakers because he sensed at breakfast the next morning that the shoddy nature of some of the players seemed incongruous for players sent to bed at midnight.

The Origin team treads a delicate line with alcohol.

Big drinking bonding sessions have been seen as a key reason for developing the brotherhood that has served the senior Queensland side well for 35 years.

There will be those among the curfew breakers who say they were doing nothing that the senior Origin side does not do. But the difference is the big boys have the coaches blessing to stay out late.

Poignantly this weekend sees the return to the Cowboys of Matt Bowen at the Auckland Nines who, despite growing up in a culture surrounded by drinkers, choose not to do so because he wanted to give himself every chance.

He learnt early about the value of sacrifices. Some take longer.

Some never do.