AFL stars’ poor form amid COVID lockdown deserves harsher punishment

Richmond Tiger’ Sydney Stack. Richmond CEO Brendan Gale needs to be checking airline schedules to find the earliest flight back to Melbourne he can get Stack and Coleman-Jones on, following their strip club brawl. Picture: Getty

It was always a tough argument. I’ve been choosing my words carefully when defending the Queensland government’s decision to allow AFL officials, players and their families to dodge the strict border lockdown restrictions.

Then along came Sydney Stack and Callum Coleman-Jones. I give up.

For those of us who live and breathe sport, there has been a strong feeling that it’s worth making concessions to footy players to allow the AFL, the NRL, Super Rugby and the A-League to resume. In these dark COVID times, footy on the telly has provided some much-needed entertainment. Something to look forward to.

But outside the sporting bubble, the perception has been a little different. Residents of Melbourne, enduring a harsh lockdown, were this week treated to footage of footballers’ partners and kids swimming and soaking up the sun in a resort swimming pool. Not a great look.

On Tuesday, AFL boss Gillon McLachlan and about 400 officials, players and their partners and kids were flown from miserable Melbourne to sunny Queensland and bussed straight to a resort. Meanwhile, cancer patients in northern NSW were prevented from crossing the border for treatment. Doctors and nurses who had been helping out with the medical emergency in Victoria returned to northern states to spend two weeks locked in a hotel room, with their meals left in a box at the door. Bad look.

And then Richmond’s Stack and Coleman-Jones decided to go on the tear and get into a punch-up outside a Surfers Paradise strip club at 3.30am.

The pair were evicted from the Hollywood Showgirls club before engaging in a fight just metres from a police station. Excuse me while I wait for my eyes to stop rolling.

The easy questions first:

Why were two elite AFL players out on the town at 3.30am in the middle of the footy season?

What were two elite AFL players doing in a Gold Coast strip club in the first place?

Why were two elite AFL players drunk enough to be punching on in the street at 3.30am in the middle of the footy season?

Why are strip clubs still open in the current climate?

The easy question: Why were two elite AFL players out on the town at 3.30am in the middle of the footy season? Stack and Callum Coleman-Jones are pictured during a night out on the Gold Goast. Picture: News Corp

And now the real question:

Do these entitled AFL stars, granted all sorts of privileges because of their ability to play football, realise what an insult their behaviour is to everyone else forced to follow strict lockdown rules.

Richmond is facing a $100,000 fine thanks to the thoughtless behaviour of these two players.

But the black eye delivered to the code justifies a far harsher punishment.

Richmond CEO Brendan Gale needs to be checking airline schedules to find the earliest flight back to Melbourne he can get Stack and Coleman-Jones on. And McLachlan needs to make sure they don’t play another game this season.