You can get away with almost anything if you’re a good bloke

Steele Sidebottom will retain Collingwood’s vice-captaincy despite his misbehaviour

It’s hard to underplay the value of being a good bloke, particularly when it comes to getting away with blue murder.

In sport, it seems, no matter what level or stupidity or misbehaviour you are guilty of, redemption is just around the corner of you are a good bloke. Blokes guilty of being less good, however, are likely to fall a little harder.

Take Collingwood vice-captain Steele Sidebottom. Go out on the turps in the middle of a pandemic, hang out with a mate who’s not in the bubble, take an Uber, get half naked and get picked up by the cops. Good bloke. Retain the vice-captaincy.

Or England allrounder Ben Stokes. Get caught on CCTV beating the tripe out of someone outside a nightclub in Bristol and only just manage to get off affray charges. Good bloke. An OBE and the England Test captaincy.

But then there’s David Warner. Get sprung as one of several members of the Australian cricket team involved in the Cape Town ball-tampering scandal. Maybe not such a good bloke. Banned from playing for a year and from captaining a team — any team — for life.

Warner has demonstrated significant ability as a captain in limited-overs cricket, but he can’t even be appointed to a leadership role in the Big Bash League.

Steve Smith, captain of the team caught out in Cape Town, is now free to take on leadership roles again. Good bloke.

Cameron Bancroft, the player who actually wielded the sandpaper, is free of all bans. Good bloke.

But Warner’s captaincy ban lives on and I can’t help thinking it is because he comes across as a little too cocky, maybe just a touch arrogant, bit of a smart alec. Just not quite a good enough bloke.

Kayo is your ticket to the 2020 Toyota AFL Premiership Season. Watch every match of every round Live & On-Demand. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >

My colleague Peter Lalor, in an earlier article, wondered if Stokes would have been treated more harshly if he were an Australian. Do we take a dimmer view of stupidity and misbehaviour by our sports stars?

The answer to that question comes with Sidebottom. He’s as Australian as they come, playing in a competition that is uniquely Australian. And his alcohol-fuelled jaunt around Melbourne at the weekend breached three of the AFL’s strict biosecurity protocols. But Collingwood president Eddie McGuire insists Sidebottom will not be stripped of his leadership role.

“People make mistakes,” says McGuire. “In life, if people go out to try to blow things up, or they’re selfish, or they deliberately do something, you take a different view on it.

“I’ve got empathy for his situation and I think a lot of people watching tonight would have empathy as well.

“These days (in the media), you could cure cancer and then get a parking ticket on the Monday and the lead will be the parking ticket.”

Sidebottom, of course, has done a great deal more than get a parking ticket. His behaviour has put at risk the whole AFL season, which is already reeling from the impact of the pandemic and tying itself in knots trying to deal with the impact of the spike in cases in Victoria.

In a spat with McGuire on the Nine Network’s Footy Classified, Essendon great Matthew Lloyd questioned whether Sidebottom would be in a position to pass judgment on the next young Collingwood player to step out of line.

“I’d be embarrassed if I was Steele, in this period of time, adjudicating on someone else,” Lloyd said.

Let’s just hope that the young player is a good bloke.