‘Irreparable harm’: Sam Kerr fiasco exposes massive double standard

The superstar has been found not guilty after a seven-day trial that gripped Australia – but there’s one thing nobody’s talking about.

OPINION

In the 80s and 90s, the great barometer of Aussie hero-dom used to be Weet-Bix and Nutri-Grain boxes.

Whoever got their cheery mug slapped on the side could officially claim national icon status, adored and idolised enough to earn their place on the nation’s breakfast tables.

Sam Kerr has gone so much further.

Who needs the tick of approval from the cereal aisle when you have the Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, Subway, Lego, Nike, Cadbury, ­Priceline and Spanish car company Cupra backing you?

Today, within minutes of Kerr having been found not guilty of racially harassing a police officer after a seven-day trial, came the hand-wringing and the thought-piece writing and the agonising. How high of a price would she pay? Had the days of headlines about her vomiting in the back of a taxi and windows being smashed and her calling a police officer “stupid and white” done her image and brand irreparable harm? How much of a body blow would this court case deal to her golden girl status and to her ability to pull in millions in big fat deals?

After everything we had heard, was Kerr still our golden girl?

Stop. Just stop.

These are all the wrong questions.

Have we ever bothered to do this degree of national fretting and agonising and twisting ourselves up in knots whenever male athletes are caught behaving badly? Would we be so up in arms if it was a bloke at the centre of this?

Would we be so up in arms if it was a bloke at the centre of this? Picture: Justin Tallis/AFP

Body-cam footage of Sam Kerr after the taxi cab incident was played in court. Picture: Twitter

“What she did was disgusting,” a male friend spluttered down the phone to me this morning. From his tone, you would have thought Kerr had been caught running an underground dog fighting ring, not just caught out as being a drunk Australian doing idiotic things while living it up in London.

As a nation, we have a very high tolerance and a very high threshold for what male footballers can get up to before they are knocked off their megastar athlete status perch.

Because how many goddamn times have male footballers been accused of deeply unflattering, if not downright gross, scenes in nightclubs and bars and pubs?

How many examples of pavement altercations and bits of biffo, shagging of teammates’ wives and other vile instances – all of which can be handily categorised under ‘dead stupid drunk antics’ – have we had to sit through, while they have barely suffered a blip in their standing or lost a cent in sponsorship?

Boys, especially thick-skulled footballer boiiiss full of beer and ego, get to be laughed off as boy.

Shane Warne is remembered as a legendary player and delightfully roguish, ever-entertaining playboy. Picture: Sam Tabone/WireImage

Now a woman has done the same, and she’s being talked about with such condemnation and disappointment such that I dunno, should we maybe look into getting some stocks?

When male athletes get up to no good, sit so often just gets written off as them being irrepressible larrikins; when women do it they are suddenly deemed to be potentially deeply flawed and morally found wanting.

Worst-case scenario for male players? Maybe, just maybe, they get ever so briefly sent to some sort of temporary purgatory, but out they will inevitably trot onto the field and back into speaking gigs. Just think of it as a turfy tabula rasa or us as having a certain collective amnesia.

We are still very willing to hold men up as legends even when they muck up.

Stop asking about Kerr’s future. Picture: Izhar Khan/AFP

When Shane Warne tragically died in 2022, he was given a state memorial service and is rightly remembered as a legendary player and delightfully roguish, ever-entertaining playboy who was always managing to get himself into naughty boy scrapes. Yet Warnie, the affectionate diminutive still the only correct way to refer to him, was found guilty of making deals with a bookie, failed a drug test, cheated on his wife and was caught having dirty conversations with a nurse, not to mention that he probably had more drunken, poorly behaved nights out than you could poke a very big, specially made stick at.

Did any of this ultimately affect how much we loved him? Or how much money he made?

Ben Cousins has landed a breakfast radio presenting gig in Perth. Picture: Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images

Just to really get on a soapbox here, how can we have a straight-faced debate over Kerr’s future while men who have done things so much worse still went on to enjoy high profile careers?

This week, it was announced that West Coast Eagles player and Brownlow winner Ben Cousins has landed a breakfast radio presenting gig in Perth. Cousins has served two prison terms, one in 2018 for 10 months for stalking his former partner and mother of his children, Maylea Tinecheff, and then one in 2020 for seven months after repeatedly breaching a restraining order and allegedly threatening to kill Tinecheff.

Or take North Melbourne’s Wayne Carey. From 1996 to 2008, Carey pleaded guilty to indecent assault after grabbing a woman’s breast; was seen by a US security guard attacking his girlfriend Kate Neilson at the W Hotel in New York City (Carey denied the claim); was charged with assaulting a public servant, resisting an officer with violence and aggravated battery after an incident in Miami, during which he tossed wine at Neilson and glassed her (he entered a plea deal, pleading guilty to two felony counts of battery on a law enforcement officer and one of resisting an officer and in exchange was ordered to serve 50 hours of community service, attend classes in alcohol and anger management, serve two years probation, pay a small fine to a police charity and write letters of apology) and pleaded guilty to one count of assault and resisting police after punching police officers at his Port Melbourne apartment.

No matter! He was still considered a right and proper person to get a nice media career. In 2012, Triple M hired him as a presenter, then Channel 7 did the same in 2014. The same year, he started writing for The Age.

It was only in September 2022 that Wayne Carey finally fell from grace. Picture: Nine News

In January 2022, Carey appeared on Seven’s SAS Survivor and admitted, “All my partners will say I’ve never been physically abusive, but have I been abusive mentally and also, I guess, intimidating? Absolutely”.

And STILL he had a job.

It was only in September 2022 that Carey finally fell from grace after a bag of white powder fell out of his pocket during a night out at a casino in Perth.

In 2021, Collingwood’s Jordan De Goey was charged with assault in a New York nightclub. He pleaded guilty when it was downgraded to second-degree harassment. He is still playing for the club.

What all these years of footballer scandals have proven is that we are very willing to give men second and third and fourth and 17th chances – but now will we do the same for Kerr?

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as ‘Irreparable harm’: Sam Kerr fiasco exposes massive double standard