Sledging is tradition. It has been ever since football was invented, because the game tests the mental mettle of its combatants. Squib a contest, drop a mark, miss a target and a player will get sledged.
To play football is to expect the sledge. If a player can’t hack having his courage, parentage and intelligence questioned, he’ll never make it. It has always been the same, ever since the first football was kicked to a teammate.
Before Australia became politically correct in the eighties and nineties, the sledging was dreadful. New Australians (as they were known then) were called wogs. Indigenous Australian’s were called black. Redheads were called blue, and those simple examples put sledging mildly.
It was worse, too. Footballers can be cruel. Religion was targeted, as were families. Last night I was with your sister was a common refrain. Your mum sorted out all the boys last weekend was another. Your girlfriend was trying to say something but I couldn’t understand her because my dick was in her mouth was yet another, juvenile taunt.
Sexuality was questioned, weren’t you arrested for sucking off homeless men was a repeated classic. Often it was far more primitive, you’re gay or fuck you, you fucking poofter.
Barely funny, the sledges were stupid. Most footballers gave them no mind, because they were basic insults without credence and they were expected.
Race and colour, though, was a different matter. Many footballers from another era reacted violently to taunts about race and colour. The tribunal sorted them out. Unfortunately the protagonist, those with the uneducated mouths often went unpunished.
Footballers from eras past have openly admitted to racial vilification, anything to upset their opponent and put them off their game. Afterwards they remained belligerent, we won the game. I’m not a racist, really, and what is said on the field stays on the field.
Their targets were supposed to ignore the jibes and get on with things. But to call someone black because they are has always been offensive. To call someone a wog because they are was always offensive. If it was said in eras past, the big mouth must be prepared to get belted.
That’s not to say the sledging was right, or should ever have been accepted, it’s just the way it was.
Thanks to Michael Long and Nicky Winmar, racial or religious vilification is outlawed. No one need be bothered anymore by ignorant comments deliberately made to aggravate or upset.
The lowest common denominator, in terms of sledging, has always been the obvious, and it’s always been race or colour. Those baleful slights have been taken away from the big mouth arsenal. To taunt by race or colour is to get suspended, and no footballer wants to be rubbed out or outed as a racist.
Occasionally it still happens. It is unbelievable that footballers can still be so dumb as to point out the colour of another man’s skin or attack his religion during a heated moment when the ball has been won or lost.
Anyone caught uttering such remarks deserve all the AFL and their clubs can pin on them. What makes those comments worse is the respect that is lost. It is abhorrent to tarnish the colour of an opponent’s skin then party afterwards with a teammate of the same colour.
Claiming mateship by virtue of the jumper is pointless. If a footballer abuses one man of a particular ilk, he is abusing all men. There can be no differentiation.
That the Western Bulldogs suspended ruckman Will Minson for a sledging Port Adelaide’s Danyle Pearce doesn’t seem surprising. Pearce is an indigenous Australian, but Minson’s verbal apparently had nothing to do with race, colour or religion.
What Minson said must’ve been shocking. The sledge, allegedly about Pearce’s mother, was upsetting enough for a brief tussle and a vigorous slanging match. Pearce was upset and angry after the game, enough to create a furore involving the AFL.
So Minson is out for a week because of something he said that didn’t involve race, colour, creed, religion or any other faith, belief or talismanic charm.
He’s gone because he allegedly made a comment about Pearce’s mother. It’s a fair bet Minson has never met Pearce’s mother, or any of his family. Whatever Minson uttered about the matriarch was made in total ignorance and with one intention, to rile Pearce.
It worked. And it also backfired, spectacularly.
Just because footballers are tough men doesn’t mean they’re not sensitive. Men have tears in them too. They love their family. They have levels of tolerance. Football is a hard game without being sledged.
The AFL frowns on vigilantism, so it outlawed vilification. Players nowadays are confined in what they can say, and that’s no criticism. The AFL’s rules offer protection, and there are some subjects that should never be explored in anger on the football field.
Family is taboo.
Consider this. In a moment of anger at work would you tell a colleague their mother likes having sex with horses? In a moment of frustration at the pub would you tell a mate his mum was like a gun, two cocks and she’s loaded? Would you tell your boss to go fuck his mother?
There are dozens of mother jokes, but consider the type of person who uses them. Mother jokes are never appropriate. Sledges about family are never appropriate either.
A sane, rational member of the community does not wander about insulting people by telling them their mother is like a mosquito, you need to slap her to stop sucking.
A sane, rational footballer knows what not to say when it comes to sledging.
Minson is a repeat offender. Four years ago he questioned why Kane Cornes was playing while his son was in hospital.
It seems Minson has learned nothing. His ignorance has been exposed, and he’s paying the price, a one week penalty.
Footballers just can’t be stupid anymore. That they remain so is remarkable, because the AFL teaches most of these men everything they’ll ever learn, and sledging isn’t part of the curriculum.
Think about what Minson said. It might seem trivial, but think about your mother, sister, father or child. How would you react if a someone you barely knew attacked your mother in a sledge?
It’s a fair bet the antagonist would get a case of sore jaw…
Hopefully the AFL will reinforce the guidelines for stupid footballers. This is what the current guidelines look like:
Don’t pick on my mum, my dad, my siblings, my race, my colour, my religion or my friends. Don’t say anything offensive. Don’t look at me sideways.
Don’t mention the war, it doesn’t matter what one. Don’t swear at me or poke fun of my beard or tattoos or that I like women with armpit hair. Don’t pick on my hair products, my waxed chest or my big nose.
Don’t call me a pussy because that’s offensive to women, and I like cats. Don’t call me gay because that’s offensive to gay men, even though none of them play football. Don’t call me a lesbian, because I don’t have pubic hair or armpit hair.
Don’t pick on my crooked teeth or my big ears. Don’t point out my balding patch or my nose hair. Don’t pick on my high pitched voice, don’t pick on what I read, don’t pick on what car I drive or the clothes I wear.
Don’t criticise the way I run or how I kick. Don’t pick on my home state or country. Don’t pick on the school I went to or the mates I made.
Don’t say anything. Don’t even grunt at me in a deep tone, because I won’t accept it or tolerate it.
If you offend me in any way, I’ll sook about it and you’ll be rubbed out for a week. Then you’ll have to front the media.
And people will write stories about you.
