Osama Bin Laden is dead, Barack Obama has a US birth certificate, and I have a weekly column with ABC The Drum. Does the joy ever stop, or even slow down, just for a few minutes?

You may recognise some of what follows, but let’s be honest most of it’s worth another look; I am aware of several readers who have wallpapered their bedrooms entirely with the back pages of The Tribune, and am told by highly-placed sources that the ABC has had to invest in a new server to deal with all the new traffic it’s getting. * * *

Gary Ablett is all kinds of good and is a worthy on-field leader for all the youngsters at the Gold Coast Suns, as long as he doesn’t impart too much Whiny Little Bitch. It was something of a shock when a few weeks back he was discovered to have an interest in something other than football and looking goofy in a baseball cap.

Shane Crawford, who was always a master of understated dignity off the field, accused young Gary of being in “holiday mode” now that he had all the big money and the Gold Coast lifestyle, and all kinds of comments were being made about him missing a game because of “general soreness”, the affliction that used to render unavailable the top half of every list just on State Of Origin time.

I don’t think Gary really understands his responsibilities as a leader, so I wrote to him:

I wasn’t surprised that, along with a super tanker of coin, the Suns granted you a few privileges like staying around in Melbourne without a curfew after games; you are the boy who used to be home tucked up in bed by 9 every night, after all. Who could have possibly imagined that, given a little bit of leash, you’d suddenly metamorphose into some terrifying amalgam of Oliver Reed, Freddie Mercury and the first four Black Sabbath albums?

Am I actually surprised that it’s taken you only four rounds to make an arse of yourself, though? Am I really? Why am I asking you, Gary, I’m sure your interest in my thoughts is on a par with your interest in your own; that is to say, nil. You’re not a thinker, are you Gary?

Trouble is, you have to be a thinker, or at least give the impression of being one. You’re a role model, Gary and not in the way that so many of your colleagues are - playing kick to kick with schoolkids a few times a year and burping out scripted apologies to the fans, the club and the Hen’s Night concerned every third Monday - but a real, actual, “ooh look at that bloke, he’s my hero, I’ll emulate him” role model. You’re the captain, Gary, did you not read that clause, or was it hidden by all the zeroes?

There’s you and half a dozen other senior players at the Suns, Gary, and since one of them is Campbell Brown (and did I mention you’re the Captain, Gary) there are thirty or so teenage kids and the best-named sportsperson (other than Misty Hymen) in the entire world looking to you for leadership. Particularly that Karmichael fellow: he’s not even sure which end of the try line he’s supposed to lock forward at the ten-yard line without hands in the ruck when the score’s deuce. He needs your guidance and your support, Gary, but in learning how to tackle opposition players without burying them up to their giblets, not on wrestling a greased pig into the waiting arms of a bevy of College Girls Gone Wild doing laybacks with Motley Crue.

It’s the Gold Coast Gary, it’s not Geelong. You have to step up and make sure young Mr Hunt and all these other boys don’t get into trouble! Have you heard of Schoolies Week? Have you seen the majestic herds of Fevolas and Cousinses and Carneys roaming idly through the streets, looking for impressionable young men fresh off the Rooky list to fill with alcohol and teach how to urinate on televisions and have their unconscious forms posted on facebook by sixteen year old girls?

You bear a heavy burden, Gary; are you up to it?

Have you really thought about it?

Or are you sleeping soundly, wrapped in your mink blankets, warmed by the coals of burning puppies, in your bed made of money, a chilled glass of childrens’ tears on the solid gold bedside table?

* * *

Essendon captain Jobe Watson was critical of the new substitute rule after Round One, and was briskly frog-marched into AFL headquarters for re-education: “After speaking with AFL football operations manager Adrian Anderson and game analysis manager Andrew McKay, Watson says he can now see that reducing interchange numbers was in the players’ interests.”

Watson went on to name seventeen players who had engaged in sabotage of AFL facilities and helped uncover no less than forty separate assassination plots against the Dear Leader Demetriou. He expressed his deep shame and begged the Commissioners for a quick merciful death for his counter-revolutionary actions, then he threw himself upon the great mercy of the People’s Liberation Rules Committee. His head will be on a spike at the Punt Road end of the MCG until Round Eight, when his rotting corpse will be paraded around the country as an example to those who set out to ruin our great game and question the genius of those in charge.

* * *

You may think that the ADFA scandal has nothing to do with sport, but think again: it involves fit young men in a very male environment behaving badly towards women. Now you may also think that Bob Ellis nailed the entire issue on The Drum the other week (in which case I urge you to climb into a whiskey bottle and stay there until next time there’s a Labor government in NSW) but if you don’t then you’re probably wondering about a solution.

If there’s one thing that professional sport does well, it’s treat women badly, deny the fact for decades, then come up with miracle cures; the ADFA could do a lot worse than click on www.afl.com.au and type “respect” into the search box.

There they will find the remedy for entrenched societal and organisational misogyny, cultures based on binge-drinking and so-called “male bonding”, and just about any other social ill that you could mention.

All that’s required is a collection of Motherhood Statements which can be trotted out every time there’s another allegation or court appearance or Sam Newman opens his filthy hole.

* * *

And, on to the AFL TV rights deal, which seems to have most of the sports media drinking from Demetriou’s Kool Aid.

Gerard Whateley, among many many others, says (and I have to allow for the AFL’s usual threats of loss of press passes and dearest aunt somewhat influencing his column) “Supporters The Winner as AFL delivers to the heartland”

He then goes on to talk about household budgets being rearranged to accommodate the necessary Foxtel bills saying, in a startling touch of Fuck The Poor, “if you want it, it’s there”.

Gerard and I can at least claim a Foxtel connection as a tax deduction, as can everyone else who writes about sport for a living. But, just as politicians and the Canberra press gallery are woefully out of touch with the rest of us, it appears that the sports media seem to have forgotten that the people for whom they write and broadcast are not other sports writers, they are fans with bills to pay and lots and lots of other things to do beside suck up to Andrew Demetriou.

Somehow “The AFL now has a lot more money” in his language translates to human-speak as “this agreement for the next five years is an important result for the supporters who love and own our game, our clubs, our players, our state and territory bodies, our volunteers and participants at every level.”

One and a quarter billion dollars over five years means two hundred and forty million dollars and change per annum.

Put aside, for a moment, what in the Warp-Drive the AFL’s going to do with that kind of moolah once it’s handed every decent player in the country over to Greater Western Sydney and given Demetriou another pay rise.

Put aside the money you spend on club membership so you can sit in a tiny plastic chair a hundred metres laterally and a stratosphere vertically away from the ground and wonder how two cents’ worth of potatoes becomes six bucks worth of chips.

Put aside the constant sports-betting ads, half of which now appear as “special comments” and stats.

Put aside the ad breaks and the cross-promotion and the delayed telecasts and yet another prime time Friday night game for bloody Collingwood.

Put all those ponderings aside for a moment, and go back to what Demetriou said when he announced the deal: “..supporters who love and own our game..”

I own the game do I, Andrew? If that’s the case, where’s my Foxtel box and the seventy bucks a month (less my tax deduction) that I’ll need to see the FIVE GAMES A WEEK that won’t be shown on FTA?

* * *

Self-indulgent as I am, this is a column about sport and not really about me, so I’ll just leave you with a request to keep hitting on my Drum column, and when you see the inevitable “I detest sports” comment (and to date there has been at least one every friggin week) feel free to Reply with as much venom as you see fit.

In my experience, late at night, after several large drinks is the best time to do this.

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