Despite everything, AussieRulesBlog can’t help but feel sorry for Brendan Fevola. The lyrics of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi are, we think, appropriate to Fevola’s situation.

 

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone

Through season after season, his on-field talent had got him out of tight off-field scrapes. Kicking goals was a cure for all ills — until . . .

We can feel the cogs turning in Michael Voss’ mind: “Surely he’s seen that he’s almost had this extraordinary opportunity taken away. We throw him a lifeline and he’ll be so grateful he’ll become a Pentecostal preacher!” Ok, there’s a bit of licence at the end, but you know what we mean.

Without a trade deal, it’s looking increasingly likely that Fev will not be playing AFL again. And, despite the NFL rehabilitating players who’ve transgressed, such as Michael Vick, Fev is not going to be a potential game changer, as Vick is. Fev’s NFL cards might also be marked, no matter how good a punter he could eventually turn out to be. Punting is just not that crucial to NFL teams to take a chance on a loose cannon.

Both Andrew Lovett and Leon Davis look to have also finished their elite level careers, for quite different reasons. ‘Neon’ Leon has, quite simply, miscalculated. Lovett missed his best chance by turning the Bombers against himself.

All three will have a quite powerful feeling when they hear Joni’s clear voice ringing out.

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

Compounding the confusion of Brisbane’s sacking of Brendan Fevola, it now appears that the prima facie reason for the sacking, charges out of his New Year’s Eve engagement with the Police, are to be dropped.

So, once more we have an AFL club taking extraordinarily drastic action, throwing a person’s life into a maelstrom, before a pronouncement of “Guilty!” Is this to be a habit? Will AFL clubs now dispense summary justice on a whim?

Neither Fevola nor Andrew Lovett are choir boys, yet surely they’re entitled to the same presumptions of legal process that the rest of us expect as our due.

Brisbane Lions’ decision not to honour its contract with Brendan Fevola seems a strange one given their recruiting of him only a year ago.

It cannot have escaped the notice of various Lions officials at the time of recruiting him that Fevola had recently had a number of public ‘errors of judgement’. Goodness knows what he’s done in more private circumstances. Brisbane can not have harboured any illusions about task they were taking on. It was a high stakes gamble — a generous contract with the promise of high on-field returns, but with the likelihood of a sting in the tail.

In the circumstances, and whatever Fevola’s misdemeanours may have been, AussieRulesBlog finds it incredible that Brisbane can attempt to wash their hands of Fevola. They didn’t create the monster — that responsibility lies with various Carlton coaches and administrations — but they cannot deny that they knew what they were taking on.

Notwithstanding that there are light years of difference between the two in many ways, the positive end to Ben Cousins’ career and Richmond’s show of faith in him contrasts starkly with the situation Fevola now faces. A storied career appears set to end in tatters.

More importantly, and here is a point of synergy with Cousins, football has been the area of Fevola’s life — perhaps the only area — where he has been able to express himself in a way the community has (generally) approved of. It has been clear that the chance to return to AFL football was an important component of Cousins’ rehabilitation. Fevola, it now seems, won’t be allowed that opportunity.

And what of the Lions’ officials who landed this big fish? Beyond some internal embarrassment, will they bear any opprobrium?

Brisbane may be ridding themselves of a distraction, but they are abrogating, presumably with encouragement from AFL House, a high-profile responsibility they took on only a year ago.

Twice in two years, AFL clubs have taken on a player with known negative issues. Twice in two years those clubs have walked away from their responsibilities, contractual or otherwise. Once could be seen as an accident, but two in two years starts to look like a problem.

The AFLPA has some hard thinking to do, but we think they and their members have a responsibility to see that AFL clubs don’t get used to the notion that they can tear up players’ contracts when it suits them.

It’s a bit much for Ross Lyon to threaten the players of sixteen other clubs with vilification complaints if they “cross over community standards” and taunt his captain over the running sore that has been the naked pictures. All very nice to take a holier than thou approach and conveniently forget the presence on his list of serial standard crosser Steven Baker.

Were it another club’s captain that was embroiled, would Lyon instruct his players, especially Baker, not to venture into dark sledges about nude photographs? Not bloody likely.

AussieRulesBlog chastised Barcodes coaches Mick Malthouse and Paul Licuria last year, not so much for what they said to the Saints’ Steven Milne, but for the inappropriateness of their interaction with an opposition player and their economy with the truth — less charitable people might suggest they lied — when later questioned.

Lyon suggests the Malthouse-Milne incident as one where “community standards” were trashed and uses it as a justification for threatening players at other clubs should they sledge Riewoldt.

We wonder whether Lyon has created yet another millstone for his captain to wear. Not only were the pictures publicised, but Riewoldt now looks like a crybaby relying on his coach to keep the bad boys from saying nasty and hurtful things to him. Riewoldt does have some form in this respect after all (even though we supported him in those instances).

But what sticks in our craw most is Lyon’s failing memory. It’s only a year ago that the Saints crossed a community standard themselves — a person is innocent until found guilty in a court of law. By declaring a contracted player guilty of a crime before he’d had a chance to face a jury of his peers, the Saints were happy to act as judge, jury and executioner when it suited them.

We suspect the mental strength of the Saints’ prima donna will receive some searching tests in the coming season. Will he thank his coach and his teammate when the dust has settled?

No, not a cricket story about Mitchell Johnson bowling a no ball!

It’s typical of self-appointed guardians of society like Neil Mitchell that they take it upon themselves to flout conventions, regulations or orders protecting the identities of those suspected of some criminal activity.

Of course, there’s more than enough precedent in everyday media. Television news broadcasts routinely name people being arrested or being taken into custody, often even when pixellating their images.

It’s reasonable to ask why high-profile footballers should be treated any differently.

But the real point is that NO-ONE should have their name broadcast before being found guilty.

This principle is even more applicable in accusations of sexual assault which can turn on the participants’ varying understanding of consent as it applied in the context of the alleged assault.

Let’s be clear that there should be no quarter allowed if the assault is proven to the satisfaction of the law and that the victim must be protected as far as possible from further harm.

But let’s also be clear that those accused or suspected of sexual assault are entitled to not bear the opprobrium if the case is not proven.

For at least some sections of the community, Steven Milne, Leigh Montagna and Andrew Lovett will be considered sexual predators whether charges were/are sustained or not.

It is reasonable and right to guard the identity of the females involved in these cases. It should also be reasonable and right to similarly guard the identities of the males involved up to the point that they are convicted.

No conviction, no ‘name and shame’.

St Kilda’s admission, during talks with Andrew Lovett’s representatives yesterday, that they’d sacked Lovett due to the accusation, and subsequent charge, of rape against him further exposes the Saints’ management team as a bunch of hopeless amateurs. And AussieRulesBlog is beginning to acquire the aura of a seer, having predicted the rape charge was the prima facie justification back in February.

In short order, the Saints have managed to turn a situation fraught with danger into a litany of misjudgement. How they must look back to 2008 and wish they’d drafted Ben Cousins who has ticked all the boxes at Richmond.

Cousins brought so much more than his silky football skills to Punt Road, providing a role model that that club’s favourite son, Matthew Richardson, could not. Damien Hardwick’s decision to nominate for the Richmond job must have been made substantially easier knowing Cousins was on the roster.

It’s hard to imagine that Ross Lyon and his recruiting staff could have seen Cousins’ Rolls-Royce pedigree in Lovett’s precocious talent, or that they could so comprehensively have misread Cousins’ determination to return.

We cannot think of a single positive for the Saints since Preliminary Final weekend last year. It really has been five truly awful months.

Despite the presence on their board of a professional lawyer, it appears the Saints have finally returned from their trip to a parallel universe and accepted their contractual obligations to Andrew Lovett.

The Saints’ series of hairy-chested assertions about Lovett have melted away faster than Vancouver snow.

The question to now be asked, especially by Saints supporters, is who the hell has been running this bumbling, keystone cops effort?

Surely no-one with their eyes open could have believed that Lovett would be other than high-maintenance? Surely it’s a no-brainer that Luke Ball’s mates were going to be pretty unimpressed about his ‘replacement’, especially given his chequered past?

Having (predictably) blotted his copybook, the Saints came down on Lovett like a ton of bricks and then employed the most bizarre timing in announcing their intention to cut him loose. A bunch of kindergarten kids could do a better job of managing than this!

As we blogged last month, should Lovett be found not guilty, the Saint’s profits for the next five years will surely make their way to Lovett’s bank account. Amateur hour indeed!