A binge-drinking culture among Australia’s elite athletes came under fire yesterday after rugby league’s highest-profile player was charged with a sex attack after an alcohol-fueled party.
Star fullback Brett Stewart, of reigning National Rugby League (NRL) champions the Manly Sea Eagles, was charged late on Tuesday with sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl.
In the latest in a series of scandals involving athletes and drink, police allege Stewart left a club reception last Friday and met the teenager outside his apartment block, briefly making conversation before attacking her.
PHOTO: AP
The allegation, which Stewart’s lawyers have denied, does not go to court until April 7.
But the NRL has suspended him for four weeks for breaching the league’s code of conduct on alcohol and fined Manly A$100,000 (US$65,000) for allowing excessive drinking at the party.
Experts say rugby league is not alone, as most sports have faced problems with binge-drinking among athletes in recent years.
Even the normally-sedate world of swimming was embroiled in controversy last year when butterfly specialist Nick D’Arcy was kicked off the Beijing Olympic squad for assaulting another swimmer during a drinking session at a nightclub.
In cricket, the drinking culture is so entrenched that former batsman David Boon’s feat of drinking 52 cans of beer on a flight from Australia to London is celebrated by fans almost as much as his on-field exploits.
Post-match bonding sessions are such a ritual among Australia’s cricketers that when vice-captain Michael Clarke tried to cut one short this year, batman Simon Katich grabbed him by the throat and had to be restrained by teammates.
All-rounder Andrew Symonds was dropped this year after a string of alcohol-related incidents, including turning up to training drunk and slurring his way through a radio interview in which he lambasted a rival player.
Paul Dillon, a drug and alcohol specialist who has worked with international athletes from a number of sports, said the sportsmen were reflecting a wider culture of binge-drinking in Australia.
But he said they were doing it in the public eye, with young athletes in a “pressure cooker” where they drank heavily as an outlet.
“They tend not to drink as much as the general population, but when they do drink they do it in a big way and that’s where they can go off the rails,” Dillon said.
He said sports administrators were trying to address the problem, but often set a bad example themselves by drinking at functions and encouraging sponsorship from alcohol companies.
“What they’re doing is picking young men very early, sometimes as young as 15, and putting them in a situation with older men who drink,” Dillon said. “Then they give them lots of money and not enough to do with their time. In those circumstances, some people do not cope.”
He praised the tough action taken by NRL chief David Gallop, who was furious at the scandal surrounding Stewart, a player promoted as the face of the game in a A$1.5 million advertising campaign that has now been pulled.
“Players must get it into their thick heads that the world has changed and just because you play professional football doesn’t give you a get-out-of-jail-free card when you behave appallingly,” Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons, a former rugby union international, wrote.
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