There's a lot been made of AFL player Wayne 'King' Carey's return to television after a few happy years roaming the planet, occasionally forgetting not to take drugs or smash glasses into ladies' faces.

It seems that the requisite amount of time for commercial television executives to stop referring to a sports star as 'disgraced' or 'unwelcome' and instead add them as a new high profile presenter is roughly eight years and one month, give or take a few weeks.

That is of course if you don't count Carey's first instance of colourful behaviour in 1996 when he requested that a passerby find herself 'a bigger set of tits' and demonstrated the point by squeezing her bosoms so hard she bruised. Back then Carey was still a regular on The Footy Show and revered as a bit of a knockabout lad, albeit one who may have been slightly overenthusiastic when it came to appraisal of tits.

It was only six years later, when he dared transgress the unwritten law by banging his teammate's missus in a bathroom - not to mention the subsequent George Best-esque downward spiral of boozing and an alleged glassing - that producers began to publicly edge away from him. Clearly Wayne just needed a bit of time out; to sit and reflect upon his behaviour and perhaps write a book revealing that the only reason he behaved like GG Allin on a crack binge was because his dad wasn't a very nice man. Penance performed, the media offers began flooding in.

League star Matthew Johns suffered a similar career pause when it was revealed on Four Corners last year that he'd once lingered beerily in a hotel room as several of his pals sprayed semen over a 19-year-old waitress. While that particular all-in knees up was only unveiled to the world in 2009, it actually took place way back in 2002 which means in a purely mathematic sense Johns has obviously suffered enough. Case in point, The Matty Johns Show - a 'new, family-friendly, NRL/entertainment show' debuted on March 25 to rapturous applause.

So they're both back on our television screens now. And it seems most sporting fans have forgiven and forgotten and are ready to move on simply for the sake of being entertained by chaps who were once - in a football sense - at the top of their game.

They relish it, a bit of forgiveness. It draws a clear line between them (compassionate, understanding of the fact that 'everybody makes mistakes') and those politically correct victim's groups who just bang on and on and won't let anybody have a jot of fun.

'I am sick and tired of the women's groups out here that continually try to take over the country and force they're views onto the public. I do not condone what Wayne Carey has done for a second, but I also respect what he has done on the football field and I believe he has an outstanding football brain. If he is so unliked by the public as you say he is, then Channel 10 will have no choice but to terminate his contract and not have him on again. After all, the viewers vote with the figures...' seethed one particularly searing social commentator on the Herald Sun website last week.

It's a wonderful word, that - 'but'. 'I'm not racist, but...';'I'm not homophobic, but...'; 'I do not try and condone what Wane Carey has done for a second, but...'

But what? But it's time to give Wayne Carey a fair go, that's what. Because after a time everyone deserves to put their past behind them. Sure AFL star Ben Cousins may be pushing his rehabilitated luck in the public's eyes - being recently hospitalised with 'mysterious' stomach complaints and all - but he's still for the most part been accepted back from the brink of his shirtless, teeth-grinding adventures with open arms. Shane Warne now attends musical theatre shows that openly - and fondly - mock the fact that he once repeatedly cheated on his wife. Brendan Fevola, for his part, probably just needs to stop being such an arseclown for a bit, but give it time and he'll soon be in an affectionate headlock and grinning adorably from our televisions again.

This notion of a 'fair go' and 'forgiveness' only goes so far, of course. If you've escaped your politically violent home country in desperate circumstances and are eventually discovered to have either once punched your wife or harboured a long-term drug-addiction, chances are you'll be splashed across the front pages of the tabloid papers and packed off back to where you came from. If you're a young Asian man prone to firing up in nightclubs, you're part of a 'culture of violence'. If you're a young Lebanese Muslim man present during a gang rape, it's your insufficient acclimatising to our way of life that is to blame (is that how you treat women in your country, mate?), and symptomatic of a wider problem between 'your people' and 'ours'.

These people can't expect us to stick up for them though, can they? Have they ever been named as centre half forward and captain of North Melbourne's Team of the Century? Are they a New South Wales State of Origin representative five-eighth? Have they scored over 3,000 Test runs?

Forgiveness only goes so far, you know. And everyone has the right to a clean slate, especially if they've been selected six times in the All-Australian Team and represented Australia in the International Rules Series.

Marieke Hardy is a writer and regular panelist on the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club.