Aug 14 2019

SHOULD we ban Mad Monday and should all players delete their social media accounts?

These are, predictably, the questions being raised in the NRL after a photo emerged of now-Parramatta prop Shaun Lane holding bag of white powered. The photo was allegedly taken the day after his playing commitments concluded at Manly last year.

First up, Mad Monday.

I can recall in the late 1990s mentioning Mad Monday to then-Sydney Morning Herald sports editor Peter Christopher. The final round of the premiership was coming up; he’d never heard of it. Outside rugby league - ie: people who either worked for clubs or dealt with footballers regularly - no-one had heard of it.

I duly wrote a story about Mad Monday stories I heard, taking out the names. I can remember calling friends who willingly told me about people running in traffic naked or skolling port. Media coverage of players’ private lives was in its infancy then and such a story was considered harmless fun.

The thing is, no-one’s debauched release-of-steam in their workplace really should be given a name and ritualised - unless it's called "Christmas Party". And if you're in the public eye, it's the exact opposite of what should happen - by giving it a name, you're drawing attention to it.

I don’t think you can stop employees congregating on the first day of holidays if they are in an industry where their holidays all come at once. If you made them all come in the day after the final match (as David Waite famously did with Great Britain once, the day after the Third Test of a home series at the end of an 11-month season), they’d have a Terrible Tuesday.

If you staggered their holidays so that the whole squad was required in the next day then 10 went on holidays each day … they’d wait until they were all on vacation and have a blow-out.

But - as I said - the problem with Mad Monday is it’s been ritualised. I know Souths have told their players in recent years that it’s not on - no way. The Jason Taylor/David Fa’alogo thing changed the course of that team’s history.

The catch 22 is that a club and a league can’t put its hands over its eyes and pretend players aren’t going to dress up in silly costumes and drink until they fall over just because you tell them not to. It’s better the devil fancy dress outfit you know than the one you don’t.

Each playing group is different. Perhaps if there is a good record of these affairs not going awry, then then there’s no reason to restrict them.

But at clubs where there’s been a problem, perhaps one solution is to have no formal mad monday and require players who are going to gather in groups to inform the club of their plans. At a bare minimum, any gathering of half a dozen or more players the day after their commitments end should be in a private place if the club’s had trouble before.

It just makes sense, but as Benji Marshall said: it’s the behavior that needs to change.

To those who always offer the “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody sees it, it never fell” argument regarding the prying media, I agree up to a point.

That point is: if the public can see it then the media has a right to report on it. That’s what the media’s job is - to be at things you can’t get to or aren’t present for or even wouldn’t even want to be at.

But telephoto lenses and helicopters are the domain of celebrity gossip not news…. none of which matters because that’ll continue to happen either way and have to be dealt with.

Social media is very different. Smart professional athletes use their social media accounts to market and brand themselves and set themselves up for life after active competition.

Only someone who already had a job lined up or was shortsighted and unable to control their emotions and actions would cancel their Instagram and Facebook account in the hope of problems evaporating. I get Twitter - it has limited use for a player unless he has a really good endorsement deal and gets a cut of sales of sunglasses, board shorts, headgear, whatever.

But here’s where I agree once more with Benji: like newspaper reports on Mad Monday excesses, social media is just the messenger. Shooting the messenger doesn’t make the problem go away.