Explosive mix of booze and ego

By PETER JESSUP

The T-shirt that reads "Instant Arsehole - Just Add Alcohol" applies more to the rich and famous than it does to the rest of us. Climbing to the top in any area requires a larger than normal dollop of self-confidence and that confidence can tip over into arrogance.

Sportspeople from all codes have disgraced themselves when the combination of big-headedness and big drinking takes over.

The wreckage is usually spectacular - John Daly in golf, Paul Gascoigne in soccer, Dennis Rodman in basketball, too many boxers to mention, and a string of All Blacks and Super 12 players.

Rugby league in New Zealand, given its working-class roots and inherent drinking culture, remained surprisingly clean.

While arrogance may have been one issue in the case of Clinton Toopi versus his Kiwi teammate Nigel Vagana, that incident looks to be down more to ignorance.

Apply free alcohol and the inevitable rushed intake by young men will - nine times out of 10 - result in a drama.

It's a statistic Kiwi coach Gary Freeman and his tour management ignored after the second test against Great Britain was drawn 14-14. The outcome was a confrontation that left Toopi with a broken hand, the Kiwis without a first-choice centre and this year's northern hemisphere tour with an unsavoury blot.

It's more the pity because the Kiwis in recent years, as well as Toopi's Warriors side, have been particularly well behaved.

In their eight seasons in existence, the Warriors have never had a player tested positive for drugs such as cocaine or Ecstasy, unlike Wests Tigers' Craig Field and Matt Spence. None has been found drunk on a traffic island, like Roosters captain Brad Fittler. No Warrior has been charged with punching a woman, as was Bulldog Darrell Trindall this year.

The Kiwis displayed exemplary behaviour under previous coach Frank Endacott and manager Gary Cooksley.

In 1999 and 2000 they stayed at the Parramatta Park Royal Hotel in preparation for test matches against Australia. After the second visit, hotel management was prompted to write to the New Zealand Rugby League complimenting it on the behaviour of the Kiwi squad, saying they were the best-mannered sports team hosted there and were welcome back.

Endacott's five-year reign passed without a single off-field controversy. Not since David Ewe relieved himself in a hotel lift during the 1993 Great Britain tour, which prompted his being sent home and resulted in the end of his representative career, has a Kiwi tour been spoiled by the wrong headlines.

So clearly things have regressed. Instead of building on Endacott's base, Freeman's northern tour will be remembered for an unlikely draw followed by a boozy late night that preceded a dismal loss, then the gradual exposure of details that kept the mess in the headlines.

But how do you control the alcohol intake of players who wear the badges and logos of breweries, who play in a sport where the sidelines are chocka with beer-swilling blokes and the measure of a man is how much booze he can hold?

It's simply an issue of professionalism. An athlete focused on getting to or remaining at the top can't afford to drink. Triathlete Hamish Carter doesn't, unless it's to celebrate a big win, and then he admits he's a two-can drunk. His body is not conditioned to hold alcohol.

There are coaches who set examples. The Tall Blacks' Tab Baldwin is one, preferring to remain physically and mentally agile.

It's often economic necessity to take sponsorship from liquor companies. But it then becomes even more important to impress on players that partaking in more than the odd drop of the sponsor's product is not on.

At the Lion Red-backed Warriors, players are not allowed to drink after games in Australia if the turnaround-time to their next game in New Zealand or back in Aussie is shortened -that is, if they play Sunday and fly home Monday, play again or fly on Friday, then drinking is out.

If there's a bigger gap and a special reason to celebrate, such as beating Brisbane, then players will be given a specific limit. They may be breath-tested next day to ensure limits were adhered to.

Breaches result in extra training routine. The player will be counselled about his responsibility to teammates, fans and the club.

If a league career at top level is what he wants, he'll be told, getting rotten drunk and turning up to training hungover is not the way to achieve it.

And there's the threat of omission from the playing 17.

All NRL players are drug-tested at random, here and in Australia, with an average of four selected after each game. An individual might be picked four times a year, or not at all.

But any suspicions will lead to a club-ordered test.

In the wake of the drugs positives at Wests, former coach Wayne Pearce said there were always suspicions about some players and hangers-on because of the company they kept.

Perhaps that's critical point No 2, a close second to supervision: bad company breeds bad behaviour.

The Warriors management's reaction to the Toopi injury and the manner of its happening has been swift, measured and responsible. They have linked Toopi with former Kiwi Don Mann, who came from Tonga to New Zealand as a 7-year-old and grew up through the league grades to represent his new country as a Kiwi from 1971 to 1974.

Mann is father of Kiwi and Warrior Duane and Warriors media officer Don and is a successful businessman with his own heavy equipment moving company.

The idea is that he's a father figure with experience of the sorts of problems Toopi might face - injury, loss of form or confidence, personal or family problems.

He's a voice apart from that of club management. He's also there to provide a sounding board and support, to remind Toopi of his job on the field, to pat him on the back or put a rocket up him afterwards.

The club wants to extend the scheme to others, using respected former players and linking them individually with the young, developing players. It should be good for both.

The list of reprehensible acts by sports stars is long and varied, and All Blacks and others have found that, while fame brings autograph hunters, it also attracts those interested in making a buck or a name for themselves by videotaping and selling the dirty story.

Which is where the present Kiwi coach and management went wrong for the second time.

After making the bad decision to allow an unsupervised late-night drinking session, bad decision No 2 was hoping that the cause of Toopi's wrist break could be shovelled under the carpet.

Too many people see and hear too many things these days for any bad behaviour by a big name to escape public attention.

Ask Rua Tipoki, who told North Harbour rugby management he broke his wrist in a weightlifting accident in the gym, when spectators in their hundreds saw the punch that did it in an unauthorised down-country game.

Ask Kangaroo hooker Craig Gower, whose exploits in whirling his penis in a misguided attempt to attract a female tourist during a "team bonding session" before the 1999 test coined the term "doing the helicopter".

Not surprisingly she complained to hotel management.

Gower was a goner, but Kangaroo team management sent a message he'd been injured in training, which journalists, including myself, had watched. The cover-up was doomed before it started.

What gives the likes of Gower the idea they can get away with it? Whatever possessed Mils Muliana to think it was acceptable, or instantly forgivable, to take a leak down a woman's leg at the bar of a Parnell club?

Young men and too much alcohol do not mix well, and in sports management, keeping the team "clean" has to be a priority. It should be clearly stated that bad behaviour will not be kept quiet.

Team management has a duty of care to young sports representatives. There has to be a recognition that some will think they're better than the rest of us and are not subject to the same laws, that some will not handle alcohol, that some will be tempted to spend some of their big salary on the wrong stimulants, that some will get too out of it and convince themselves that women like their obnoxious carrying-on.

It's not an image any game can afford.

The National Rugby League has just released television viewer figures and demographics for the latest season. Not surprisingly, 27 per cent of fans are men aged 25-54. But 21 per cent are women. Most importantly for the league, 25 per cent of the audience is under 17.

Clearly, the players are role models for that quarter. And they can easily turn off the best part of another quarter, the female fans, if they are allowed to carry on like drunken louts.