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Australia has felt the thud of another fallen star after one of its football gods was charged with assaulting police, confirming a descending spiral of booze, drugs and violence that is scarring the nation's sporting fields.
Wayne Carey will appear in court next month on three charges after
police used capsicum spray to subdue the former Australian Rules titan once called "The King", after reports of a dispute at the Melbourne penthouse he shared with girlfriend and model Kate Neilson.
In July, Carey is also due to appear in a Miami, Florida, court on charges of aggravated battery of a police officer and resisting arrest after allegedly smashing a glass into Nielson's face. American police described him as a "thug" who could spend up to 15 years in jail.
Nor are these the only sordid and alarming incidents in a life that Carey has admitted during television and magazine interviews has been fuelled by alcohol and cocaine: adultery with his best friend's wife, an affair during the pregnancy of his now-estranged wife and other alleged bouts of drunken violence.
Carey's sins have come as Australia loses patience with the macho booze culture of many of its sporting heroes; from the serial adultery of cricketer Shane Warne to allegations of orgies of alcohol, sex, drugs, violence and rape by teams of varying football codes.
Most recently, rising butterfly swimming swimmer Nick D'Arcy was dumped from Australia's team for the Beijing Olympics after police charged him with assaulting former Commonwealth Games swimmer Simon Cowley. Cowley suffered multiple facial fractures after D'Arcy allegedly pounded his head at a Sydney nightclub in March.
Against this background, Carey has become a tragic totem. In a nation obsessed with sport, his football code pulls more Australians to the television than anything else but cricket.
A Morgan poll out this week shows that 41 per cent of Australians watch AFL, equal to the audience for cricket test matches and one-day internationals. More, "football" as a generic description embracing AFL, league and union totally eclipses all other sports among television audiences - 58 per cent to cricket's 47 per cent, tennis' 33 per cent, and golf's 18 per cent.
The significance of Carey's sins - admitted or alleged - has been sufficient to attract the attention of a federal Government deeply worried by a tsunami of binge drinking and alcohol-stoked violence among the nation's youth.
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Carey's life showed the heavy price exacted by alcohol abuse.
"Alcohol has played a big part in this," she said. "We're saying to young people that alcohol isn't a solution to life's problems, isn't a way of dealing with young adulthood."
Gillard and other politicians are alarmed at the influence Carey and other erring sports stars can have on the young. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently launched a A$50 million ($61.14 million) national binge drinking strategy to combat what he said was a huge toll on the Australian community, shown up three years ago in a survey that said in any given week, one in 10 youths aged between 12 and 17 drunk themselves into insensibility.
More ominously, a study by the Centre for Youth Drug Studies of community football clubs showed that 13 per cent of 18 to 20 year olds drank 13 or more standard drinks every time they went to the club, 83 per cent drove home and most believed drinking was an important club tradition.
Rudd's strategy has now been picked up by the nation's six biggest sporting bodies, embracing AFL, league, union, soccer, cricket and netball. As well as specific anti-booze measures, they have agreed to develop a nationally consistent code of conduct for the responsible use of alcohol.
Carey's woes - underscored by a 12-month ban on West Coast Eagles star Ben Cousins imposed late last year because of drug problems - have given powerful force to Rudd's campaign.
There are few greater names in AFL. Born in the New South Wales country town of Wagga Wagga, the 37-year-old footballer epitomised the code for years.
During his 271-game career, most spent with the North Melbourne Kangaroos, he became at 21 the code's second-youngest captain, led the'Roos to two premiership victories and was one of AFL's top-earning performers.
Carey was named the club's best and fairest player four times, was captain for four of the seven times he was named in the AFL's All-Australian team and, before his fall, was picked as captain of the'Roos team of the century.
Meanwhile, his private and professional lives were disintegrating. Six years ago, he was forced to quit the'Roos after an affair with the wife of then-best friend and teammate Anthony Stevens, moving to the Adelaide Crows for a final 28 games, marked by sensational playing and clashes with Stevens and other'Roos.
Hampered by the legacy of past injuries and a final neck injury, Carey quit the game in 2004, signing up for a lucrative new career in television and radio.
But behind the public facade, as he was later to confess in the media, , Carey was living in a haze of booze, cocaine, and adultery.
He may have described the birth of his daughter early in 2006 as an achievement greater than any of his football triumphs but his marriage had ended secretly four months previously, destroyed by excess and an affair with Neilson.
In Miami, where Carey is to appear in court next month, American police described Carey as "just another thug" for attacking officers called to deal with him after he allegedly cut Neilson's head in an attack with a wine glass.
Police said Carey had to be restrained by a hobble restraining his hands and legs but then used his head to try and smash a hole between the front compartment and the prisoner compartment in the police car.
And as for his media career, that has also come to a screeching halt, with Carey being sacked by a television channel and not having his contract with a radio station renewed.
