Great off-field conduct

THE Cats may not have had the season they wanted on-field, but off the field the players have a lot to be proud of.

The Frank Costa maxim of ‘character first, talent second’ has created a culture of a genuinely likeable, wholesome very well behaved playing group.

Some other elite team sportsmen tend to relish an opportunity to disgrace themselves.

The Cats may have occasional off-field moments of human frailty, mainly involving driving too fast.

But these pale in significance when compared to the worst boorish behaviour of some elite clubs, particularly northern states’ rugby players.

Think of Sydney Roosters’ Mitchell Pearce whose drunken night out ended with him making unwanted advances towards a woman and then a dog — all of it caught on camera.

Or Todd Carney’s ‘bubbler incident’ — we’ll spare you the details except to say the episode left a bad taste in the mouth — which got him sacked from Cronulla.

The list goes on and AFL players are not exempt. But (subject to the emergence of previously hidden debaucheries) the Geelong Cats do appear to be exempt from these issues.

They should be commended for being such excellent representatives of our region and great role models to younger sports fans.

So while Patrick Dangerfield came to this week’s ‘Wacky Wednesday’ dressed as a Canterbury Bulldog player there was none of the over-the-top ‘Mad Monday’ behaviour involving nudity and vomiting that this month brought notoriety to that club.

Instead the Cats players had a few beers, went to a few venues, sang along to Daryl Braithwaite at karaoke, and then called it a night.

Plenty has been said about the Cats’ recurring on-field finals performance issues.

But the young men of the team deserve credit for their wholesome example off-field.

It’s quite nice to have a team of blokes that is so free of badly behaved boofheads.