In March, swimmer Nick D’Arcy elbows a man in the face in a moment of drunken stupidity and inflicts terrible injuries. A few weeks later, Sydney Swans full-forward Barry Hall, an accomplished amateur boxer, punches an opponent square on the jaw with a blow that several experts later claim could have killed.
D’Arcy fronts an Australian Olympic Committee hearing today to discover whether his suspension from the Olympic team will stand or be overturned. Hall, meanwhile, returns to football on Saturday night after serving a seven-match suspension for his devastating left hook KO of West Coast’s Brent Staker.
If D’Arcy’s ban is upheld by the 14-person AOC committee, the national 200m butterfly champion will not get to swim in Beijing. The tens of thousands of laps he has swum over the past four years, up and back, up and back, often in the pre-dawn dark, will have been for nought. The AOC will hand down what, in Olympic terms, is effectively a four-year ban.
In eight weeks, about the time the Olympics Games are beamed into our lounge rooms each night from Beijing, Hall will be helping Sydney put the finishing touches to its home-and-away season and gearing up for another finals campaign. The hubbub will have died down, his brain explosion will have become a distant memory, fresh dramas involving other high-profile players will headline the sports pages. Life in the AFL will go on.
Meanwhile D’Arcy could be watching the Games from his Gold Coast home, seeing images of that remarkable bird’s-nest building which houses the Olympic pool and wondering what might have been.
The two incidents, and their aftermath, highlight an absurd discrepancy in sporting crime and punishment. The crimes are similar; the punishments way out of kilter.
Yes, D’Arcy belted his former Australian teammate Simon Cowley at the end of a heavy drinking session in a Sydney bar, an incident from which Cowley is still recovering. Yes, in the days that followed, D’Arcy came across as a cocky young punk riding for a fall.
But he is 20. How many of us have done really dumb things after drinking too much – getting behind the wheel of a car and driving when clearly our judgment has been impaired; getting boisterous and a bit lippy in a pub; generally bludgeoning the boundaries of decency and good taste?
High-profile sportsmen are expected to observe a code of behaviour that simply does not apply to other men and women of their age. They are held up to ridiculously high standards that the many in the general community could never hope to live up to. And woe betide them if they fail to meet those standards for the moral police in the media, who have never once fiddled their expense accounts or exaggerated their over-time records, are just waiting to hold them to account.
D’Arcy has been a dill and a dropkick. He deserves our derision – which he has already received in spades – but not a four-year ban. That would be the most brutal king-hit of all.
Charles Happell is a former sports editor of The Age.
UPDATE: Since publishing Crikey’s email edition, the Australian Olympic Committee decided unanimously to dump D’Arcy. The swimmer vows to fight on; he plans to lodge a final appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
I was horrified as any right thinking person would have been when I saw the injuries inflicted by Nick D’Arcy on Simon Cowley. It’s worth noting also this wasn’t the first time D’Arcy has caused serious injury by assault. I’m sorry Charles Happell, two wrongs simply don’t make a right. Citing other instances of drunken violence, or violence in other sports, does nothing whatsoever to mitigate what D’Arcy did. The Olympic movement strives for a higher ideal in sport and D’Arcy is being rightfully punished for his actions. Other sports should simply follow the good example being set by the AOC.
This piece is either deliberately provocative or Charles Happell is simply senile. It’s been a long time since I’ve read such a stupid piece of journalism. Maybe Charles Happell is auditioning for a job with News Corp.
I think the matter of who threw the first blow is highly significant in this case. If D’Arcy king-hit Crowley from behind, then he deserves everything thrown at him. If however Crowley instigated the altercation, then D’Arcy has only defended himself a bit too vigorously. Has anyone got any idea how things started?
Charles I am sure you have taken this position to generate debate. It is clearly working since it motivated me and many others to comment.
The assertion that D’Arcy’s behaviour should somehow be condoned for the sake of Olympic medals is way off the mark. I agree with many others here. D’Arcy committed a brutal assault and anyone arrogant enough to do so should suffer the consequences that result. There are hundreds of other young swimmers, just as committed and far more humble, waiting to take his place.
That silly Belinda Neal gets ‘anger management.
Darcy gets ‘life’.
It’s a cultural ‘thing’. Abominable but cultural.
Making him the scapegoat for something that blights our entire juvenile culture is to completely miss the point.
Make him the model not the victim – lets ensure that Simon Crowleys injuries are not in vain but the beginning of a change in the juvenile culture.
Good grief!!
I’m sorry, but I beg to differ. You’ve missed the point and blurred the boundaries. When someone steps onto a football field they reasonably suspect they may come in for some sort of physical contact or injury. The very nature of such games are based on aggression. The same cannot (or should not) be said for having a drink out socially with friends.
D’Arcy is more than a drop-kick. His actions were totally unwarranted and unacceptable. In this day and age when we lament young people not having any real consequences for their actions, I see this decision by the Olympic Committee as both responsible and entirely appropriate. For my part I do not want someone of the calibre of D’Arcy representing my country at any Olympic or sporting forum.