BORIS THE ROOSTER

As published in Inside Football 15 April 2009

Footballers just having fun?

I’m not outraged by the Kangaroos’ Boris video. To be perfectly candid, I don’t expect footballers to set the social agenda or act as role models.  That doesn’t mean their actions, whether in assaulting women or producing a video underpinned by antiquated views about women, don’t deserve criticism. Anyone who thinks the Boris video doesn’t carry a menacing subliminal message about the place of women is surely in denial. If Boris the rooster’s idea of erotic sex includes a love song with the words ‘get out of the way, move bitch’ and one last act of sexual penetration after the ‘chick’ is run over by a group of marauding men, I reckon he’s a rooster with problems. But Boris, of course wasn’t simply an animation. He was the embodiment of what some footballers think is the consummate bloke.

Defenders of the video can prattle on until the cows come home about the media blowing the issue out of proportion.  So what! Does this mean there’s nothing to talk about? Is it lost on anyone that only weeks after Wayne Carey admitted his hollow  ‘if I offended anyone’ apology after pleading guilty to grabbing a girl on the breasts in 1995 was wrong and insulting the Kangaroo players offered an identical apology for the Boris video. If there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the video why apologise? 

I say the video is primitive and degrading to women and given the extent of the scourge of violence against women deserves our criticism. For as long as we turn a blind eye to opinions – whether espoused by by judges, footballers or Boris the rooster – that could reasonably be expected to give comfort to ‘women bashers’ the violence will continue. Doesn’t that make sense?