The Courier Mail has been having a field day with pictures stolen from the Facebook profiles of various Australian swimmers. I say stolen because they're essentially using those pictures- which are incredibly tame, judging from the few I've bothered to look at, to flog their stupid paper.
"Are our sports stars behaving badly or just having a giggle online? Read our special report"
"Off their facebook"- a not particularly subtle play on 'Off their faces'.
The photos show nothing more than a bunch of young people pulling funny faces and occasionally wearing dodgy fancy dress. Nothing that is of any more relevance to the public than if the Courier Mail were to send a photographer to poke a camera through their bedroom windows so we could find out what colour underwear Stephanie Rice is wearing. It's pretty offensive that the CM thinks they're fair game for some online snooping and dodgy innuendo just because they happen to be good at swimming. I don't want to know about the parties those guys attend any more than I want to know about Joe Blow's Friday night at the pub.
Nick D'Arcy is another matter altogether. The guy's a thug, and sounds like a really insecure, immature brat. And unless Daddy-the-surgeon is able to pay off his latest alleged assault victim then he's also a soon-to-be convicted criminal. When the alleged bar-room assault and grievous bodily harm of Simon Cowley took place over Cowley's criticism of D'Arcy ordering drinks on Ian Thorpe's tab, the first things to appear in the media were comments from little Nicky's mum, who wanted us all to know how upset the poor dear was about allegedly beating some guy's face in so badly he had a broken jaw, fractured eye socket and broken nose, and how he had stayed in his room and hadn't eaten all day.
Maybe if Daddy D'Arcy hadn't paid off the victims of Nick's previous efforts the boy would have earned a much-needed lesson and modified his behaviour accordingly. He's young enough that getting booted off the Olympic team would leave him enough time for a shot at the next Olympics if that's his goal, but I think the stories that have come out about him this time are serious enough to warrant leaving him off the team, and if he decides he's had enough of swimming as a result it's hardly something that should be on the heads of team officials or whoever else makes the decision. If Nick D'Arcy had been an ordinary person of working-class background and had faced charges over his previous alleged assault and vandalism/property damage crimes, he'd be looking at jail time by now.
Or we could just believe the words of D'Arcy's coach, who thinks that all these allegations have appeared out of thin air:
“I think the Australian public are beginning to see these unproven allegations for what they are,” Stehr said.
“Some unknown person is conducting a vendetta against Nick for reasons only known to them.”
Yeah. Yeah... that must be it. Because if some person had a vendetta against, say, Kieran Perkins or Ian Thorpe, the public would totally believe stories that either of those guys had a propensity for beating people's faces in... more like D'Arcy is Coach Stehr's meal ticket and he's worried about losing out if D'Arcy is banned from the Olympic team and/or goes to jail.
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