The story on everyone’s
lips
mind this week is the sacking of Todd Carney by the Cronulla Sharks, following
a photo on social media that went viral, depicting young Toddles pissing into his own mouth.
Joey Johns, a rugby league
immortal, one of the world’s sharpest minds and a confessed drug user
throughout his career, doesn’t understand why Carney was sacked, saying, “He
isn’t hurting anyone else. It’s stupid,
but it’s harmless.” Johns also doesn’t
understand where the sun goes at night, or how to make those “bunny ears” that
keep his shoelaces tied up.
Carney’s manager, David Riolo,
has complained that Carney didn’t have a chance to defend himself before the
Sharks CEO cut him loose. Normally, I
wouldn’t give a fuck about anything that Toddles has to say about anything, but
I would buy a ticket to listen to him try and explain this one.
“It’s a set-up, like when people
stand in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” Riolo told radio station 2UE. It’s very much like that, except completely
different, as one involves people standing in front of a leaning building, and the
other has a grown man urinating into his own face.
Is Carney’s sacking due to other
misdemeanours since he’s been at the Sharks?
Not according to manager man Riolo. “There’s been no serious allegations
that I’m aware of that have come across my desk in writing,” he said.
“I get 1000 emails every time Todd steps out.” Just quietly, I reckon Riolo’s email database takes up eighteen
warehouses.
Other dickheads have come out and
blasted the photographer, one Mick Robinson, a “mate” of Carney’s who took the
photo without Todd realising, sent it to his brother, who then lost his phone
at the greyhounds which some unknown champion found, unlocked, scrolled through
the photos and posted that picture on
social media. It’s all making sense
now.
I’m just going out on a limb
here, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that Carney would piss into
his own mouth unless it was being photographed.
You know, for posterity, so he can look back when he’s older, perhaps
with some grandkids on his knee, and reminisce about the time he drank his own
wee. Carney himself has stated, “It was
just a prank, the boys have seen me doing it before.” I'm not sure if admitting to doing this multiple times makes it any better, to be honest, just like the time he pissed on a bloke at a Canberra pub, drove his car into a mobile phone shop in Goulburn or set fire to someone else on New Years in Sydney.
Mick Robinson, by the way, will be
relieving “Joe the Cameraman” at Channel 9 next week in his role as “sport star
scapegoat.”
I'm glad to see that Fox Sports keeps it as professional as I do
The Sharks made a controversial
decision to sack Carney; drinking your own piss isn’t illegal; being a fuckwit
isn’t illegal; having your photo taken being a fuckwit and drinking your own
piss isn’t illegal - so why should he lose his job? If Frank the butcher was caught pissing in
his own face, would he get sacked? Maybe
not, but I doubt that many people would be buying their sausages from him once
they saw the photo.
The point is that Toddles is
earning $650,000 per season to play football.
That’s a fucking dump-truck of money by anyone’s standards. He plays for 80 minutes per week, and trains
for two or three hours a day, maybe four times a week. Other people would call this “going to the
gym for a bit” and pay through the dick for the privilege. Carney has also been injured for the last two
months and has played maybe 120 minutes of football in six weeks. For a guy who is constantly injured, whose name
doesn’t get mentioned for representative honours, whose team isn’t winning,
fuck it, they’re not even sponsored, but is still pulling in $650k per year, he
needs this smack in the face.
Is his career over? Possibly.
But probably not. He might fuck
off to the Super League in the UK (last time he tried this, his visa was
rejected due to his criminal record), or he might fuck off to France, who will
pretty much sign anyone. More likely, he’ll
fuck about in Australia until he fulfils whatever rehab nonsense he pretends to
go to and then gets picked up by the Cowboys, Warriors or Storm – probably for
about $500,000 a year – so he’ll learn absolutely nothing from being sacked by
the third club that he’s played for, and carry on as if nothing happened until
in another two years, we’ll be back right here again.
People have also drawn parallels with the trials and tribulations of my other favourite fuckwit, Robert Lui, who was let go by the Wests Tigers after he was found guilty of assaulting his pregnant girlfriend on numerous occasions, only to suffer the indignity of paying a $2000 fine (seriously) before getting snapped up by the Cowboys for a two-year contract for the meagre sum of $180,000 per season. Good ol' Robbie unfortunately spent the best part of one of those years on the sidelines following injury, lack of fitness and the small matter of ANOTHER FUCKING ASSAULT CHARGE ON HIS GIRLFRIEND.
We also have the cases of Greg Bird (smashing a schooner glass over his girlfriend's head), Nate Myles shitting in the corridor of his hotel after a night out, Billy Slater punching a bloke in an English pub, Anthony Watmough, Mitchell Pearce touching up a woman in a nightclub, Blake Ferguson's sexual assault, every fucking next guy drink driving...
It might just be a case of "bad timing, Toddles" as the NRL rap sheet starts to reach biblical proportions, and that might have been how the Sharkies saw it too. Make an example out of this bloke and send the message through to every fuckwit out there that it doesn't matter if you've won a premiership, scored the Dally M, represented your state and your country, that you can't just go around being a dickhead without facing some consequences. Each club can do what they want with the dickwits that continually fuck up, and this is what Cronulla have done. In my opinion, it's what the Cowboys should have done too. They probably should have also had second thoughts about Lui's comeback game being the designated "Women in League" round, but I'll leave that up to the stellar people at the North Queensland marketing department. I don't know how we got to the point where the punishment for ongoing violent crimes was a trip to a tropical paradise and given hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I don't know if it's much of a deterrent.
There's um... something on your chin.
What should be done with ol’ Todd
Carney? Shooting him into orbit was my
first thought... but before we find out exactly what happens when a person is launched beyond the stratosphere, we should actually look to the future a bit more seriously. I think it's safe to say that there’s not a whole lot going on behind those squinty eyes of his, so
playing footy is pretty much all he has going for him. His track record shows that he obviously doesn’t
appreciate the position that he’s in or the money that he earns, so let's take that
away from him. If someone is seriously
desperate to sign him, then put him on a contract for $80,000. Enforce a mental health assessment to see why
his mentality got stuck at 15 years old. His new club could become a trailblazer in actually trying to rehabilitate people, and not
pretend that they have “overcome their demons” simply because you need them to
play against the Bulldogs next weekend. Carney
also needs to actually want to accept support, want to keep playing and want to
stop fart-arsing around. He needs to
learn from his mistakes – mistakes that have so far cost him literally millions
of dollars. If he doesn't want to change, learn or improve, then it's up to the team management to deal with that and understand that he is a risk and accept the fact that he will most likely drag himself, the club and his team mates through a fair amount of shit (possibly literally). Again, he hasn't broken the law or hurt anyone. If he can stick to that, he might have a future.
Unless, of course, that Carney's firing wasn’t
entirely unplanned, and it was all part of his brilliant scheme to escape the ongoing drug
investigations at Cronulla HQ. Maybe Todd felt the need to uh… evacuate the
premises, so to speak.
In terms of the Sharks' reaction to all of this, Carney’s
Cronulla team-mates are full of support for the “fallen angel” but split as to
whether he’s a massive twat who deserved to be fired. One report claims that they enforced a media silence as they rallied around him by stating “Sharks players started arriving at Remondis
Stadium from 8am and were tight-lipped as they entered the ground.” I’m not surprised - I’d be tight-lipped
around Carney as well. He has
exceptional aim.
