Fair To Say

No one is quite saying it out in public, but the euphemism of lack of “preparation” that the Adelaide Crows are using to explain the club suspension of their star defender Graham “Stiffy” Johncock may have a hidden explanation: the players have gotten sick of his chain smoking. Have the players laid down the law to Stiffy: either the fags or the Crows?

In this increasingly scientific world of professional sports, there isn’t much room for the chain smoker any more. In darts it’s practically a requirement, but given that a pot belly to rest your beer glass on is also de rigeur in pro darts it’s arguable about whether that qualifies as a real sport. Cricketers right up to Shane Warne have carried on the tradition from the Benson & Hedges days when many players were actually employed to be cigarette sellers, such as the notorious puffer Doug Walters, although the media circus that followed Warne included many back page scandal photos of Warnie sucking on a Stuyvesant. Many sportspeople smoke marijuana on a casual basis, but I daresay none of them partake as much as do habitual tobacco smokers, of which Johncock is one.

It’s amazing that Johncock has lasted this long, actually. Australian football is one of the more aerobically demanding sports, and there’s no room for galloping gasometers in the modern game. Next to sleek machines like Andrew McLeod and brutal beasts like Nathan Bock in the Adelaide backline, Johncock has been able to get away with his reduced running capacity by relying on his undeniable skill and ballwinning ability, as well as his defensive capabilities in shutting down opposition small forwards. He has been hidden, effectively, by being placed in a role where he doesn’t have to bust his tar-filled lungs sprinting up and down the ground like so many of his team mates. If my guess is correct, those team mates have had a gutful and they’re lifting the smokescreen.

The fans are none the wiser about what the actual problem is. Some point to his cousin Peter Burgoyne copping a similar penalty this week from the Power for drinking at local nightclubs. Others say he forgot to tell the club about a fanily funeral in Port Lincoln recently which conflicted with a Crows function. Speculation surrounds Johncock’s private life, with rumours of “personal issues” which are affecting his onfield demeanour run by Michaelangelo Rucci in the Adelaide Advertiser.

Perhaps the strongest evidence for the tobacco theory came in quotes from Neil Craig run by Sportal.com.au:

“It’s a combination of form and Graham probably losing focus on the things which are really important for our club and for him to play good footy,” he said.

“That’s tied up with training, that’s tied up with recovery, it’s tied up with lifestyle away from the footy club.”

“Nothing disastrous, but not to a level which is conducive to playing at this level.”

“Graham had received a lot of feedback on that so it wasn’t just a one-off. What the playing group are now saying to Graham is we need to see a response in those areas, we know you can come up to those standards because we’ve seen that before.”

That doesn’t sound to me like personal or family problems, it sounds like a smoking habit gone crazy.

Originally the suspension was supposed to be for one match, but the latest is that the Crow players have been given the power to choose when he returns, with never being one possibility. Reading between the lines of that article, it sounds like he’s been given a chance before after pleadings by the leadership group, but then succumbed to whatever it is that is troubling him.

It’s fascinating that the Crows are not making the real issue explicit. It’s not as if there’s a huge stigma to smoking if that is what it is, even in these politically correct times, so I’m not sure why Adelaide is tiptoeing around the problem. This story will keep smouldering on until Stiffy stubs it out.