Roosters captain Mitchell Pearce is once again in the headlines for all the wrong reasons after being filmed attempting to kiss a girl, performing a lewd act on a dog and then urinating on a couch.
When are NRL players going to learn that they can’t act like morons in public because every single person with a smartphone is a potential journalist who could end their career.
They can not only easily capture video and pictures in an instant but they can also just as easily share it.
Unfortunately for Mitchell Pearce that’s exactly what happened when he was filmed heavily intoxicated on Australia Day as he tried to force a kiss on a young lady before grabbing her dog and simulating a sexual act.
Now if that wasn’t bad enough, Pearce topped off the incident by wetting himself on the young woman’s lounge.
Pearce knows the power of owning a smartphone and sharing content.
Earlier in the day he used that very device to capture images of his day on the harbour with his Roosters teammates and share them on Instagram.
He would have seen that more than 1,000 of his 32,000 Instagram followers liked those photos.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time Pearce has found himself in trouble following a nightclub incident two years ago.
The point here is that someone is always watching.
When we’re out in public we are surrounded not only by people with smartphones with cameras onboard but also CCTV and security cameras that are constantly monitoring the area.
On the same day news bulletins were playing the despicable Pearce video, other news stories involved a man being bashed in Mount Druitt and a man being run over by his neighbour.
What they all had in common was smartphone video and security camera footage that could show the incidents as they unfolded.
A lot of people are laying the blame on the person who shot the video of Pearce and his appalling behaviour.
It turns out this person saw the incident as an opportunity to capture it and then profit by it with reports the person received a total of $60,000 after selling it to a TV station and a newspaper.
Many would argue that Pearce was in a private residence and was entitled to his privacy.
There were quite a few people around at the time of the incident.
But somehow a right to privacy wasn’t the foremost though in Pearce’s head and blaming the person who shot the video is ludicrous.
And it wasn’t like the person was shooting the video without Pearce’s knowledge.
Judging by the footage, the smartphone would have been clearly visible to Pearce and everyone else in the room.
If Pearce didn’t act like a cretin, then there would have been nothing to film.
A gun without bullets doesn’t kill anyone but what Pearce did was like handing over a box of ammo.
The viral nature of the video and the way it is being shared on social media is only adding to Pearce’s woes.
There are already memes and plenty of people poking fun at Pearce so there would be genuine fears for his mental wellbeing.
I say fix the problem before you assign the blame. If Pearce has issues with alcohol then his club, the Sydney Roosters, has a duty of care to help him.
But he’s not the first player to be caught up in a scandal – or the last.
I’m sure there have been plenty of incidents in the past where players got up to some mischief.
The only difference is there was no one carrying carrying device with a full high definition camera with them everywhere they went and there was no internet to help them share.
Today it’s a completely different story – but a story today’s players should only know too well.
