It's time someone called out this whole Billy Brownless/Garry Lyon saga for what it is.
Some have come close, but let's not mince words any longer. This is not merely a salacious non-story. It is the nadir of a grubby grain of sports journalism that serves as the mouthpiece for an industry — Australian Rules Football — that has a long way to go before it outruns the accusations of racism, homophobia and misogyny that it claims it is committed to leaving in its wake.
These former AFL footballers and sports media colleagues have fallen out very publicly over the past few months. The cause of this is a reported affair between Lyon and Brownless' ex-wife, Nicky.
Lyon has since quit his media duties and sought treatment for a mental illness, while much of the sympathy, especially from those in the AFL community, has been directed towards Brownless.
This sympathy hit its peak last week when Brownless participated in an interview conducted by fellow The Footy Show panellists James Brayshaw and Sam Newman. Brayshaw and Newman did their best to cast this as an act of journalistic integrity: after all, why should their colleagues Lyon and Brownless be spared the same hard-hitting treatment they'd subject anyone else to?
But this is not Insiders. This is The Footy Show — a program that among other achievements has enshrined Newman as a cult figure despite numerous documented sexist and homophobic remarks over the years. Not to mention Brownless himself, a man who a few months ago, despite being a White Ribbon ambassador, was heard making a sexist, abusive remark during a junior football club function.
To be fair, there are ethical questions around marital fidelity — which include, by the way, those concerning societal double standards regarding infidelity enacted by a man or by a woman — that bear public attention. But it is doubtful that they justify dragging painful personal sagas into the glare of a media spotlight; or that a program as puerile as The Footy Show is the forum for them.
In any case, these questions about marital fidelity are not even relevant here. Lyon and Nicky Brownless were separated from their spouses when the reported relationship took place. What we are actually talking about then is two consenting, single adults engaged in a relationship. There is no public good in the airing of this story, nor in all likelihood is any good served to the private