Our culture of sporting excess

Kiwis admire their sporting men and women as heroes, and for years, this has also meant celebrating the robust ability of many of them to down the drink. But after several high-profile and embarrassing cases involving athletes and alcohol, many are beginning to question the place alcohol plays in our sporting culture. Could things be changing for the better? Keri Welham

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New Zealand Rugby League Chief Executive Jim Doyle is the first to acknowledge the downfalls of New Zealand sport’s boozing culture, and says both players and fans are an “at-risk” community. But he says league is hoping to lead the way as a responsible, progressive sport committed to building both great players and great people with sound communityminded values.

Working with the tagline ‘More than just a game’, Doyle’s team are refashioning their approach to building future stars. Camps for talented young players now feature a dual focus: improvement on the field and improvement off the field. Alcohol, Doyle says, has a negative impact on both.

New Zealand Cricket Chief Executive Justin Vaughan, a medical doctor, has seen a change in drinking culture since his days as an international cricketer in the 1990s.

“Our players play a lot more [and are] a lot more professional. It’s no longer acceptable for guys to go out and get a skinful the night before [a match].”

He says sometimes sports stars, such as cricket’s Jesse Ryder, fall short of public expectations through events fuelled by alcohol. This, Vaughan says, reflects the rest of the community where such incidents also befall other young men.

“If all cricket players were viceless individuals, that just wouldn’t connect with the community. Like it or not, they have a role model tag around them.

“I’d like to think Jesse will continue to improve, [but] there are no guarantees around that, absolutely not.”

In a 2007 study of 1,214 Kiwi sportspeople aged 18 and over, lead-authored by New Zealander Kerry O’Brien, academics from three Australasian universities found hazardous drinking behaviours differed across levels of sporting participation. Elite provincial sportspeople were most inclined to drinking in a hazardous way, followed by club/social sportspeople, and elite international sportspeople displayed the lowest levels of hazardous drinking.

The report referenced a 1998 study that illustrated higher rates of binge drinking among the leaders of sports teams than in sports team members themselves. In turn, sports team members were more likely to report binge drinking than non-athletes. The same 1998 research confirmed sportspeople experience significant pressure from team mates and coaches to drink together to increase team cohesion and bonding, while other research has suggested sportspeople use alcohol to cope with the stresses of competition and demands on their time and energy.

Another Australasian study led by O’Brien was released in 2008 and focused on identifying differences in the way male and female sportspeople drink. It found “coping motives” were a more significant predictor of hazardous drinking in females than males. Across both sexes, hazardous drinking among sportspeople at New Zealand universities was high, with 46.3 percent reporting binge drinking and 35 percent reporting frequent binge drinking.

There are abundant tales of highprofile sports stars breaking laws or moral codes, heaping embarrassment on their families and their sport. In 2007, when Western Force players Scott Fava and Richard Brown were fined $11,000 and $5,000 respectively after being found guilty of animal abuse during a team bonding session, Force coach John Mitchell said, “They won’t be the only boys or only team this year that has a problem with alcohol. It’s generally in most clubs.”

Mitchell himself was criticised for allowing a troublesome drinking culture to develop when he was All Blacks coach. Former hooker Anton Oliver, in a 2005 tell-all book, revealed the team’s binge drinking culture “spiralled dangerously out of control” when 2003 coach Mitchell was at the helm.

“We had several young men in the team, and I thought, ‘We are teaching them that this is what it is to be an All Black, to drink a lot of booze’.”

Oliver said he began to address his discomfort with the drinking culture when he received a letter from one of his young fans who had been too afraid to approach the drunken rugby star in a restaurant because “of my profane language and generally poor behaviour”.

Oliver writes that he burned with shame when he read the letter and carried it around with him for 3 months.

Other research by O’Brien and colleagues in Australia found that young people think their friends probably drink significantly more than themselves and that sports stars probably drink significantly less. Overestimating the amount another person drinks has been shown to result in heavier drinking. Thus, in this study, young people illustrate that they may be more influenced by their perceptions of how much their friends drink.

The Australian Drug Foundation is attempting to sever the ties between sports clubs and a binge-drinking culture with its Good Sports programme, launched in 2000. The initiative offers three levels of accreditation to reflect how advanced a club is with its practices and policies involving alcohol. Clubs are assessed on factors such as how well their staff enforce liquor laws, provision of safe transport options and whether they have worked to establish funding streams other than grants from the alcohol industry. It is hoped the programme will show community sport can survive without booze.

Clubs with accreditation have lowered their rates of risky drinking, violence and drink-driving. Contrary to the concerns of many sports clubs, which worry they will not survive without alcohol sponsorship, the head of the Good Sports programme, Carolyn Watts, says breaking the link between alcohol and sport increases revenue.

Watts told the Sydney Morning Herald that, if a club has a boozy culture, the rest of the community don’t want to join in.

‘’Women don’t want to come along to those clubs; they don’t want to bring their children and have them surrounded by that sort of behaviour, and good players don’t want to go to clubs that have a boozy culture because it shows they don’t take their sport seriously.”

Research shows that, once a sports club reaches level 2 accreditation in the Good Sports programme, club membership increases on average by 42 percent, and the number of women visiting the club grows by 24 percent.

Watts says changing a culture that associates sporting celebrations with alcohol can be achieved by simple measures such as offering food, ensuring soft drinks and low-alcohol beer are available and abolishing all-you-candrink nights and alcohol as prizes.

“The clubs that have problems generally have a boozy culture dominated by a certain group of men, and that culture just doesn’t work any more.’’

New Zealand Rugby League has launched a programme with a similar focus. Jim Doyle and his team are rolling out a nationwide club development programme where each of the 138 affiliate clubs will be assessed, ranked and given red, amber or green status. One of the criteria for reaching green accreditation, the most desirable status, will be banning alcohol on the sideline. As an incentive, green clubs will get gear such as tackle bags, cones and balls. Where many football grounds have goalpost bolsters emblazoned with alcohol brands, green clubs will be given bolsters to wrap around their goalposts that say ‘Ease up on the drink’. The bolsters are one initiative that has grown out of a 3-year agreement between NZRL and the Alcohol Advisory Council (ALAC).

“For a culture change, it takes years,” Doyle says. “In some parts of the country [these] moves are more popular, in others, less popular.”

Porirua’s St George Rugby League Club has already banned alcohol on the field and in the changing rooms at its home ground, Cannons Creek Park. St George has also stopped hosting rowdy after-match functions in its local bar following every game, choosing instead to host just a handful of select social events throughout the season. Some individuals still go for an aftermatch drink, but the tradition of clubendorsed weekly drinking sessions has been broken. The club hasn’t yet been assessed for green accreditation.

Chair Taima Fagaloa says the sideline alcohol ban was implemented from the start of the 2010 season, and at first, visiting teams were unsure of whether the club was serious.

“We found we had to be consistent with the approaches and the messages,” Fagaloa says. “We knew this was going to take time to implement, and we had to ensure we were seen to be encouraging and not dictatorial. Eventually, we could see less presence of alcohol post-match.”