GOTTA love this city. In April, they held the NSW district netball championships at Meadowbank, and after six hours of play in the pouring rain, officials started announcing the winners over the loudspeaker. Most teams, sodden and exhausted, just quietly came up and received their trophies. Not the victorious under-15 Ryde-Eastwood girls, who hit the stage in force as their captain commandeered the microphone.

"Thank you, thank you all," she said. "We'd just like to thank everybody and I'd also like to say … that I'm probably the prettiest girl in the team." Great hilarity all round. Gotta love this city! Just not soccer

Why, members of the academy, I really don't know what to say! I see that in [an early 2008] edition of FourFourTwo magazine, your humble correspondent has been given the "Soccer Knocker of the year award for 2007" by SBS's Simon Hill. Thank you, thank you all! No, no, really, you are too kind. If I may just say one thing though, Simon, it is this: I am offended by the word "soccer", do you hear me! My good man, it is "FOOTBALL", got it? Football! Football! You may choose to call it "soccer" in your blinkered, insular, xenophobic, neanderthal, knuckle-dragging, egg-balled way, but we worldly sophisticates who understand how important these things are insist that everyone calls it football, even if the result is tired confusion in a nation that already has three other, much better, football codes.

Still, apart from all that, thank you, thank you all! Time for lemonade

At least, following last year's late-night league atrocities, Brad Fittler was able to put his finger on the essence of the problem. "The public seems to really enjoy reading about negativity," he said, "and that's what is selling papers and TV ratings … The players have got to learn that and understand that. I think it's a bit of a blight on society these days."

Exactly! When are you lot going to wake up to yourselves, you rotten mongrel dogs? Huh? Huh? HUH?!?! Well, Brad and I, and the players, are sick of it, do you hear? Sick! Sick! SICK! Oh, you want a bit more do you? Want to know just what effect your absurd interest is having on players? Tell 'em, Brad.

"They'll have to make a more appropriate time if they want to go and have a beer. It's really curbed the behaviour of players … we've nearly got to be angels these days."

See?!? Most of them are angels. But that's not good enough for you, is it? Just let them get involved in one, stinkin', tiny, little gunfight on the streets of the Cross at 4am and you want to read about it and talk about it. You go on as if it is some kind of big deal, as if most normal people haven't, at one time in their life, been involved in a gunfight. Sheesh! Your hypocrisy makes us SICK! Come on, Brad, let's go and have a lemonade. The blame game

At the conclusion of a long drinking session in early February, Matt Henjak, so badly king-hit a seated and defenceless teammate that he broke his jaw. Now, you and I might think that a fair punishment for that act - when judged against the background of his extremely troubled track record - would be to simply tear up his contract. You and I would say, wouldn't we, that the problem here, Matt, is that what you did was in character, not out of character, and the only way forward for us as a sporting institution, and you as a man, is for us to part company. Matt, you have no one to blame but yourself and for you it is game over.

All fair? Henjak's manager, Greg Keenan, didn't think so. Tell the folks where you think the blame lies, Greg, and don't hold back.

"The Western Force," he said, "are in a unique position where every player they contract comes from other states. That means that social supports a player would usually have in his home town aren't available, and as a result the responsibility to provide those supports rests with the Force."

See? Perfect, isn't it? It was the Western Force management wot dunnit, yer honour! It was they who got Henjak to Perth, away from his family, and therefore they who had to ensure that he didn't go around breaking other people's jaws!

Meanwhile, Henjak's uncle, the former league player and 2009 Brisbane Broncos coach Ivan Henjak, thought the responsibility lay with older players who established the heavy-drinking and high-jinks culture that his innocent nephew fell into. Enough already.

Although I know I risk being whipped with a wet lettuce by Mat Rogers for being an old fogey who just doesn't understand the mores of modern rugby, I still can't help but feel that the primary responsibility for the whole disaster lies with Henjak himself. And that it is precisely the kind of justifications offered by Keenan and Uncle Ivan that lie at the base of so many football atrocities. Those naughty boys

For too long in this country, soccer players have enjoyed a cleanskin reputation. Whereas AFL, rugby league and rugby union players are constantly making appalling headlines for atrocious behaviour towards police, women and cute, furry animals, soccer players have somehow gotten away just about scot-free. Indeed, if it weren't for Mark Bosnich having been, in his prime, a one-man band of badboydom, their record would be just about lilywhite.

Mercifully, wonderfully, last February the football players came back to the pack and can now hang their heads in shame with the other codes. I refer, of course, to the press release from Perth Glory FC. I quote: "Perth Glory Football Club can confirm that players Hayden Foxe and David Tarka were issued with infringement notices on Saturday morning [February 2, 2008] by Queensland Police while holidaying on the Gold Coast. Foxe received an infringement for 'disobeying a red light signal' while crossing the road and has paid a $30 fine. Tarka received an infringement for 'being drunk in a public place'."

CEO Scott Gooch said: "We are disappointed at any transgression by our players and will be investigating fully. Perth Glory sets high standards in relation to off-field conduct and has a stringent code of conduct to which all players must abide. Once all the facts are gathered, the club will take appropriate action if deemed necessary."

I know, I know, jaywalking and having too much to drink might not count for a lot in the atrocity stakes, but it is a beginning, and I have every confidence those soccer thugs can build on it if they really put their minds to it. Just a little a teaser

This week, we're going to discuss the worst job in sport. I'll go first and then you try to beat it. I say the worst of the worst is being a "teaser stallion". Having only just heard of it myself, I'm still reeling. In thoroughbred breeding, see, the big deal is to get prize stallions to impregnate as many prize mares as possible. Speed is of the essence. There is no time for romance, flowers, chocolates or even foreplay. And this is where the teaser stallion comes into play.

Always up for it, this lowly runt of a beast is brought into proximity with the hindquarters of the mare when she is on heat, and if she is in the mood and reacts appropriately, the poor brute of a teaser stallion is led away, to be replaced by the prize stallion, who then does the business. At this point, Mr Prize Stallion, Mr Studley Do-Right, Stud-to-beat-all-Studs then gets led away for a fine feed and a bit of a rub down followed by a nice sleep until he is up for it once more. Our friend Teaser, though? He is taken to the hindquarters of another mare, to get her in the mood. Of course, she may well kick out with her hind legs, in which case it is only Teaser's ribs that cop it. And that is Teaser's whole life! You wouldn't do it to a Turk on Anzac Day, would you? Try to top that. Topping the teaser

After TFF's item about "teaser stallions" in thoroughbred breeding, whose role it is to get the mares in the mood before the prize stallion does the business, I received many emails, of which this is my favourite:

Dear TFF,

Bear a thought for the poor guy who has to lead the teaser horse to the mare and then drag him away BEFORE coitus becomes uninterruptible. I did this job on a quarter horse stud. The job also involved "guiding". This is where to protect the very valuable horse's pizzle as he rears frantically to enter the mare, some complete idiot - in this case me - is there to reach under and between two half-tonne, sweaty, aroused animals and ensure that aforementioned expensive pizzle gets where it is meant to, and is not bent or damaged. And the only protective equipment you get is a pair of rubber gloves …

Stephen Callaghan. 2008: A BAD YEAR FOR …

Melbourne Storm. Won everything in sight bar the game that truly counted.

Geelong. Ditto.

Barry Hall. His reputation plummeted as quickly as Brent Staker did after Hall's punch. But what a punch!

Andrew Symonds. Had a decent year with the bat and ball, and a very ordinary year with everything else, including getting his teammates well offside.

Alan Lewis. Few thought they'd bought a ticket to the Alan Lewis Show when they went to November's Bledisloe Cup match in Hong Kong, but that's what they saw. The Irish ref took over.

Matthew Hayden. "Matt the Bat" faded before our eyes.

Greg Bird/Todd Carney. The NRL bad boys just couldn't keep out of trouble.

Craig Bellamy. The best rugby league coach around couldn't get the Storm or NSW home.

Nick D'Arcy. No sooner had he been selected for Australia's Olympic team than he attacked former Olympic swimmer Simon Cowley and everything went to hell - starting with Cowley's face.

WHAT THEY SAID - RUGBY SPECIAL

Stirling Mortlock's pre-game response to Greg Martin's question as to what the Wallabies' approach to playing the French would be: "It'll be cohesion and combinations … and to play what's in front of us, or beside us, or what's behind us." Strange days, indeed.

Chris Latham explains his early motivation to take up serious rugby, which led to a 78-Test career: "I honestly went to play with Randwick [as a teenager] to get out of a country town to meet people to get out on the piss with and have a good time."

Springboks coach Peter De Villiers opens up: "Structure in rugby came from Australia, which doesn't have a lot of rugby talent … the more talent you have, the less structure there should be. We have a massive amount of talent in South Africa and I want to give them the freedom to express themselves. I want my players to be the best they can be on and off the field."

De Villiers again: "I was appointed to make rugby decisions. I promised to be honest and focus on rugby. We never said it was going to be a perfect world. If you look at the Bible, Joseph started out in the pit and ended up in the palace. There was a moerse lot of kak [excrement] in between."

French winger Alexis Palisson was asked if he had ever heard of - excuse, for once, the third person - Peter FitzSimons, who in the mid-'80s played at his Brive club. Palisson replied: "Pffft. I wasn't even born." Sigh.