Carney gets bum's rush
* By Andrew Webster
* From: The Daily Telegraph
* January 08, 2010 12:00AM
THE melodic thwack of leather on willow might consume our thoughts in these warmer months, but rugby league's shadow is never far away.
The predicament of reformed Roosters bad boy Todd Carney allegedly involved in the burning of a man's "buttocks, scrotum and upper thighs" has set the bar as high as the Burj Dubai tower for bizarre off-field indiscretions, merely days into the new decade.
Channel 7 ran wild with this story and they told us a man suffered the burns early on New Year's Day while on holiday at Airlie Beach. And serial villain Carney had allegedly lit the fuse.
An unidentified witness named "Jenny" saw the man running from the Peninsula Resort desperately trying to locate an ambulance.
"He had no bum cheek left," she exclaimed. "It was just all burned off."
Oh, and the victim appeared to have his eyebrows shaved off.
Gauging by the tone in reporter Robert Ovadia's voice, it was all very serious. Either that or he was doing his piece to camera from outside the White House.
The word out of Rooster Land is that this is nothing more than New Year's high jinks gone awry and the victim is only concerned about his scorched nether regions. Carney was in Airlie with a handful of mates for four days, presumably because he's banned from his home town of Goulburn after one grog-fuelled mistake too many.
Now this may surprise some readers but the shaving of a male friend's eyebrows - usually while he sleeps - is a time-honoured ploy on such road trips.
The lighting of his buttocks and scrotum, however, is a risky, old-school party manoeuvre that requires the co-operation of the owner of the buttocks and scrotum and his consumption of a late-night kebab laden with too much chilli sauce. It's all fun and games until someone is shooting off flames like a drag car at Eastern Creek at 300km/h.
The Roosters wouldn't see the humorous side of this given their new pledge of a "New Attitude, New Beginning". After a year in the wilderness, Carney's lifeline came with several behavioural clauses, but one of those stipulations wasn't an absolute alcohol ban. He just isn't allowed to drink excessively.
When the club decides his punishment - if any - next week, they are bound to highlight in no uncertain terms that no matter how minor the misdemeanour, it will always be amplified by a thousand because of who he is.
That's as far as it should go. If it is a sin to shave the eyebrows off a close friend before setting their arse on fire in the name of New Year's hilarity, then we should all give it away and become priests.
