You or we might be in jail under similar circumstances, but the kid glove treatment was given to St. George Illawarra Dragons players Tim Lafai and Siliva Havili.
Ignoring the sage and age-old advice that alcohol and rugby players is a bad combination, the two were involved in an adult beverage-fueled brawl last year in a Wollongong nightclub.
They appeared in Wollongong Local Court, where they pled guilty to reduced charges of common assault in the case of Havili and offensive content in the case of Lafai. They received a 12-month good behaviour probation.
Apparently, the altercation at the Fever nightclub were the result of envy on the part of reserve grade teammates over the status of the two players on the Dragons’ senior list.
For those who follow international sports news, incidents of this sort had a much poorer outcome for former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, where an innocuous nightclub brawl resulted in Hernandez murdering one of the antagonists, being acquitted of murder charges in the deaths of two others, and then eventually committing suicide in the jail cell where he was serving a life sentence for the first killing.
Those of us who remember our younger days when everything meant so much more are fortunate to have reached the point in our lives where we can enjoy our libations without the passion that often accompanied us in our youths.
