The Mental Health Racket, Sportsman’s Edition

Liz Cambage, a basketball person who plays for the Las Vegas Aces, has withdrawn from the Opals team for the Olympics, citing, inevitably, ‘mental health’ reasons, after it was claimed she had misbehaved, by getting into a fight with a Nigerian basketball person during what is apparently known as a ‘scrimmage’, and that she had broken team quarantine rules.

There are rumours that Liz called the Nigerian player she had a punch on with a ‘nigger’. Or perhaps it was ‘nigga’, given that in the Australian way of speeching there is no difference in pronunciation between the two. Or perhaps she meant to say ‘you bloody Nigerian!’ but it came out as ‘Niggerian’. Given her father is Nigerian it all sounds unlikely but certainly fun to speculate on. As for her breaking quarantine, it is rumoured that the purpose was for sexy romps with large male basketball persons.

It’s not just women athletes, but big burly Australian Rules footballers also suffer from “mental health” issues rather a lot, and when a club announces that one has retired or taken time off for mental health, you can ordinarily assume it is one, several, or all of these problems:

1. gambling
2. drugs
3. drinking
4. getting caught rooting a teammate’s girlfriend (in a toilet)

Former Collingwood/Brisbane/Collingwood player Dayne Beams famously suffered from a lot of mental health issues, and it was an open secret that it was #1 above, and that he had gotten loans/lines of credit from the sort of people who send bikie gang members to club training sessions as an impassive stony reminder of your obligation to pay the money back.

Now retired (‘mental health’ reasons, fully paid out contract for two years), poor Dayne is still playing the mental health card, in the oddest of places. While attempting to book a venue for his wife’s birthday Dayne felt he did not receive satisfactory service and launched a vindictive Instagramming and reviewing crusade against the establishment, citing the crushing effect on his mental health of not being bowed and scraped to:

Another former Collingwood player, now at Footscray, Adam Treloar, is also known to tell anyone who’ll listen “I’m struggling with my mental health” but in his case it’s likely not one of the Big Four reasons, but that he is just a weirdo.

It’s all very sad that these grown and well paid men suffer so much psychological trauma for bad life choices and at the drop of a hat and even sadder that they feel comfortable telling the world about it.