Dog in the Doghouse: Tales of a Wangaratta Drunk

Let me get this straight. Steve Johnson’s punishment is that he’ll start in the reserves and have to earn a senior spot? Really? Did they tell Will Slade about this? Genius idea guys, make the loose cannon earn his place rather than playing him every week regardless of form (the Lovett-Murray precedent) or off-field discretions, (the Cousins statute).

How must the other VFL players feel? The ‘leadership group’, whatever the Hell that is, figures that the worst thing they can do to ‘Dog’ Johnson is to essentially make him a VFL player. I mean why not just change his name to Paul Koulouriotis and be done with it.

The fact is he was drunk Christmas Eve, but it was in Wangaratta, so isn’t that punishment enough? Maybe they should have made him play for Wangaratta for the first five rounds, or even just visit other shit-hole country towns around Australia for 5 weeks, “Swan Hill this week Johnno, then, strap in, we’re off to Yarram!”

Perhaps the punishment should have been more in-house, like forcing him to live with Brad Ottens for a year and watch as ‘Sex-fingers’ sleeps with every girl that Johnson ever meets; you can’t get anymore ‘in-house’ than that.

Let’s see, what else? Cameron Mooney’s tackling dummy? Bomber Thompson’s new love interest? Tom Lonergan’s kidney donor? Paul Chapman’s hair donour? Trade him to Essendon? Whoops, tried that.

Or, how about everyone at the club directing their ‘ugly/virgin/blood-nut’ jokes away from usual suspect Cameron Ling and towards Steve Johnson for the season? I’m sure Cameron could do with the respite, and he could even get in on the act too, after all, I’m sure he’s heard ‘em all. Johnson would even be forced to go on ‘The Footy Show’ in Linga’s place; enduring that awful rabble of a TV show and seeing Sam Newman’s love-spuds once a week would be enough to scare anyone straight.