As Australia began to forgive disgraced cricketers Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith in the wake of the South African ball-tampering saga, something curious happened when their teammate David Warner faced the press, apologising for his actions.
They simply couldn’t, and wouldn’t, forgive him.
Backlash was furious, Warner and his wife Candice facing criticism for every decision they made the minute they landed in Sydney last Thursday night. In the eyes of the public, they couldn’t do anything right.
But AFLW footballer Hannah Mouncey wants tell you a different story.
In a piece written for news.com.au, Mouncey writes of a moment David and Candice Warner reached out to her as she was at the centre of a national debate about trans-issues and sport.
“When I was going through all the issues I faced with the AFL (as a trans player, I’ve been fighting to be able to play in the AFLW), there was a small number of people who I hadn’t yet met who reached out to offer their absolute support,” she wrote, in article published on Tuesday.
“One was former Hawthorn player Russell Greene, another was an AFLW player I will keep anonymous, and the last of these people were Candice and David Warner.”
Mouncey said the Warners offered their support out of nothing but good will.
“No one made them do that, there was no doing it for appearances and it was clearly entirely genuine. It’s a side people don’t get to see of anyone when they’re competing.
“If people are going to judge someone, they need to take into account a lot more than one mistake on the cricket field or whether the way they play Test cricket fits in with how spectators on the couch would go about it.”
Because in the kind of outrage culture we live in, sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that we’re not the sum total of our mistakes.
Can we choose what we are outraged about when it comes to sport?
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The Quicky
Top Comments
Perhaps we could get a few people to vouch for having seen him rescue a kitten from a tree a few years ago too?
The media were not going to walk away without blood so they settled on Warner. Why isn't Mamamia bringing into the conversation the incident in previous weeks of the bullying of Candice re her personal life before David Warner. As the journalist for The New Daily pointed out such actions by the South Africans was worse than ball tampering. Step up Mamamia and do some investigating.
...Then, in the spirit of balanced reporting, they'd also need to also investigate whether Warner himself has ever said anything foul about the partner or children of any of his sporting opponents in the past. I daresay he wouldn't come out smelling of roses there, as he has an established reputation as a notorious sledger.
They've been saying the treatment of Candice is no good since the pictures of people with SBW masks first surfaced.
The media treated Warner no differently to Smith or Bancroft. They asked them all almost the exact same questions, Smith and Bancroft answered the best they could, Warner did his level best to answer nothing.
He's upset that he got caught, not contrite that he cheated. The best way he could have stuck it to the South African fans was to ignore them and win in spite of it. Instead, he cheated.