Australian Rugby League Player In Controversy Over Photo With Dog

by Glenn Davis | 11:35 am, November 4th, 2010

We’ve heard of some weird scandals, but this one might top them all. Joel Monaghan, a rugby player for Australia’s Canberra Raiders, might see his entire career path altered thanks to some incriminating photos of a “prank”…in which he apparently engaged in (or “simulated”) a sex act with a teammate’s dog.

While this entire story sounds like a prank, it unfortunately appears to be very much real. Monaghan even owned up to the humiliating stunt, and his manager released a lengthy statement. It reads in part:

Joel can’t blame anyone but himself for an act of stupidity that will haunt him for the rest of his life. Joel wants to make it clear that he was the one playing a prank on an absent team mate by simulating the act. There are no words of explanation that can be offered because none can be appropriate.

Monaghan will have to show an awful lot of that kind of contrition, because “simulated” or not, he meant to imply bestiality, and it’s one of the grosser things a prominent athlete has ever done. The statement also contained a bit of a shot at the person who leaked the photo on Twitter (“The fact that someone has sought to compound the situation further by the use of social media only adds to the trauma”), but the fat is there’s just no way to sympathize with Monaghan here.

People do stupid things when they’re drunk. It happens. But most stop short of this. As bad as Monaghan might feel, voluntarily taking a picture where it looks like you even might be engaging in some highly-inappropriate inter-species relations…how does that never strike you as a horrendous idea, no matter HOW drunk you are? Whatever winds up happening to Monaghan here, even if he is the “genuinely good person” his statement claims…he earned it.

[H/T Reddit]

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