Footballers are not always the brightest people. We’ve known this for some time. A formative life spent chasing a small ball across a large lawn for enough money to fund Jurassic Park is as conducive to high intellectualism and responsible decision making as the study of cardiopulmonary bypass techniques is to the execution of a Cruyff turn.

Doctors, scientists, panel show contestants, all sacrifice countless hours of playtime to accommodate the studying required to become the foremost mind in their field. Just as footballers sacrifice countless hours of bookish studyism in the pursuit of becoming really really good at P.E.

It’s odd then, that we repeatedly insist on holding them up as role models for a variety of life choices beyond their ability to run very fast and kick things accurately.

This week, the Shite-House Award for Media Exaggeration (S.H.A.M.E) went to Kyle Walker, the Tottenham & England defender with a striking resemblance to Al Pacino’s character in the 1990 movie Dick Tracy. Walker’s ‘crime’ was to be pictured on a night out during the off-season using a legal stimulant inhaled from a small balloon.

Nitrous Oxide, known as laughing gas, or ‘Hippy Crack’ to absolutely no one but by-line writers and people who still think ‘Wacky Baccy’ is common parlance, is a recreational drug mostly used in dentistry. It has become a festival mainstay in the last decade, being inhaled in small amounts for a disproportionate price through the conduit of a small child’s party apparatus. Its effects last about 45 seconds and can most accurately be described as standing up too fast just before noticing something extremely funny.

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After a week of the usual tabloid hackery, Walker’s former boss ‘Arry Redknapp, a man who lost his chance at the England job by being taken to court for a genuinely illegal offence (and subsequently acquitted) helpfully chimed in with his pearls of wisdom:

“It was a bad, bad picture. Drugs wasn’t part of our life when I was growing up, but when I see someone doing that, sniffing whatever that is, and apparently it can kill kids, that is a bad message to be sending out.’”

‘Arry’s eccentric approach to balloon inflation aside (I think we can all agree that sniffing balloons is a bad message to send to kids) his knowledge of laughing gas had evidently only that morning’s glance at the paper to go on. It’s intriguing to think, had he made any further enquires into the matter (see – knew what he was talking about) to what extent he’d still believe drugs played no part in his formative years.

Our relationship with alcohol and tobacco is different to our usual knee-jerk perception of drugs – of scratchy people who’ve wasted inside their own clothes –  because they are legal drugs. Much like laughing gas. As such they should surely all be afforded a similar status on the outrage scale, regardless of our braying media’s hunger for controversy. Walker did a legal thing, while on holiday from his job.

It’d be interesting to know whether Redknapp or the tabloid press think the photos that emerged from England’s pre-Euro 96 binge in Hong Kong – where the squad were snapped in soggy disarray after running the gauntlet of the famous ‘Dentist’s Chair’ – were a better or worse message to send to kids than an iPhone snap of a right back holding an inflatable bag.

Suffice to say there are a myriad of things worse than laughing gas, but there are also undoubtedly a myriad of things better too. This article isn’t for the purpose of extolling the virtues of getting ratted in various different ways (that’ll be another article, not for this site).

The main problem with the reaction to Walker’s indiscretion is that it’s a reaction disproportionately fired at sportsmen, and footballers predominantly. Why footballers should or shouldn’t be role models is an argument that has raged incessantly, and like all other aspects of football, fan opinion is usually as fickle as it’s tribalism. Manchester United fans may have felt passionately that John Terry’s unique crime of adultery was a clear arm-band-able offence. Until Ryan Giggs reminded them that a footballer should definitely only be judged by what he does with the balls at his feet.

The reactionary tub-thumper’s argument that any substantial figure in the public eye should hold themselves to a standard befitting of their potential influence is flawed when it’s applied fame-wide. To musicians or actors or writers or models. Few of these are so regularly tried by media for their failure to conform. They’re humoured and mocked, sure, but rarely chastised. There are few Daily Mail articles on the bad influence Keith Richards is setting young musicians.

Sportsmen should legitimately be flamed for letting down their team, or condition, but not our children. If anything children should know their heros are fallible. It’s the best life lesson they can learn.

I was brought up idolising Paul Gascoigne, as my father idolised George Best. By some amazing quirk of fate neither of us have ended up a raging alcoholic or a befuddled siege negotiator.

Sportsmen and women hold a curious place in our national appreciation. They’ve (usually) worked harder, and sacrificed more than your average celebrity to reach the level they have, and when they succeed we treat them like Gods. But if their saintly crown slips, and they fall, if but for a second, for the sordid temptations we while away our days with, they’re castigated like no other for destroying their cherished image.

They should be castigated for diving when they had a clear shot on goal. For not tracking back for Watford’s second goal. For wearing a snood when it’s barely cardigan weather and the Brazilian left back is wearing short sleeves. Not for failing to uphold the family values of the tabloid press.

There are many qualities to admire in footballers. But they’re not always the brightest people. We’ve known this for some time.

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