Australian Footballer Sets Dwarf On Fire, Gives League CEO The Giggles

Here is Australian Football League CEO Andrew Demetriou demonstrating exactly now not to react to news that one of his league's players set a dwarf entertainer on fire at a team party.

The incident occurred during St. Kilda's celebration of Mad Monday, a league-wide day of debauchery which previously brought us a dude getting blown by a dog. St. Kilda hired a popular dwarf entertainer named Blake Johnston to attend its Mad Monday party, at which midfielder Clinton Jones decided to set Johnston on fire. Jones has since issued an apology:

I sincerely apologise to Mr Johnston and have done so personally today. As a playing group we were engaged in end of season activities which in hindsight were quite childish. I made an error of judgement in including Mr Johnston in the activity.

I am embarrassed if this has caused angst and certainly had no intention to cause any harm to anyone, including the St Kilda Football Club and its members.

Demetriou, after claiming that he only giggled at the news on an episode of Talking Footy because he thought he was being put on by the show's hosts, also issued a long and rather bumbling apology to :

After I found out that it was true, it's just reprehensible. I was flabbergasted because in the scheme of things, that was one thing I could have never predicted we would deal with.

[...]

So when I was told that, for some reason that I could never possibly fathom, that there were people walking around with lighters lighting the back of each others' shirts, I just couldn't believe that.

I just couldn't believe that could be in this day and age. We spend our whole lives teaching children not to play with matches.

[...]

I don't understand, what the purpose of having lighters, we are talking about fire here, I don't get that.

Demeitrou should probably just stop talking about the incident at this point. In the meantime, Australian football should really work on getting its shit together.

[ The Age]

h/t Bill