Although Nowadays, with the Way the Miss USA's Girls Have Gone Wild, the Real Challenge Is Keeping Them Off Your D___.

Elite footballers are young, rich and often act as if they are above the law, but they are not invincible. A high-flying AFL premiership player learned that the hard way last spring when he nearly died in an American hospital. . . .

On the record, players and club officials go along with the club's cryptic explanation dismissing the incident as a routine medical matter. Off it, insiders have told friends and relatives their man overdosed.

It fits a pattern of misbehaviour by AFL players and a tendency for clubs to cover up for those considered too valuable to lose — at the expense, sometimes, of lesser lights axed to protect sponsorships and the game's lucrative brand image.

The spectre of substance abuse hangs over the Las Vegas episode as it hangs over other strange incidents — the arrest, for instance, of Geelong's Steve Johnson in Wangaratta this year after worried householders called police when he staggered into their yard late at night and allegedly tried to drink from a bottle of suntan oil on their patio. . . .

A former coach says some clubs are quietly reviving the practice of having a few drinks after a game, just like the old days.

But it's hard for some to go back after walking the wild side. One All-Australian player who made too much of his days in the sun boasted to a club official: "You haven't lived until you've had (a beauty queen) snort coke off your d---."

That's true. It really, really is.