'I didn't do it': Even sport's repeat offenders swear it was a case of mistaken identity

This was published 10 months ago


"It's not me," said Manly's Martin Taupau when asked about how he belted a Parramatta player in the head.

"That's not me," said Rooster Jared Waerea-Hargreaves after passing Taupau (but still trailing Sam Burgess) for record loyalty credits on frequent visits to the NRL judiciary.

Illustration: Simon Letch

Illustration: Simon LetchCredit:

Charged with attempting DIY on-field ophthalmic surgery, the AFL's most recent eye-gouger Toby Greene was adamant. "That's not me."

A few years ago, poor old Damian Keogh, the ex-basketball champ who had become Cronulla Sharks chairman, stood down after being caught with cocaine. Being a chairman, Keogh used more words. "People who know me know this isn't me," he said. "It's not what I'm about."


I've been doing a count of people who are not them and it now seems that there are more people who are not them than who are them. Accusing your hands, your forearm, your nose or any other treacherous body part of not being you has gone global.

Just this week, the Cleveland Browns' Myles Garrett, who had just put the New York Jets' quarterback Trevor Siemian out for the season with rough play, explained: "I know who I am and the guys within these walls know who I am and that's not me." It wasn't him who produced a headbutt and a bodyslam in the same play. It just looked a lot like him.

It's tempting to mock this, so mock it we shall. I blame Foo. When I was growing up and my brother or I would deny responsibility for the broken window lying in shards between us and our football, our mum would say, "So who did it? Foo?"

This might be one of those sayings that has passed out of usage due to political correctness gone sane, but it always springs to my mind when a sportsperson disengages their self from the act that their body committed. Who concussed that guy? Foo? Who gouged that eyeball? Foo? Who got high as a kite down at Woolloomooloo? Old mate Foo is leading one hell of a life.

But I suspect there's something more interesting at work than simply overgrown boys trying to dodge responsibility for their acts. "That's not me" must be differentiated from the traditional formulation, "That's not me", which points to mistaken identity, as in, it wasn't me, you got the wrong guy. For example, when Penrith's Dylan Edwards recently said "It wasn't me" about someone in a sex video, he actually meant it wasn't him, in the Bart Simpson sense of: "It wasn't me, I wasn't there, I didn't do it."

The revolutionary new meaning of "That's not me" points to a kind of slipped identity where the person on the videotape doing the bad (or good) thing might have the same name and DNA as the person denying it, but is, in some profound existential way, not the same human being.

It is a thing. I've sat with professional sportspeople in front of footage of their greatest moments and their engagement with the picture is not how you and I see ourselves in family snaps. They do not respond with, "Yeah, I got that one out of the middle" or "I saw the gap, stepped off my right foot and took it." Instead, professionals very often slide out of a subjective to an objective point of view.

It's literally as if they are watching someone else. With one cricketer, I took him through some famous footage and he gazed in silent wonder, admitting that he couldn't remember doing those things but was transfixed by watching. I stopped the video, and he asked me to keep it rolling. Why? "I want to see what happens next," he said. It was not that he didn't know what happened. It was that his way of identifying with the events was from outside his own body, as a spectator, and he was as gripped by suspense, lost in the moment, as if watching it for the first time.

It is argued by sports psychologists that attaining this out-of-body sense is not a sign of mental impairment or profound immaturity, but a necessary condition for high performance. One of the biblical texts of sports psychology, Timothy Gallwey's "The Inner Game of Golf", reveals the moment he discovered the poison of "self-instructional thoughts", what he called "Self 1" talking to "Self 2".


"Self 1 thought he knew all about how to play and was supervising Self 2, the one who had to hit the ball." Self 1 mostly destroyed Self 2's confidence through constant criticism. The key to enjoyment and better performance, Gallwey found, was for Self 1 simply to observe and record Self 2's actions, like a detached (quasi-Buddhist) spectator, rather than berate and judge and live and die with Self 2's emotional ups and downs.

So let's assume that Self 1, watching Self 2 play the game, is thinking, "That's not me." There was a West Indian batsman a few years back, Carlisle Best, who took this to an extreme. While an unfulfilled talent on the cricket field, Best was a champion spectator of his own actions. Opposition players said that when Best faced bowlers in Test cricket, he made the most close-up live commentary imaginable. David Boon recalled: "It was as if someone had brought a radio to the middle. He'd be facing up ... and he'd be chattering away like 'and Best faces up to Alderman, who's at the top of his mark. He's one of the world's best swing bowlers ... he comes in with his fluent and powerful run-up, he lets it go ... and Best lets it go outside off stump. You should have hit that for four, Carlisle Best'. "

When Best hit a boundary, fielders would hear: "And Best rocks back and pulls it for four. Craig McDermott must surely know by now, you can't be bowling there to Carlisle Best." Curtly Ambrose was said to speak similarly, commentating on catches to Carl Hooper at second slip before the batsman had even nicked the ball.

If the intensity of elite sport is indeed an out-of-body experience, should we then question our normal ideas of personal responsibility? If a player doesn"t know how they hit a ball or bamboozled the defence or performed some astonishing move, if they see their high points as being possessed by some superior spirit, can the same not be said for their low points?

Take it a step further. Low points of sport, like trips and swinging arms and eye gouges and hair pulls, must be punished to set an example. But if "It wasn't me", how can punishment work as a deterrent? Equally, watching an act of genius on a sporting field is not to be an effective incentive for doing it again. If it wasn't me, how can either punishing or rewarding me have any impact on my future behaviour?

Sam Burgess is one who at least acknowledges the way he plays the game.

Sam Burgess is one who at least acknowledges the way he plays the game.Credit:Getty

Perhaps I'm giving Sam Burgess more credit than he is due, but I think this is kind of what he was getting at this week when he said that people "who have no feel for the game" shouldn't be making judgments about footballers' adverse actions.

Maybe that hand that was pulling an opponent's hair wasn't Sam's. Maybe it was the hand of rugby league itself, just grabbing whatever was in reach, pulling a random pullable object.

Maybe it was some reptile-brain instinct. It wasn't me. It was something that possessed my hand in that moment, and if you played rugby league, you would know precisely what I mean.


But Burgess, amid pointing the finger at everyone else for everything else, did bring himself to accept responsibility. For a guy who's been dragged across the mat for blaming others for his own actions, Burgess was that rare sportsman who actually identifies with himself.

Asked if he will change his game and be less aggressive, Burgess dropped what can only be described as a truth bomb.

"No," he said. "That's me."

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