No one would want it replayed, but the AFL furore that made national news all week caused me to revisit, and wonder, how a front page story from a footy season seven years ago would have gone down today.
The themes were uncannily similar: women, men, violence and AFL football. The power of imagery. The power – and the risk - of protest.
This 2009 story didn't involve two AFL club presidents. Rather, it led to the entire North Melbourne playing list assembling publicly to say sorry.
When I first saw the amateur, four-minute video originally made for the in-house entertainment of those North players and their coaches of the day, I was shocked and sickened.
It was graphic, sexist, violent and topped off with a "move bitch, get out the way" rap soundtrack.
The film's central protagonist was a rubber rooster, Boris, whose adventures began when he literally put his pecker in a bird – depicted by a raw chicken carcass - in a supermarket. It featured condoms, intact and broken, and a mock sex scene on a pub toilet lid, no less.
The crescendo scenes started in the offices of North Melbourne's Arden Street headquarters and concluded in a car park where Boris, no longer enamoured but angry, pecked madly at his chick in a stand up fight.
After slamming the chicken against a wall, then on the ground, he jumped into a van and ran the battered body over. In the final scene Boris inspected the by now split-in-two carcass and his final act was putting his beak back inside it.
I'd been at The Age covering AFL footy for four years when I reported on the existence of this video and its source. I was 29 and still learning the intricacies of the real lay of the land in the game.
There was no doubt in my mind it was a story but I could not have predicted the consequences of writing it.
This included, variously: isolation from a footy club, as good as radio silence from AFL headquarters, piles of correspondence split between encouraging and outraged, and a written threat of physical harm to me personally that The Age insisted be put in the hands of Victoria Police.
Upon seeing the film (uploaded to YouTube, so freely available for those who knew it existed), the first thing I did was have a copy made.
By the time North Melbourne responded to me directly, the video had vanished from the net, which was unsurprising.
I'll never forget the first assessment of the video relayed to me by the AFL. A league spokesman of the day described it to me as "ridiculous".
In the first report I quoted the AFL's then corporate affairs boss, Brian Walsh. "Infantile and inappropriate" were the words he put to print.
Phil Cleary was also quoted in that story. He termed the video "disgracefully misogynist".
That week North Melbourne president James Brayshaw co-hosted Channel Nine's The Footy Show, as he did this past Wednesday night.
On April 8, 2009, Brayshaw and Garry Lyon opened the program with a summary of a story "revolving around a rubber rooster and a frozen chicken". They were Lyon's words, delivered with straight face and in entirely somber tone. The studio audience's response was to burst into loud laughter.
The same night, former North Melbourne captain Adam Simpson - then still playing - and his teammate Daniel Pratt told The Footy Show they were the most senior players involved in the film making.
Simpson and Pratt were each fined $5000. Other players were also reportedly fined but never identified. North's playing group donated $10,000 to an anti-domestic violence and sexual abuse charity and the club committed to long term education programs.
Behind the scenes I was isolated from this club. That's nothing new for a journalist reporting an inconvenient truth, but in this case North Melbourne had acknowledged a wrong.
How isolated?
Here's one blatant example, because others were much more nuanced: it was noted that year by producers of Channel Ten's now defunct Before the Game (I was a panelist on the show), that we'd scarcely had a North Melbourne guest that year. So they invited one. The message from the club came back that the player – I can't remember who was proposed – would only sit at the desk if I was removed from the desk for those segments. Thankfully our panel and producers make a group decision to decline North's offer.
Save for the time of the original events unfolding, I've never had a conversation with Simpson, now West Coast's coach, about the episode.
Mid-interview, he dropped me like a hot potato on ABC radio one Sunday when wounds must have still felt sore. In our respective professional capacities however, I'd describe our few interactions as nothing but professional. I hold no grudge.
Pratt actually produced what I'd regarded privately - until writing this - among the most impressive off-field acts I've experienced in footy. At an AFL function years ago he made it his business to seek me out. Pratt extended a hand and expressed sincere regret for his part in the ordeal.
If that video had been unearthed this week I'd like to think a number of key AFL and club figures, even broadcasters and scribes who were cynical about the seriousness of the film's content, would respond differently.
In footy that cynicism was expressed privately more than publicly.
I'd like to think times have changed for the better.
* Samantha Lane won a Quill award from the Melbourne Press Club in 2010 for her reporting on the North Melbourne video
