Cancel the Wedding. Get Some Dignity.

“Too much to forgive,” says a friend of Isaac Heeney’s fiancée, according to the latest reports. If that reflects how Steffie Waters feels, I can understand it. What I struggle with is the familiar expectation that a woman should spend weeks weighing up whether her own peace is worth more than a relationship that has become a public bloody circus.

Heeney was among five Swans players suspended for breaching club standards. There is also an ongoing police investigation, with no charges laid. Those allegations remain unproven. The club’s disciplinary action, however, is a fact—and its standards were apparently more than these professional adults could manage.

Professional football demands discipline. Training schedules, dietary requirements, recovery sessions, team meetings. An entire organisation devoted to helping grown men make good decisions. Yet somehow, once the football is put away, basic good judgment becomes an advanced elective.

Then comes the aftermath. The damage control. The worried conversations about a promising career. The sympathetic discussion of what he stands to lose. Marvellous. Can we spare five minutes for the woman whose engagement has become something strangers discuss over breakfast?

I have very little patience for the idea that she should now help rescue the situation. She agreed to marry a man. She did not apply to become the human shield in front of his reputation.

And if she stays simply because he’s handsome, famous or exceptionally good at football, well; I think that would mean she gets what she deserves. You’re choosing a husband, love, not filling a vacancy in your fantasy team. 

We are far too impressed by sporting talent. Give a man a guernsey and suddenly people start explaining away behaviour they wouldn’t tolerate from the bloke next door. 

I’ve had three ex-husbands. I understand that leaving isn’t always simple, and I won’t pretend an Instagram photograph tells us what is happening privately. But I’ve also learnt that the years you’ve already spent with someone are gone. 

If I were in a relationship that had reached “too much to forgive,” the wedding would be off. I wouldn’t be waiting for another beautifully worded apology or a convincing performance of regret. I’d be making arrangements for my own future.

He can manage his career with his club, his advisers and whoever else is paid to sort it out.

She has a life to get on with. I hope she chooses it.

Rob Lowe Has Broken My Heart. He Doesn’t Know It Yet.

Rob Lowe was asked to name his best on-screen kiss, and he answered immediately: Nastassja Kinski. They kissed in The Hotel New Hampshire back in 1984. Apparently she was so beautiful that he was nervous.

I have taken this news with the dignity you would expect from a woman whose in her sixties. I’m going to lie down for a bit.

Of course, Nastassja Kinski is gorgeous. I’ve seen her. I’m not disputing his eyesight. What I object to is Rob Lowe still remembering a kiss from 1984 while I’ve spent the intervening forty-two years being available in a purely theoretical sense.

The really annoying part is that he’s still gorgeous himself. Rob Lowe has somehow kept the face and the hair. It feels excessive. There ought to be a limit. Boy... He ought to try being a woman. There is no such thing as a gorgeous, craggy woman!

He’s been married for decades, I’m happily spoken for, and the kiss happened on a film set before many people reading this were born. None of which makes my disappointment any less real. I didn’t ask for an explanation of who his favourite was. I was quite content not knowing.

So congratulations, Nastassja. You won a competition you probably didn’t realise was still running. As for Rob, I’ll forgive him eventually.

Probably by lunchtime.

He Rated Her Looks. What A Dick

Coco Pickering, 22, working at Commonwealth Bank has apparently become the subject of a LinkedIn post calling her “beautiful”. And now corporate Australia is arguing about it, because a young woman should be able to go to work without a man publicly assessing her appearance.

LinkedIn is meant to be a professional platform. People use it to talk about jobs, skills, promotions and the occasional leadership lesson discovered while making toast. Yet somehow this man looked at a young bank worker and decided the professional contribution he had to make was a comment on her looks.

Perhaps he thought he was being nice. That’s often the excuse, isn’t it? It was a compliment. But a compliment is usually for the person receiving it. A public post about a woman’s appearance invites everyone else to look at her through his eyes. She didn’t go to work to become content for his LinkedIn audience.

I’m sure she has a job to do and ambitions of her own. None of those appears in the headline. What does appear is her age, where she works and a man’s opinion of her face. That’s a fairly neat demonstration of the problem.

And before someone says we can’t say anything nice anymore: yes, we can. Tell a colleague she handled a difficult customer well. Praise her work. Thank her for helping you. There are hundreds of pleasant things to say about a woman at work that don’t sound like you’ve wandered in from a dating app.

The man may be surprised by the reaction. I’m more surprised that he pressed post without once thinking, “Would I write this about a 22-year-old male bank worker?”

Probably not. Which tells us exactly how professional the post was.

Good for her! What a sleazy old pig.

Grand Final...

Yesterday I didn't get to blog. Normally, I wouldn't have.  But yesterday, it was the AFL Grand Final.

It wasn't overly exciting... Well, I guess it was if you consider the score. Brisbane won by a goal; or there abouts. But they won with about 2 minutes on the clock. It was a fantastic game.

Still, last year at least we had a Victorian club playing in it. Geelong. But that wasn't overly exciting either. It was my team, and we lost.

I have been to 5 losing and 4 winning grand finals.

I'll admit; winning is better.

Why Can’t They Just Let Her Leave?

A woman decides she has had enough. Perhaps she says it aloud. Perhaps she quietly starts putting money aside, looking for somewhere to live, imagining a future in which she can shut her own front door and breathe.

And sometimes, the man who claims to love her decides she isn't allowed to have that future.

Why can’t he just let her go? It is such a simple question. People separate every day. It hurts. They argue over the house, the dog and whose turn it is to explain things to the children. Then, somehow, they carry on. Yet some men would rather kill their partner than accept that she has a life beyond them.

In Australia, 32 women were killed by a current or former intimate partner in 2024–25. That is about one woman every 11 days. By 19 September this year, a separate public tally had recorded 51 women killed by violence in 2026. Those 51 deaths are not all partner killings, and we should never blur the numbers to make a point. The real figures are dreadful enough.

I keep coming back to the word love. We use it in headlines about these deaths as though it explains something. He loved her too much. He couldn’t bear to lose her. He was devastated when she left. But a woman is not a possession someone has lost. She is a person who made a decision.

For some violent men, that decision means a loss of control. The threats, the checking of her phone, the rules about where she goes and whom she sees may have been there long before she tried to leave. Violence is more common where a man believes he owns his partner or has the right to make her decisions.

Then we tell women to leave, as if walking out is the end of the danger. Of course, women should be able to leave. They should also be able to survive doing it. A man who threatens to kill his partner needs to be taken seriously while she is still alive to be protected.

And the rest of us have a part in this. When a mate talks about his ex as though she owes him her time, her location or another chance, don’t laugh along. When he calls constant surveillance “caring”, say what it is. When a woman says she is frightened, believe her before her photograph appears beneath a headline.

I don’t want another solemn announcement that “something must be done” after another woman has died. I want her to be able to pack a bag, walk away and get on with the ordinary business of living.

Why can’t they just let her be?  :(