The reason I go back to the Ched Evans story has nothing to do with football. It has everything to do with the whole argument of role models and impressionable minds, which I find unbearably sanctimonious and nannying.

For whatever it’s worth, my take on the Evans business is that I am happy to assume that the court served justice fairly, and that the five-year sentence was appropriate. There is no question to my mind that Evans should be free to play football or do whatever else he wishes, when those five years are over.

The saccharine tabloid world of second chances, apologies, and public confession is entirely irrelevant to me. What matters is that we uphold the social contract that is our commitment that justice had better be left to a court of law. In Evans’ case, that court decided that his due was five years in prison.

Anything beyond that commitment is essentially vigilantism, which is usually premised on a popular belief that the state’s legal agencies are inadequate.

There are situations here and there where that may be true, and where popular law enforcement may be the only option. But that’s such a dark and murky territory that it would be mad to go anywhere near it. Certainly people in Britain and Malta have no need to do so.

Which leaves us with the role model question. In Evans’ case it seemed that many questioned the sanity of putting a convicted rapist in the limelight of public adulation that is the world of professional football. Surely the message would be that rape is forgivable?

Let me first get something out of the way. What if Evans were a politician? Would it not then be misguided to re-elect him into a position of power? My answers to that are ‘Probably’ and ‘It’s a different matter altogether’, conjoined by a ‘but’.

The process of electing a politician has nothing to do with justice. Rather, it is about trust. People will trust and choose as their representatives whoever they will, for whatever reason. In Evans’ case I doubt most would trust him, given what he did.

I for one probably wouldn’t. And there can be no faulting that, simply because trust is where political choice begins and ends.

It is for the same reason that we care about the private lives of politicians, inasmuch as they may reflect on their judgement in public matters. That judgement in turn affects us. Footballers operate on an entirely different logic. We don’t need to be able to trust them, simply because their sense of judgement is unlikely to affect public affairs. What matters is their ability to score goals or stop their opponents from doing so.

On to the role model business. There are two things to say here. The first assumes that the notion of role models is a sane one. I reject that assumption. But let me for the sake of argument accept it for a little while.

It would be wrong to put a rapist in a position where he could serve as a role model. Thing is, Evans is not just a rapist. He is a convicted rapist. If we must, the lesson there is not that rapists can change their underwear and get on with their other business. Rather, it is that they first have to spend a lot of time in prison. In other words, Evans is top-scoring proof that rape is a serious criminal offence.

The notion of role models is dreadfully nannying. It does away with the figure of the rational individual

Besides, the role model theory works both ways. Take George Best. He ran riot, swore like a trooper, drank until there really was no tomorrow, and at one point was handed a prison sentence for drunk driving and assaulting a police officer.

As expected, his career suffered tremendously. But Best was also one of the greatest footballers of all time, infinitely more stellar than any Evans as it happens.

One could plausibly argue that he served as the best role-model-to-avoid one could possibly imagine. Millions of people watched as his dissolute lifestyle ate away at his talent. Now, of course, there will have been some who decided they wanted to live and die like Bestie. Many more others will have understood the horror of genius cut short. Which was my point, that the role model theory works both ways.

If we accepted it, that is. I suggest we don’t, because it is mostly rubbish. The notion of role models is dreadfully nannying. It does away with the figure of the rational individual (surely the cornerstone of a free and innovative society) and replaces it with that of a mindless mimic.

Presumably the only rationality it preserves is the exalted one of rent-seeking types who appoint themselves as arbiters of what their intellectual inferiors (us, that is) should be free to imitate.

Role model theory assumes that people generally have no standards of morality and behaviour other than those which they glean off their idols. Which is, of course, nonsense. I adore Van Gogh but I wasn’t thinking of cutting my ear off and sending it to a prostitute any time soon. Nor was I planning to spend the weekend with rent boys à la Francis Bacon.

To ban Van Gogh and Bacon on account of their role model status would be even stupider. Sean Connery once said that “it is not the worst thing” to slap a woman every now and again, provided one did it with an open hand. I know, and most people know, that that was Connery being silly and nasty. We can still enjoy the early Bonds without slapping women around.

The point is that I refuse to accept a morality-by-celebrity. That’s because I haven’t given up on the formidable weapon that is the free and inquiring mind.

Standards of behaviour, ethics and morality are not products that are associated with celebrities by the advertising industry. And if they are, heaven help us.

Only we know it won’t, because the first person to try the role model defence was Adam. And, on that occasion, God wasn’t impressed.

mafalzon@hotmail.com