“Why I'm happy Todd Carney did a wee into his own mouth”.

If you feel like urinating into your mouth at any point today, please, feel free. Go ahead. Wee away …

NRL player Todd Carney did and he’s now living with the blanket media coverage consequences of his party trick.

Yesterday a photo of Carney, 28, star footballer for the Cronulla Sharks urinating into his own mouth went seriously viral. Carney was ‘bubbling’ because in this world of Instagram, overpaid footballers and excessive alcohol-intake, OF COURSE there is a formal term for weeing in one’s own orifices.

Definition: ‘Bubbling’; a gravity-defying stunt whereby a man urinates into the air and aims the stream into his mouth.

Immediately after the photo appeared in countless Twitter feeds across Australia, Carney was dumped. Fired. His five-year $3 million contract with the Cronulla Sharks NRL team has been torn up.

Along with the rest of Australia, I have to admit I’ve had several conversations today – mostly with women to whom ‘bubbling’ isn’t something we’d heard of before – about the physical feat of the task. We’ve stared at the photo with furrowed brows asking some big questions: “So, um, how does he aim it into, um …”,  “Why on earth would you …” “That’s good flow. He must’ve been busting …”

But the giggly and fascinating only lasts so long.

This morning the debate has moved on from shouts of ‘Oh eww!’ and ‘Why would you DO that?” in response to the offending photograph (which you can choose to view here), to whether Carney’s punishment is reasonable. Should this “bubbling” be dismissed as a harmless one-off incident? Or is peeing in one’s own mouth an embarrassing enough stunt to warrant sacking?

On top of all this, we have to consider that Carney’s bubbling photo is not his first expedition into the world of offensive social media publicity. Carney has been de-registered and booted off two teams and appears not to have learnt his lesson after multiple charges including drink driving and vandalism.

So this isn’t an isolated dickhead offence.

But in the midst of all the last 24 hours of outrage, I found myself with a singular and strange feeling towards Carney. And that was: Thank you Todd Carney.

Thank you for showing my children that there’s zero-tolerance for A-grade grubs. Thank you for showing my children that if they behave like dickheads – they’ll be turfed.

I don’t care if Carney is league’s answer to Bindi Irwin. If you’re a blockhead, it’s over. End of story.

Surely, this is a locker-room trick that men have attempted for many years. And I suspect this incident will only fuel those conquests amongst other dickheads in locker rooms everywhere; get ready for ‘bubbling’ stunts to go viral, bubbling may well be the next milking or planking.

When I say thank you, I’m not saying that I condone the stunt –  but I am not going to pretend that it offends or shocks me. Sadly, I have come to expect nothing less of an NRL star (which is a shame because there are many fine men who play league).

Kids watch rugby league. Kids support the teams. Kids know the players by name, by number, by ability, by reputation. And this weekend, child fans of the Cronulla Sharks will be asking their parents, “where’s Todd Carney?”

My son is only a few years away from being that kid. He watches league with his dad. They talk about scores, adding up the numbers and express dismay over the referees’ decisions.

For a lot of parents, this week will be about a very different conversation to that lovely one we have every week in front of the telly. But believe it or not – it’s a good one. Because we get to tell our kids this week that when you do something stupid, it won’t just go away.

The message? If you act like an idiot, it’s likely you’ll get caught and there will be consequences.

For the rest of your life – your school, your family, your career, your mates. It’ll change everything.

So watch yourself. (And, incidentally, watch your willy or you may end up with no job, an embarrassed family, friends who don’t respect you and the taste of wee in your mouth).

Do you agree with the zero-tolerance approach? Do you think sports players who behave badly should be given another chance?