COLLINGWOOD was a "laughing stock" and guilty of double standards for not suspending Alan Didak for his Queen’s Birthday binge, former Magpie coach and premiership captain Tony Shaw said last night.

Mick Malthouse’s predecessor, and the uncle of Magpies Heath and Rhyce Shaw, said that Didak, the reigning Magpie best and fairest, could not handle alcohol and should abstain from drinking it during football seasons.

"It looks like Alan, when he has too much to drink, he just doesn’t know how to handle it. He’s got to look at that issue now," Shaw said.

"It’s not about Alan the person, though, this is about having a culture . . . I heard someone on radio say that he didn’t do anything against the code of conduct.

"Well, what code of conduct allows a player to be out at 5 o’clock in the morning, drunk as a skunk, and he doesn’t know what decisions he’s making, and then he brings the club into disrepute?"

"I think our club now looks like a laughing stock just because of the lack of policy.

"If you talk to Alan Didak just in the street or just around football circles, you wouldn’t get a better bloke, but it just seems he’s got an issue with the grog and when it’s in he just doesn’t know how to handle it.

"He’s just got to look at now, I think, becoming nearly a clean nose through the whole footy year . . . during the year he’s got to pull his head in.

"I don’t think they’ve disciplined him enough from the start, but they had another opportunity and they’ve missed another opportunity here. "Someone’s going to get hurt and then they’ll say we weren’t strong enough."

Had Didak been a less important player, Shaw said, he would have been suspended for at least this weekend’s match. His comments were echoed by former Magpie forward Jarrod Molloy, who said the Didak decision was typical of Collingwood’s inconsistent response to poor player behaviour.

In May this year, 2007 debutants Shannon Cox and Brad Dick and the more experienced Leon Davis were banned from the seniors for one game for leaving the team’s hotel after a match in Adelaide.

The club said the trio had contravened the post-match instructions of coach Malthouse."The young kids must be thinking, ‘Oh well, what’s the cutoff, when do you not become a young kid . . . is it based on games, the calibre of the player you are or your ability as a player?’’’

Shaw said."Everyone’s saying it (Didak’s night out) was the mid-season break, but did they give an order to go out and say, ‘Everybody let your hair down, you can get as drunk as you want, just don’t get in trouble?’

"I just worry, was Eddie (McGuire) involved in this decision? I think he would have been . . . but the Eddie that I heard at the (2006) Copeland night when he went berserk for seven or eight minutes saying, ‘This would be cut out now, we’ve had enough, you’re getting paid a lot of money,’ is this all huff and bluff?

"You can’t make a statement like that in front of thousands of Collingwood supporters and stand there and get the applause and then not make the decision.

"You don’t want to sack an Alan Didak because he’s so good, but you’ve got to have some level of discipline and you can’t just vary (it) up and down."It’s the way the club’s gone. They’re making policy on the run, and sooner or later it’ll come back and bite you . . . This has been changed just because of the calibre of the player."

Shaw said that a one or two match ban, plus a $2000-$3000 fine would have been suitable punishment for Didak.

"It would only be based on him being out drunk 10 weeks out from the finals period — the last Copeland Trophy winner, a senior player, 10 weeks out (from finals) when they’ve had a great start to the year. All that can do is have a detrimental influence."

Molloy, a former teammate of Didak’s, now an assistant coach with the Oakleigh Chargers and an ABC broadcaster, was not surprised by Collingwood’s decision."

Malthouse has consistently shown that he will take it case by case. He won’t have a sweeping rule, so I’m not surprised that he’s playing because, as with (Ben) Johnson and (Chris) Tarrant last year, I think they’ll pick and choose the players (they punish) and the timing, so I’d say it was consistent with Collingwood, (that is, it’s) not inconsistent,"

Molloy said."I remember when Nick Davis was at Collingwood and he was never punished, and it did become an issue because he was constantly stepping out of place and not being punished and then some other players, who were doing less, if not equal, were getting punished for it . . . it can cause some derision within the group and in terms of the players and the coaching staff."