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3AW Radio has edited this editorial.

The problem for the spin doctors at the St Kilda Football Club is that, when there are still more questions than answers in this murky viral environment, a scandal involving your captain and other players is not going to just disappear. One press conference starring an indignant, ‘I was ambushed by a mate’, Nick Reiwoldt won’t do it.

It won’t miraculously disappear like the Christmas tree on Twelfth Night. No matter how many times you go to court. And have your QC dismiss a 17-year-old girl as immature or ‘simply stupid’.

No matter how many times you stand on the courthouse steps and threaten fire and brimstone and vow to hound the teenager financially for 15 years for damages.

Club vice president Ross Levin branded the girl as a malicious troublemaker and said the players intended to sue for damages for breach of copyright, breach of confidence, mental distress and trespass.

While they’re at it: Will Nick Reiwoldt sue teammate Sam Gilbert for breach of confidence for taking that ‘surprise’ picture of him naked?

And if anyone should sue for mental distress surely it should be a teenage girl taken sexual advantage of by grown men, allegedly impregnated by one of them, then tossed aside like a used jockstrap.

Suddenly described as ‘the St Kilda schoolgirl stalker’ and reportedly told in Adelaide when she tried to confront her footy hero bedmate ‘piss off, you slag’ or words to that effect.

Does anybody wonder that she now seeks revenge in the only way she knows?

The club goes back into court today to try to get the a Federal Court judge not only to make an injunction permanent against further publication of the offending photos.

The club asked the judge to order the girl to destroy any pictures she allegedly took from Gilbert’s computer. And, in this world that Marshall McLuhan predicted had become a ‘global village’ (and that was back in the 1960s before public emails and  Facebook and Twitter),  the club demands that destruction include ‘without limitation, copies stored on an internet account or website, computer hard drive, memory stick, MP3 device, camera phone or any electronic repository or format’.

Even Judge Shane Marshall found that proposal ‘fairly draconian’.

They must be dreaming if they think that even a win there will end it. As I said yesterday: It’s like trying to catch an amoeba in a colander.

Last night I was at a dinner party. Of the eight people there four had the Riewold and Nick Del Santo pics on their iPhones. A court order will fix that?

Seeing that this is all about those photos, let’s go back and look at how they were taken and how this angry, jilted teenage girl got hold of them.

(And remember she is a girl, although Riewoldt’s manager, Ricky Nixon, deliberately refers to her in interviews as ‘that woman’. A bit like President Clinton saying to reporters ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’ until he realised how belittling that sounded and how angry he would make his jilted lover and added ‘Miss Lewinsky’.)

Riewoldt says Gilbert snapped the unauthorised pic of him naked as he got out of bed. Sleeps in the nude like most people.

Look at the picture. As thousands of you have. What do you notice, apart from the fact that Riewoldt has waxed his pubic area. And, perhaps, that he is well-endowed.

Any normal man, sprung like that, would instinctively, inherently, try to cover his genitals. Riewold does not. His hands are on each side of his penis. As if posing.

And a shirtless Zac Dawson, who has been kept under the radar, is invading Riewoldt’s space, grinning (a little self-consciously) at the snapper and holding what looks like a blue condom wrapper only centimetres from his skipper’s kipper.

Then there’s the other photo of Dal Santo, presumably taken by ‘artist’ Gilbert. Apparently the Bill Henson of the footy set. The club hasn’t even attempted to explain this one.

Dal Santo is captured, with his penis exposed, playing with himself.

Is this what grown men do on footy trips? Is this the ‘bonding’ they are always rabbiting on about?

The official story is that Riewoldt asked Gilbert to delete the picture (at least of him) and was assured it had been. Gilbert not only kept the pics, he uploaded them on to his laptop – from which the girl allegedly ‘stole them’.

How did she know those photos were there? Did Gilbert give her a late night ‘show and tell’?

They say: every picture tells a story. The story here is the picture trail. How they got from a hotel room (and possibly more from a Grand Final party house in Melbourne) into the hands of a 17-year-old schoolgirl and then on to Facebook and out to the world.

These few photos could be the least of St Kilda’s worries. And some other clubs will have some nervous nellies checking the internet although they’ve all known about it for some time. I’ve seen internet chat about Riewoldt’s Brazilian going back as far as November 30.

There are now allegations about AFL footballers and videos showing cocaine use. Some big names from big clubs being bandied around.

Much of it is unsubstantiated but this email gives you a general idea:

"Great work with your recent blog Derryn, but let me assure you, this is only the tip of the iceberg ... During a Grand Final after party this year, a number of players from different clubs were filmed in very compromising positions."

Footnote: As we head into Christmas Eve, one thing really hit me. And it was a comment from that 17-year-old to a media pack when she landed at Tullamarine Airport last night. You can quote Andy Warhol and scoff about her ‘15 minutes of fame’.

But what sort of Christmas is this kid going to have? Sure, she’s been a willing partner in these sexual shenanigans which seemed to germinate when some of her footy heroes visited a 16-year-old’s school.

She sounded tough and brave last night but as you hoe into your Christmas ham tomorrow surrounded by family I wonder how brave she’ll be. Especially after this comment:

‘My parents have just left and they told me that I'm never going to speak to them again. I can't even explain how I'm feeling right now.’

You pay a big price when you take on a footy club or the AFL in this town.

Questions, questions questions

3AW's Derryn Hinch blogs on the St Kilda naked image scandal in a way only he could. Read the version 3AW has chosen to publish here, which deals with some of the issues in this story no-one else has yet covered.

'I have never met her'

VIDEO: Nick Riewoldt expresses his disappointment in Sam Gilbert for not deleting an image of him in the nude taken a year ago in Miami which has ended up in the public domain.

• Naked Saints grow wings

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