I guess I’m like everybody else who loves their sport. I reckon the Nick D’Arcy saga has stretched on so long and with the latest episode being his dumping from the current World Championships team, I’m now actually feeling sorry for the bloke.

As I’ve stated before, Simon Cowley is the real victim in all this as he continues to heal from the original incident 12 months ago.

However D’Arcy has now been run off yet another team and Swimming Australia is justifying its position by stating it’s the first time they’ve punished him for bringing the sport of swimming into disrepute.

But everyone knows all this because it’s already been stated ad nauseam in every paper in the land. You’d have to be living on Mars to avoid this issue.

From a swimmer’s point of view I don’t know how D’Arcy can keep on training. His results at the recent National Champs were unbelievably great, considering the distraction of his court sentencing just a few days after the meet.

There’s absolutely no doubting his enormous talent, focus and dedication to his training. But how can you keep that training intensity going indefinitely with no light at the end of a very, very long tunnel.

D’Arcy’s next chance to make a real Australian team arrives this time next year at the Commonwealth Games Trials. Day in day out bashing up and down a pool for around 300 laps a day for the next 12 months, hoping that Swimming Australia believe you’re rehabilitated and forgiven enough to select. Imagine that!

I’d need assurances from the halls of power at Swimming Australia that I’m now eligible to make the New Delhi Games Team. Or maybe the Australian Commonwealth Games Association has to punish D’Arcy too!

You can’t have all the other sporting bodies in Australia banning the bloke and the ACGA missing out, can you? Anything ‘Big Brother AOC’ can do, we at the ACGA can do better, we’ll make it the next two Commonwealth Games in which to ban the blighter!!’ That’ll make the papers for the tired old ACGA,.

His non-selection for this current team took me completely by surprise. I believed missing the Beijing Olympics was penalty enough and seeing as D’Arcy hasn’t reoffended I thought it was game on. Not to be however.

If Nick D’Arcy can stick to his training over the next 12 months then with his obvious swimming talent we could see the rise of a great Australian sporting champion.

DA