In their premiership year of 1996, it wasn't unusual for the North Melbourne boys to discuss their post-game social arrangements in the last quarter. "We'd be five goals up," recalled a wistful Wayne Schwass. "And we'd be talking about where we're going to go out."

No sooner had the game ended, and the players dealt with their bruises and been debriefed by Denis Pagan, Wayne Carey would lead them into their boozy fifth quarter. It was just a question of venue. Post game drinking wasn't just for recreation's sake, either. It was a mechanism for team bonding.

The slightly tamer Carlton players of 20 years ago had similar arrangements. Often, they'd find a local pub near Princes Park. As with North, it was their adored Alpha male leader and champion key forward Stephen "Sticks" Kernahan, who would preside over the sessions, which were part of the post-match routine.

This kind of drinking - written and authorised by the captain - must seem like another country to the player of today. The 2015 model player is supposed to be a model player. Team rules aren't simply about when you kick to contests or switch play.

It follows that the Gold Coast Suns don't necessarily have a drinking problem. They have a leadership problem. The players whom the club suspended for this weekend's match weren't rubbed out for "drinking", per se, but for breaking "team protocols". The crime was failing to follow a directive, namely, not to drink in the coming days.

No one should be surprised that the Gold Coast are having issues with player behaviour/culture, as hinted when the Karmichael Hunt drug episode detonated. This is a club largely compromised of a) players from out of state living away from their families, b) younger players with few senior teammates and c) young men living in a semi-tropical holiday destination on the beach.

When you're living away from home, players become more dependent upon the club and their teammates for social and emotional support. If they couldn't drink with teammates, who would they drink with?

These players can't drink like the North and Carlton teams of two decades ago. It's unlikely they can powder their noses like a sizeable portion of the West Coast Eagles nearly a decade ago. Contemporary training regimes make that kind of excessive consumption almost impossible - save the odd metabolic freak - even if it was permitted.

The Suns suspensions have coincided with a parallel conversation about player enjoyment, over-training and whether life as an AFL player has turned into a large pile of spinach, which you have to eat for nutrition's sake.

Whilst the AFL is reviewing the illicit drugs policy and yielding to populist calls for a more punitive system, the industry is asking questions about how to handle the constant grind of a sport that demands more and tolerates less. Rarely is the obvious connection made between those two "problems".

Should we be so surprised that footballers, when given a laundry list of "don'ts", will rebel against these prohibitions - taking drugs when they think they can, going to Vegas on a dangerous bender in the off-season, drinking more than they should and so forth. Should we be surprised that they will seek a release - no matter how stupid - from all that training and self-denial.

If you make rules, people break them. Young people are particularly likely to break regulations imposed from above. Every club has a certain number of "wild horses" - players who like to run free, without much restraint. In some cases, they're also the ones - see Buddy Franklin - who win games and bring people to them.

When clubs ask themselves how to deal with these issues of alcohol, drugs and culture - while maintaining odious training regimes, disciplines and rigours - the first step should be to resist the notion that they're in loco parentis.

Players shouldn't be infantalised and the Nanny Club, like the over-reaching government, has its limits. Far from "taking away their youth," in some respects, the AFL industry prolongs it.

Contrary to the language used, footballers aren't children. They are young men, who are old enough to drive, to earn a mean wage of $280,000, to vote and start their own families, as many do.

Some are older than young adults. Dustin Fletcher is closer to my generation than his teammates. Brent Harvey is 37 next week. They are perfectly capable of making their own decisions. Or they should be.

In the Essendon saga, the club was forced to spend much time explaining the situation to parents, which, while unavoidable (and necessary), betrayed the fact that footballers aren't seen to be responsible for themselves and their welfare. It is quite different for an 18-year-old's parents to be briefed, quite another for Fletcher's, Brent Stanton's or Jobe Watson's.

I believe the most successful clubs - the ones that can negotiate with the messy thicket of modern challenges - will be those who recognise the limits of their power, and find the right players to lead their playing groups. It will not always be the best players who provide the premium leadership.

Melbourne University academic and drug/alcohol expert Dr John Fitzgerald, who co-authored the AFL's study of alcohol use among 582 players (83 percent) in 2007, argues that AFL players are comparable to the military and to police, in that they are subjected to enormous regulation and rigors. Fitzgerald - who found that a troublingly high proportion of AFL players engaged in risky drinking during the off-season - warns about "winding them up too tightly, so that they don't unwind like a tightly wound coil."

Studies of the military, Fitzgerald explained, showed that soldiers tended to binge drink and run wild when given the chance, because they were tightly coiled. "They drink to excess."

Fitzgerald reckoned players needed balanced lives, rather than ones that were obsessively focused on football, to ensure healthy choices were made. Some of the most well-adjusted leaders among AFL players were those who had interests outside of football, who had developed initiative beyond the club walls. "They aren't children under the control of parents. They're in a workplace."

It's more of workplace than the fun place Schwass knew. But it's not a creche, either.