Yet another slew of NRL footballers' misadventures with alcohol seeped through the headlines this week.

To fans, they may be something that goes with the territory of working class sport: young blokes filling in time waiting to go into battle.

But in a wider context, the players' role model status and their apparent habitual problems with alcohol have focused attention on the nexus between NSW trading hours, street violence, alcohol advertising and personal irresponsibility.

Mooted moves for bans on advertising or punitive or socially beneficial changes have been made to look ridiculous in the very place where such reforms could take place: the NSW Parliament.

Premier Barry O'Farrell publicly humiliated his Finance Minister Greg Pearce after he was so drunk during a late-night sitting that he was unable to vote. But O'Farrell kept him in the cabinet.

In other arenas, players of less status receive harsher penalties. Here's a police blotter on the NRL week:

South Sydney Rabbitohs player George Burgess was banned for two games and fined $10,000 after being charged over a smashed car window in Cairns. He is scheduled to pay for the cost of the damage, undergo an anger management program and commit to a further 50 hours' community work.

The Canberra Raiders star Blake Ferguson was dumped from the NSW Blues team for next week's State of Origin clash after he was charged with indecent assault following an incident at a Cronulla nightclub last Sunday. The 23-year-old winger is alleged to have groped a 23-year-old woman, who slapped him after the incident at 2230 Restaurant and Bar in Cronulla Mall about 10.30pm.

North Queensland Cowboys prop James Tamou was charged with drink-driving and driving while unlicensed in Townsville last week. The NRL's risibly named Integrity Unit at first recommended a two-match suspension, partly because missing the Origin game would cost Tamou $30,000. But public outcry saw an additional $20,000 fine mooted.

But if the NRL players are misbehaving, some of their leaders are no angels.

Mal Meninga, the Queensland Maroons coach, did very little to set the standard expected when he was told to leave the Down Under Bar and Grill in Brisbane's central business district on Wednesday morning.

He was attending a traditional team bonding celebration - the birthdays of Queensland players Billy Slater and Cameron Smith, as well as the recent arrival of Johnathan Thurston's baby daughter - when he went behind the bar to ask for a beer.

Meninga went on the attack after the Integrity Unit hurriedly cleared him, saying his transgression should not be linked with other incidents. ''That's the whole issue, isn't it, about what happened to me and trying to lump it in with all the bad behaviour that is happening in the game, not only ours but other sports,'' Meninga said.

''It's disappointing … because I haven't been charged with anything, there was no confrontation. I wasn't intoxicated, I wasn't assisted from the bar, I left on my own accord with a couple of fellas who tried to protest but at the end of the day I did what I thought was the right thing to do. When national TV uses it as a lead story this morning, I find it quite ludicrous when you have got some more important things in this world.''

Footage accompanying reports about Meninga showed Maroons players happily attending a book signing in Brisbane. XXXX signs - a Maroons sponsor - littered the scene.

Speaking ahead of the National Alliance for Action on Alcohol forum on Wednesday, West Australia Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said the culture of alcohol was particularly troubling in codes such as rugby league because of its popularity among children. He said the saturation of alcohol advertising in sport was also concerning and labelled the government's response to the issue as ''twisted logic''.

''We've seen everyone up in arms about gambling advertising in sport,'' he said. ''But no police officer has ever been assaulted on the streets because the perpetrator had a gambling addiction. We can't link 40 per cent of all domestic violence to gambling.''

Of course, rugby league's special relationship with alcohol is not new.

In 1992, Jim Lawson, a former professor at the University of NSW School of Public Health and Community Medicine, co-authored a report, Prodigious alcohol consumption by Australian rugby league footballers. It had been undertaken after players were involved in a rash of violent and drink-driving incidents.

He recalls meeting players at a clubhouse midweek to discuss research and then watching them walk out the door to go drinking. ''And I mean drinking. It was nothing for these blokes to down 10 to 15 schooners at a session,'' he says. ''Of course, we recommended better information, more education. Clubs listened politely, nodded their heads and did nothing. Looking back, we were so naive. Drinking was part of rugby league - and rugby union - culture, a way to gain acceptance. Strangely it's almost absent in Australian rules and soccer.''

Lawson believes the entwining of alcohol and violence has skyrocketed in the three decades since he did the report.

''What's changed? It's so evident - opening hours have increased opportunity,'' he says. ''They're drinking longer, up later. The problems of NRL players with alcohol have become emblematic of what's gone wrong on a far wider scale.''

Sport is not the only field of endeavour where main players are being put in public stocks over alcohol abuse.

A parliamentary inquiry will consider if NSW MPs should be banned from drinking alcohol at work following Pearce's drunken display during a late-night parliamentary sitting when he was too drunk to vote. The NSW upper house has passed a motion asking the procedures committee to inquire into and report on alcohol consumption by MPs during parliamentary sitting hours.

The inquiry has been given three months to investigate MP drinking habits and is expected to report by September 27. It will consider if a code of conduct is needed and if the ''pairing'' system is being abused to excuse drunk MPs.

Pearce has taken a month off work on sick leave after being accused of being drunk in Parliament three weeks ago. He has admitted being exhausted and stressed on the night and this was ''compounded'' by the effects of alcohol.