Footballers have allegedly been snorting cocaine? I'm shocked and appalled.

They've allegedly been buying it for others? I'm shocked and appalled.

They've allegedly been doing it on Mad Monday? On an end-of-season "booze cruise"? And a buck's party? I'm shocked and appalled.

Actually, the most shocking and appalling part of this cocaine scandal that's taken a tight grip on rugby league and rugby union - and, hold tight, AFL, don't start beating your just chest yet - is how shocked and appalled so many seem to be.

Are we all really so naive, or still living in a Disney fantasy land where every player drinks coconut water and meditates twice a day?

You can just picture the boys at the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission, standing around the office, drinking coffee, patting each other on the back, having pinched a stack of players for getting on the rack.

We're talking about some high-profile nostrils here, too.

Code-hopper Karmichael Hunt had been earmarked as a future "poster boy" of Australian rugby. Titans players Greg Bird and Dave Taylor are Kangaroo and Origin representatives.

If the growing speculation about two former Queensland Origin legends also being involved proves to be correct, it will escalate this story into the stratosphere. At this point, it's important to note that the allegations against the players are unproven and we haven't heard their side of the story.

Andrew Johns and Wendell Sailor are surely giggling into their coconut waters as we speak, remembering all those pundits who reckoned they were the only ones who dabbled in party drugs.

We'll let you in on a dirty little secret: the drug of choice among many footballers is cocaine. Has been for years. And that's because the drug of choice among young men in their 20s and 30s is also cocaine.

Analyse it all you want. This isn't a "too much time, too much money" thing. It's a modern-day Australia thing, especially in the big cities.

Don't think so? Next time you're in the men's bathroom at an inner-city pub, check out the white powdery residue on top of the cistern, or the stainless steel toilet-roll holder.

It's not Ajax. Actually, some of it could be. The city is awash with cocaine.

Stories and legends abound about recreational drug use among sports stars, across all football codes.

There's the high-profile international who was watching a game of club rugby from the grandstand and was speaking so loudly down his mobile phone to his dealer the coaching staff on the sideline could hear it.

There's the high-profile international who was playing pool at a local pub, reached into his pocket to pull out some money and a stack of foils fell out.

And there's the senior coach who turned a blind eye to drug use at his own club for years, knowing that sanctions would hurt his side's run at the premiership they eventually won.

So cue the moral indignation now. Find a ladder and climb up on your moral high horse and condemn arrogant, over-paid, over-pampered footballers. We've heard it all before. Illicit substances are illegal and ruin lives and families. Alcohol, on the other hand ...

The issue here isn't whether footballers should or shouldn't snort cocaine in their own time - it's the cold, hard, irrefutable fact that they just can't. They just aren't allowed. It is that simple.

If you signed a contract worth six figures a year in which it was abundantly clear you can't touch illegal substances, that you were bound by the WADA code not to, and that you were going to be regularly tested, would you risk it all for a night on the blow?

If you did play with fire, knowing all of that, and still got burnt, you'd only have yourself to blame.

Current-day players should be as wary as they've ever been.

Sure, there are the hours of player welfare sessions educating them about codes of conduct and potential doping violations.

But if anything should have alerted every single sportsperson in this country that Big Brother was watching, a frank reminder came in February 2013 when the Australian Crime Commission slapped down its Organised Crime and Drugs in Sport report.

The debate continues about how effective the subsequent ASADA investigation into both Cronulla and Essendon has been.

But that episode should have told all concerned that if you so much as suggest to anyone you ran a red light, some authority, somewhere, would know about it.

If the allegations into Hunt and the Titans players are proven true, they have been as naive as anyone.

Those allegations also remain murky. There have been no positive tests and no one, as far as we know, caught in possession of cocaine.

Officials at the NRL and Titans, and the ARU and Reds, are all keeping their powder relatively dry - no pun intended - until the players in question front Southport Magistrates Court on March 5.

The allegation of "supply" is confusing. On the surface, it conjures images of Al Pacino in Scarface.

In reality, it could be as little as a gram. One player's lawyer says "supply" could mean supplying to oneself. Another dismisses that claim.

In the meantime, the NRL and ARU juggle the notions of natural justice and how much their respective codes have been brought into disrepute.

It will shock and not necessarily appal if there isn't more to come.

The Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission has been accused of grandstanding with their staggered issuing of court notices to players since last Thursday night when Hunt was the first implicated.

If this is part of a wider "multimillion-dollar cocaine supply cartel", we'll assume there's more than a bunch of footballers at the end of the line.

On the other hand, there might be a strategy behind their approach.

Either way, footy's dirty little secret is out.