It depicts a group of Newcastle Knights players 20 years ago, after they had been knocked out of the 1995 semi-finals.

The players, including some of the biggest names in the club’s history, are on Mad Monday, dressed in op-shop women’s clothing and posing out the front of a Hunter Street pub. All look as if they have consumed enough alcohol to leave a bull elephant comatose, but one player in particular grabs the attention.

He has unashamedly pulled his skirt to one side to reveal he is wearing nothing underneath.

When our photographer printed that picture and brought it to our attention, I have vague memories of it circulating around the office, to widespread mirth.

Not once did anyone suggest we should print it, even in a censored form.

Two years later, I was in Leeds with the Canberra Raiders, working for the Canberra Times, covering the Super League junket known as the World Club Challenge.

The Raiders were staying in the same hotel as the Australian cricket team, and after respective wins against Wigan at Central Park and the Poms at Headingley, a joint celebration was held in the bar downstairs.

At one point the festivities were interrupted when former Raiders player Jason Death, who was also in Leeds with North Queensland Cowboys, stood naked on a coffee table and performed a maneouvre he referred to as “the helicopter’’.

It wasn’t until the following day, when Death was named and shamed in the Yorkshire Evening Post, that I felt obliged to follow it up with a story in my own paper.

My attitude until then was that the whole night was “off the record’’, a view that changed once the story broke and I could no longer pretend certain events had never happened.

That’s the way things were, 20 years ago.

If you went back a little bit further, to the 1989 grand final, Canberra champion Laurie Daley recalled in his autobiography how in a euphoric dressing room, he  “jumped up onto a stool, dropped my strides and proceeded to have a play” (with himself), to honour a bet. In front of Prime Minister Bob Hawke, of all people.

And then, of course, there is the iconic “man in the bowler hat’’ tale arising from the 1967 Kangaroo tour of England, when the Immortal Johnny Raper walked from the pub back to the team hotel naked except for his headwear, also apparently to win a bet.

None of which will offer much comfort to Mitchell Pearce, but nevertheless highlights the world in which we now live.

This is the age of outrage.

Whereas once “what happens on tour, stays on tour” was an unofficial rule that allowed journalists and players to socialise together after hours, these days anyone who steps out of line can expect to be publicly ridiculed by mainstream press and social media.

It is the era of the lynch mob.

Take the Pearce incident this week as Exhibit A.

Sporting Declaration is not defending him or condoning his conduct in any way, shape or form. If they handed out Olympic gold medals for sheer stupidity, the Roosters halfback would be on the podium, singing the national anthem.

But just consider how the scandal broke.

An opportunistic punter videos the incoherent and out-of-control Pearce on a phone camera.

Soon after media outlets are offered the vision at the right price.

Channel Nine, News Limited and Fairfax Media fork out collectively tens of thousands of dollars for the incriminating footage.

Naturally, they want some value for their investment. That entails getting viewers and readers interested.

Hence, the whole sordid episode seems to evolve from breaking a story to maximising the outrage.

At times like these, I find myself wondering at what point did the media take the quantum leap from reporters of facts to bloodthirsty jackals?

Take the TV crews camped at Roosters HQ the following day, badgering Pearce’s teammates for comments they knew would never be forthcoming.

What is the point, other than to whip up hysteria?

Likewise, in among all the columnists and commentators calling for Pearce’s head on a platter, how many were concerned about his well-being?

It is too easy to label this as another example of rugby league’s caveman culture, but similar scenarios seem routine in the AFL, English Premier League, and US basketball and NFL.

And you don’t need to be a high-profile sportsman to be a drunken imbecile. Many of us have been there and done that.

The difference is the next day we’re left nursing a hangover and a few sketchy memories, not watching our antics replayed over and over on prime-time TV. 

I’m not saying that is fair or unfair.

It’s just the way it is.

Mitchell Pearce, better than anyone, should have known that in this age of outrage, there is nowhere to hide.