One-time rugby league bad boy Willie Mason says there are no excuses these days for young NRL players to get caught up in alcohol-related scandals.

The weekend plight of Sydney Roosters and NSW State of Origin stars Mitchell Pearce and Boyd Cordner has once again turned the spotlight on the off-field conduct of players on boozy nights out on the town.

The pair were fined $20,000 and $5000 respectively after being ejected from a Sydney hotel, with Pearce also stood down for this weekend’s clash with North Queensland after being arrested for failing to leave a licensed premises.

Mason is no stranger himself to alcohol-related trouble, having been fined earlier in his career for a succession of offences including evading a taxi fare and breaking protocol by leaving the team hotel to go out drinking with teammates.

But now 34, the reformed loose cannon says he didn’t have the education available to him a decade ago that the NRL offers players nowadays.

“When I was younger, I just did not care about being a role model or anything like that,” Mason said on Fox Sports’ NRL 360.

“If I wanted to go out, I was going to go out and it didn’t really matter.

“My attitude was just: ‘I’m just doing me’ and you didn’t really learn.”

Mason said although the penny didn’t drop for him until he was close to 30, there was no excuse for modern-day players in their “mid-20s” to be placing themselves in compromising situations late at night.

“Obviously it was a different environment back then but I had to learn the hard way and I did,” said the former Test and Origin star.

“But hopefully now, these guys, there’s so much education that they don’t have to learn the hard way.

“You don’t have to go out there, put yourself in a compromising position.”

Mason and NSW vice-captain Robbie Farah said players must realise there’s been a cultural shift and the public no longer tolerates footballers behaving badly.

“People are pretty much saying: ‘We’re over footballers’ and all that type of stuff,” Mason said.

“They’ve got every right to say that because, at the end of the day, we get educated all the time on alcohol and putting yourself in different positions and when and where and why and all this kind of stuff and it does keep happening.”

Farah said it was important to remember players as young as 18 aren’t always ready for the limelight when they crack first grade.

“They’ve got the fame, they’ve got the money, they’re going out and (doing) what any normal 18, 19-year-old kid is doing on the weekend and I guarantee what’s going on in Kings Cross is 10 times worse than what Mitchell Pearce did,” he said.

“It’s no excuse, but you have to understand it’s part of what we do now – whether you like it or not, that when you go out that you’ve got a responsibility that we’re a role model.

“But I still think that at times it does get blown out of proportion.

“Young kids are going to make mistakes. But if they’re making the same mistake over and over and over, you can’t cop it.”

Mason cautioned the young generation that playing in Sydney was also far more perilous than playing under teetotaller coach Wayne Bennett in relatively sheltered Newcastle.

“Wayne has never drunk a drop of alcohol but he doesn’t mind us having a beer as long as we’re in a controlled environment,” he said.

“We’re pretty lucky in Newcastle; a lot of places look after you.

“In Sydney, it’s a massive city and people don’t really give a crap about footballers and you can get yourself into a lot of trouble.”