As crisis-fatigued Melbournians began another six-week lockdown, the Prime Minister himself showed that you don't have to be a leader to set the wrong tone, but it helps.

"We are all Victorians now," he had ventured inclusively, just days before showing that well, plainly we're not.

Actual Victorians had this harsh reality emphasised by photos of the be-scarfed and conspicuously unmasked PM downing a beer in the stand while watching his beloved Sharkies.

At first blush, any criticism of this quintessentially Australian moment seems churlish. Partisan. Petty.

After all, it is currently permissible to attend live sporting events in NSW and nobody (of whatever stripe) should begrudge an obviously hard-working PM a break after six gruelling months of cabinet meetings, huge policy calls, and more press conferences than you'd normally get in a full term.

But on deeper consideration, the legality defence misses an important point about the difficulty of public health leadership and its sole objective of maximising voluntary compliance.

The interplay between law and medical advice regarding tobacco is illustrative here.

Cigarettes are also legal but nobody believes that snaps of our national leader heaving away on the gaspers would be sound, let alone set the right example to impressionable people.

Addiction notwithstanding, tobacco is a discretionary product presenting a known risk to the smoker's life, and a further danger to others nearby.

Not unlike like attendance at large public gatherings during, say, a still unresolved pandemic that constitutes the gravest public health crisis in our lifetimes.

Funnily enough, the government itself believed this just weeks ago, when it lashed marchers at the Black Lives Matter rallies calling them irresponsible.

While the rallies were unlawful, they at least, were convened to protest something urgent, even existential: namely Australia's abysmal record of indigenous dispossession, systemic discrimination, and racist judicial brutality. In other words, issues which themselves go to life and death.

What leaders say, matters. What they do matters even more.

Which brings us back to the PM's footy foray.

Even though it is within the rules to join crowds at sporting events, the PM doing so arguably contradicts the spirit of what his officials are frantic to achieve: high public vigilance to bring an end to community transmission.

Remember, even hard-and-fast prohibitions (such as stay-at-home orders, pub bans and temporary border closures) are only part of the anti-infection effort, with the heavier long-term lifting done by sustained levels of community observance.

That means buttressing temporarily curtailed freedoms in the peak of the emergency, with clear and consistent public health and personal hygiene messaging - social distancing, self-reporting of symptoms, vigorous widespread testing, self-isolation, frequent handwashing, minimum travel, face masks etc.

This is why last weekend's football outing was no wiser than the first time Mr Morrison encouraged it back in March.

In fact, it may be worse because back then, less was known about how a sense of public urgency dangerously abates once economic restrictions are lifted.

The lesson here is that leadership is hard and the task unrelenting.

On reflection, Morrison might have shown readier solidarity with Victorians last weekend but the bigger mistake was in behaving as if the crisis was ebbing.

Some could take the message that unless you're in Victoria, head out to the footy, have a beer, and don't even worry about a mask, it's all going to be fine.

But is it?

"Don't be surprised if the [state] government takes decisions to further reduce the risk in the next month," said Morrison's own state premier Gladys Berejiklian on Sunday - ie. just hours after he attended the footy.

Even since then, an outbreak sheeted home to the Crossroads Hotel - an exquisite metaphor for the state's circumstances - has prompted Ms Berejiklian to tighten the screws again, announcing a 300- person restriction on numbers in pubs and rigid COVID-safe compliance.

Others changes will follow.

As the previously anti-mask British PM reverses course, it may be time for Australia to do regroup and redouble.

The PM's done well during this crisis but his own behaviour will be crucial.

In any event, his discretionary NRL outing will turn out to have been an unhelpful message if NSW infections continue, forcing Berejiklian further along the Victorian path.