An open letter to Phil "Zzz" Rothfield

Dear Zzz,

As you may remember, earlier this week you used part of your column in the Daily Telegraph to complain about what you see as the Wests’ Tigers bad attitude in refusing to allow greater media access in the run-up to finals games. In this context you described coach Tim Sheens as “a dinosaur who is causing enormous damage to the growth and promotion of rugby league” for only allowing his players to take part in one media session a week before finals.

This apparently puzzled you. So I hope you don’t mind if I suggest a few reasons why the Tigers – and, quite frankly, any sane NRL club – might be disinclined to allow greater access to the Daily Telegraph and its ilk.

Let’s start with the fact that the Telegraph has, within the past month, conducted a slur campaign against the Tigers’ best player and one of the game’s most high-profile faces, Benji Marshall. While the fearsome journalistic hero responsible for this particular crop of innuendo-riddled rubbish took the moral high ground by assuring readers that what he was writing wasn’t technically libellous, it can surely not come as a surprise that the victim and his club are disinclined to make time to provide the Telegraph with more material?

Perhaps you were expecting the rest of the Tigers team to queue up to speak to the Telegraph, given how keen the paper has also been to spread unsubstantiated rumours about how they all hate Marshall? Strange that that didn’t seem to work, isn’t it?

When you say Sheens “is only hurting his club, his players and the game” by refusing to talk to you and your disreputable colleagues, I would counter by asking what you think you’re doing when you drag the name of the biggest walking advertisement for the code through the mud?

Let’s face it, Zzz, it’s not just the Marshall stuff. Your paper has a well-established track record for being the lowest common denominator in NRL coverage. It doesn’t break stories so much as it recycles the contents of the league cesspit for the amusement of people who want to see the code fail. And its writers, many of whom are happy to portray themselves as fans, are there to pour scorn as the code gets dragged deeper into the effluent.

Consider, for instance, what might be your paper’s biggest ‘story’ of the season: the moment when news of Todd Carney out on the piss fell into your lap thanks to an attention-seeking cab driver. You were mighty quick that night to get a photographer down to Oxford Street to take photos of a man outside a pub. Congratulations – I’m sure the Walkley people will be in touch.

The next day came the big follow-up. And what was it? An exclusive interview with Carney, perhaps, secured by skilful doorstepping by one of the Telegraph’s fearless journalists? Or a previously-unknown insight into the thinking of the inner sanctum at the Roosters or the NRL itself? Of course not! The Telegraph went with the shocking news that Carney had been to a shopping centre and – won’t somebody think of the children – taken in a movie.

If this constitutes a story to the Telegraph, surely it can’t just be me who thinks Tim Sheens might have the right idea in “keeping his superstars and his sponsors out of the media”. Why on earth would he want them to be in it?

Let’s not forget, either, that the Telegraph’s big story on the Tigers training camp were some unauthorised photos ‘proving’ that Chris Lawrence was injured. Unhelpful to a coach, but something that practically every Tigers fan already knew about by the simple process of reading the online fans’ forum.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it Zzz? The Telegraph is now such a useless source of actual, true information on the NRL that it has already been superseded by what every fan can read on online forums and Twitter. Fundamentally, you have no purpose any more.

It doesn’t have to be like that, though. The emergence of new media might be manageable if you and your team of hacks weren’t already so widely hated and reviled by people inside the game that you have effectively surrendered virtually any chance of breaking an actual news story. But unfortunately almost everything you print seems to be recycled off the forums anyway – or be wildly over-reported dross that fell in your lap like the Carney business.

Last week, let’s not forget, your best attempt to offer right to reply to another one of your sad little vendetta victims – Phil “Frog Man” Gould, a man who has achieved more in his chosen field than you could in 40 lifetimes – was to send him a text message. To which, oddly enough, he chose not to reply. Are we supposed to be impressed that you have Gould’s mobile number? Do you think we are going to accept that a text message now constitutes journalism?

Listen, Zzz, I understand – really I do. In my day job I am also a journalist (though my boss normally asks that my copy contains crazy, off the wall things like “named sources” and “facts”). It’s not easy for any of us at the moment, what with citizen journalism, the blogosphere, Twitter and all these scary new phenomena. It must be especially tough in a field like sport where there are numerous people willing to provide content for nothing. Even more so when you can’t base your value proposition on quality of prose – because, let’s face it, George Plimpton you ain’t.

But the crux of the matter is that, as an old media provider, there are two ways of responding: you can either rely on the strength of your sources, your insights and your content to keep yourself relevant in the new media world, or you can resort to being effectively a blog with a masthead, rehashing whatever crap happens to fall into your lap with a soupcon of added prejudice. You and your rag, Zzz, have positioned yourselves firmly in the latter camp.

Here’s my plan of action for you. Get back out there. Apologise to the sources and potential sources you’ve slandered, buried with innuendo or simply never bothered to cultivate. Stop getting your material off fans’ forums and whatever loser rings it in. Make a personal commitment to using named sources when possible (I don’t mean yourselves). And start writing some real news stories that real fans haven’t already read somewhere else. Then I might feel sorry for you if you don’t get asked to more press conferences.

Yours sincerely,

A fellow hack

Time for a quick one

Todd “Swift Half” Carney must be the easiest sporting source of innuendo-driven, barely-substantiated material for the Daily Telegraph since Sonny Bill Williams had the audacity to decide he wanted to earn a proper living. Sadly it’s a little late in the day to discuss the journalistic nadir reached in August by Christian “Shit Scoop” Nicolussi, who exclusively (as in, no-one else could be bothered to report it) revealed that Swift Half had been out to the shops. But there is a chance to do a little compare and contrast between a vaguely reputable news source’s reporting and that of the scummy Telegraph.

As a journalist, there are two fundamental ways to report quotes. One is to place them in an appropriate context; the other is to twist them to fit what you believe is the best story. No prizes for guessing which approach the Telegraph’s Dean “Integrity” Ritchie goes for in his story about Swift Half possibly moving to Cronulla.

“Cronulla won’t publicly admit wanting Todd Carney – but the club cannot dismiss chasing the troubled star,” Integrity breathlessly reports. Which, I must confess, set my alarm bells ringing. Generally when someone “won’t publicly admit” something to a tabloid newspaper it means they either aren’t doing it or don’t have a clue whether they’re doing it, but the paper wants to run the story anyway.

But perhaps I am being too harsh, as Integrity’s story is not based on the information provided by ‘club sources’ or ‘a source close to Carney’ or some other euphemism for ‘the player’s agent desperately trying to create a market’. No indeed – in this case he has a real, on the record, source:

“Sharks chairman Damian Irvine said coach Shane Flanagan had not made any formal approach to Carney but admitted his club may soon be interested. ‘As with any player, if Shane and Darren (Mooney, football manager) come forward with someone like Todd Carney, then the board would consider it on its merits,’ Irvine said.”

That certainly is big news: what a shock it would be to see a heavily-inked alcoholic with a long record of trouble with the law turning up in Cronulla! Seriously, it’s a lovely place. But it would be a big story.

Except of course that a half-way responsible use of the comments provided by Irvine wouldn’t back up that story. Here’s the Sydney Morning Herald, on the same day as Integrity’s piece, putting a slightly different spin on things: “Asked last night about speculation in recent days that the Sharks wanted to sign Carney, who split with Sydney Roosters last week, Irvine said: ‘It’s unbelievable. I’ve had people ring me all day about this, and I’ve told them nothing has happened. We’re not talking to Todd Carney or David Riolo [Carney’s manager]. There’s nothing doing there.’”

The Herald also repeats some quotes made by Irvine earlier this month, in which he adds the information that Shane Flanagan “‘doesn’t want to get involved either’”, before bringing those up to date by stressing that “Irvine said the situation hadn’t changed”.

Seems pretty conclusive. But wait! Those idiots at the Herald might just have buried the lede – down at the bottom of their story is a very, very small big of ambiguity from Irvine. “‘It wouldn’t be my call,’ he said. ‘If it came to the board at some stage in the future it would be a board decision, but we haven’t discussed it so I’m not sure what would happen there…. If Shane and Darren [Mooney] decided they wanted Carney and put a case together, they could put it to the board and we would look at the pros and cons of it. That hasn’t happened and I haven’t heard any suggestion of it happening.’”

Surely that should be enough for a “refuses to rule out” story? After all, it’s not like the Telegraph itself has failed to report the fact that Irvine basically admits that he doesn’t know what might be going on. Here’s Integrity’s take on the same material: “‘Shane hasn’t said he is keen on Todd. Todd has a lot of issues outside football we would have to consider and we would look at the pros and cons if Shane came to the club’s board. He [Flanagan] hasn’t expressed a preference either way.”

What’s interesting about this is that both papers have received basically identical information from Irvine in the form of two key messages. The first is that Cronulla has made no approach for Swift Half and, so far as Irvine is aware, has no plans to. The second is that it wouldn’t be up to Irvine to raise the matter anyway – it would be the coach’s call, and that call has not been made.

Of course none of this conclusively proves that Cronulla is not going to sign Swift Half at some stage in the future – what it does prove is that the club’s chairman is outright denying that any such move has been initiated. Faced with the choice of reporting this material accurately or spinning it into a wafer-thin bit of transfer gossip, the Telegraph – inevitably – decides once again not to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

More on NRL finals: how to make everyone look bad

First of all, a caveat: this post is based on information originally printed by the Murdoch papers. It contains direct quotes so I will on this occasion allow the possibility that it isn’t completely made up – but I would advise also bearing in mind that it still could be.

The latest backsliding nonsense to come from the NRL on the week one finals embarrassment of fewer than 14,000 turning up for Manly v North Queensland at the SFS is a classic piece of twisted logic. David “Glue Factory” Gallop now apparently believes that the only reason why hardly anyone bothered to go to the game was nothing other than its slightly inconvenient kick-off time.

“The 8.30pm kick-off wasn’t ideal and we will explore all options in relation to that with the clubs and broadcaster,” one gutter rag has Glue Factory saying. “The timeslot isn’t one our fans are used to. It is quite late. However it did produce record ratings so we need to find a balanced approach.”

The slander sheet in question claims the solution Glue Factory will propose for this theoretical problem is playing the two Saturday round one finals at 4pm and 6.30pm instead of 6.30pm and 8.30pm. This avoids the late finish while still allowing Channel 9 to fit in its scheduled Harvey Norman commercial, sorry, ‘news bulletin’ at 6pm.

This is ass-backwardsness of the highest order. It appears to rest on the principle that the reason no more than 14,000 Manly fans went to the Cowboys game is nothing other than that it had a late kick off. The counterargument is that it was in fact the combination of the late kick off with the fact it was played two hours on public transport away from the home club’s fan base that caused the problem.

You have to give Glue Factory credit for realising that if you move a team’s home game miles away from where most of its fans live attendance is likely to suffer (though it’s a shame he had to watch a finals game played in front a less than third full stadium to twig). However, where many of us might try to solve that issue by thinking “maybe it’s a bad idea to move the game in the first place”, Glue Factory has decided to twist himself in knots by concluding that moving the game would have been fine, provided fans were given enough opportunity to make the epic round trip to and from.

One thing worth noting here: if it was just about the kick-off time, why not just play the Manly game in the 6.30pm slot and the Brisbane v Warriors one at 8.30pm? It would have meant a late kick off for Warriors fans watching in New Zealand but, let’s face it, New Zealand TV audiences are about 500th on the list of NRL priorities at this point. And the Kiwis had rugby world cup games on earlier anyway – a late game would have had less competition for ratings.

In addition, I’m really struggling to believe that simply moving the Manly game to 4pm would have radically improved the crowd anyway. If it’s just about attendance, to justify moving the match to the SFS the minimum crowd required would be about 25,000 – in other words, comfortably above the capacity at Brookvale. Would 11,000 extra fans have showed up to an earlier kick off? We’ll never know, but personally I am doubtful in the extreme. And that’s not to mention the fact that 25,000 at the SFS still means a half-empty ground appearing on TV.

Once again the whole issue seems to come down to the ‘suitability’ of suburban grounds for finals football. This year has shown without doubt that crowd numbers do not always demand a move to larger capacity stadia: the Tigers v Dragons game could easily have been played at the SFS while Manly v North Queensland wouldn’t even have sold out Brookvale. Yet apparently both games had to move simply because the NRL couldn’t countenance letting Manly play at their home ground.

Here’s my question: what’s so special about finals games that suburban grounds – that are perfectly acceptable during the regular season – suddenly can’t be allowed to host them?

At Tigers v Melbourne earlier this year there were 20,000 in at Leichhardt Oval; it was bursting at the seams but coped. The same was true of Brookvale for the infamous Manly v Melbourne game. What changes in finals? Are fans going to have a hissy fit because there’s a bit of a queue to get in and it takes a couple of extra minutes to buy a beer? If so, who cares? Are we there to watch a game of league or to have a nice picnic?

Here’s my theory: it’s to do with corporate boxes and the media. It’s ok to cram 20,000 in to Brookvale or Leichhardt during the season because it’s just mug punters who’ll turn up anyway, but as soon as media and corporate interest spikes up – in other words the kind of people who wouldn’t be seen dead at Tigers v Newcastle on a cold Monday night in July but don’t mind showing up at the business end of the season – suddenly there need to be ‘modern facilities’ and ample parking.

Home finals update

Wests Tigers v St George Illawarra Dragons attendance: 45,631

Manly Sea Eagles v North Queensland Cowboys attendance: 13,972

In other words, the Tigers were forced to give up home ground advantage and move from the SFS to ANZ Stadium in order to accommodate a whole 131 additional fans (I bet they feel special). Manly were crowbarred out of Brookvale only to play a game in front of nearly 10,000 fewer fans than their home ground can hold.

Given Manly fans’ legendary unwillingness to travel, it seems pretty likely that their game would have got a significantly bigger crowd at Brookvale. In other words, the NRL’s short-term money grabbing effort didn’t even work on its own terms.

Boycott the Telegraph (entry one in a series of thousands)

There is so much innuendo and outright rubbish published on a daily basis by Sydney’s shame, the Daily Telegraph, that it almost seems futile to single out individual examples. But what the hell, I’m a small man in a lot of ways so let’s subject some of the recent garbage vomited forth by this miserable excuse for a ‘news’ paper to a little scrutiny.

NB: I’m not linking to the original stories and will never link to Telegraph content.

The writer in this case is one Andrew “Pulitzer” Webster. His stock in trade, in common with many of his lazy colleagues at the Telegraph, is not breaking actual news stories (why bother when you can find all the forthcoming player movements on Twitter and fans’ forums – and never mind if they’re true or not) but regurgitating talk radio-level dribble with the dash of added pomposity needed to dress it up as a professional op-ed column.

In the past couple of weeks, Pulitzer has twice opined on Benji Marshall in the wake of his August court case. Long story short: the assault case against Marshall was thrown out without even making it to a jury. The overwhelming impression the conclusion of the case gives is that is that the whole ridiculous affair should never have got to court in the first place.

The natural response to this – at least on the part of anyone who actually likes rugby league – would be relief that the game isn’t going to be dragged through the mud again by player misbehaviour and the inevitable ensuing media circus. But not Pulitzer: he’s got a different angle. Apparently Marshall ought to bow and scrape more while being exonerated.

To be fair to Pulitzer, he’s got some skill. Not much, but a bit. When he sets about a character assassination of one of the NRL’s biggest stars – and arguably the biggest draw card in the game – he knows he’s not going to be able to outright accuse him of anything. After all, Marshall has a clean record and at the time of the article’s publication mere hours had passed since he had been described in glowing terms by character witness and all-round Australian sporting icon, Dawn Fraser, and had all charges against him thrown out of court.

So Pulitzer goes heavy on the innuendo. “Marshall is a cocky little character on the field…. Surprisingly, though, Marshall oozed the same self-assuredness when it came to his big day in court with his freedom – not the game – on the line.” Apparently giving confident testimony is somehow grounds for suspicion in Telegraph-world. I wonder what Pulitzer would have thought if Marshall had been inarticulate or monosyllabic in court?

Later on in the article things get frankly ridiculous. “When [Marshall’s barrister Geoff] Bellew asked him about being approached by ‘patrons’ out in public, [Marshall] almost sighed like it was all part of the job. ‘Absolutely yes,’ he said. ‘It happens every day.’” Oh my god, really? He “almost” sighed! How dare he have so much contempt for the general public – who, lest we forget, Pay His Wages – that he “almost” sighs when asked if he gets approached a lot?

You know what, Andrew Webster? it “almost” amazes me that anyone pays you to write this shit.

Later on in the same piece, Pulitzer does his damnedest to disprove potential allegations that all his material is unsubstantiated bullshit, lazily cobbled together out of his own prejudices and the venal desire to stir up controversy where none exists. Yes, that’s right – he quotes an actual source. And it’s pretty awesome material, too; step aside Wikileaks because Pulitzer may or may not have spoken to someone or other.

“The Daily Telegraph delivered the news of the not guilty verdict to a few leading players, and when advised of his remarks afterwards they knowingly laughed. ‘No surprise,’ said one. ‘Why would you not just say thank you and get out of there?’”

Incidentally, I delivered the news of Pulitzer’s pathetic column to a few leading players in my head, and when advised of the garbage contained in it they knowingly laughed. ‘No surprise,’ one of them could easily have said. ‘I’m a figment of your imagination and I’ll say whatever you want.’

So that was act one of Pulitzer’s little character assassination. Predictably, after a few days of negative comment about the content of the first effort he – like a neutered old dog that makes up for its lack of bollocks by incessantly licking its own arsehole – came back for a second dig. Word to the wise, Pulitzer: if you’re confident in your material you can rise above the critics. Responding just legitimises their complaints.

That goes double when the response is as feeble as: “Last week, this column was criticised in one section of the media for a story explaining how Marshall had come across as far too cocky while sitting in the witness box as he defended an assault charge that could’ve landed him in jail. For the record, the story was checked off with The Daily Telegraph's court reporter before it was filed.”

Yes, that’s right: Pulitzer’s defence of his material is ‘it wasn’t actually libellous’. This is effectively the same as a builder doing a shoddy job on your house extension, and when you call him up to complain saying ‘I drove past your house yesterday and it’s still standing – what’s your problem?’ Thank goodness Pulitzer didn’t become a doctor (some chance!) – I can see him now telling some tragic victim of surgical incompetence ‘well yer still alive aintcha?”

And don’t get me started on Rothfield.

Home sweet home(bush)

In the debate about home ground finals games for Sydney clubs I can understand the NRL’s position. In general, getting more people into games – especially showpiece games – can only be good for the code. Not to mention the fact that the clubs agreed at the start of the season to shift home finals to bigger stadia so there’s certainly some support for the idea that it’s a bit late for the Tigers and Manly to start complaining now.

Even so, the arguments against playing Tigers v Dragons at ANZ Stadium and Manly v Cowboys at the SFS seem overwhelming.

For a start, the signs are that neither game is going to attract a big enough crowd to warrant the move. NRL director of football operations, Nathan "Goebbels" McGurk, predicted on September 7 that the Tigers game will get “40,000-plus” fans while the Manly match will be played in front of “20,000”. That’s 20,000 dead – not at least 20,000 – so given the NRL’s tendency to inflate expected crowds like a third-world dictator's election results my hunch is there is no chance whatsoever that the game will have a bigger crowd than Brookvale Oval’s 23,000 capacity.

Meanwhile the SFS holds 45,500 and is a Tigers home ground, so the NRL’s decision is apparently to shift the Tigers game to a neutral site in order that TV viewers can enjoy the heart-warming vista of an empty upper tier whenever a high kick goes up - which will be every 30 seconds if the Dragons get to test the defence of Matt "Air" Utai.

All this happens, of course, in an environment in which NRL fans are constantly being told that the league is in a battle for its life with the cashed-up, aggressively expansionist AFL. Casual punters, in whose interests all these changes are apparently being made, will as a result on Friday night have the opportunity to flick their TVs between Hawthorn v Geelong at a packed MCG and Tigers v Dragons at a half full ANZ Stadium. On Saturday they can enjoy a late lunch while watching Collingwood v West Coast played in front of another 90,000 crowd at the MCG before switching over to another inter-state battle between Manly and the Cowboys – at which there will be more empty seats than occupied ones.

To be fair, if the biggest Sydney derby clash of the year can’t persuade more than 40,000 locals to drag themselves off their couches then where the match takes place is pretty much a side issue. Even so, surely it would make more sense to host Tigers v Dragons at the SFS, where there would be a decent possibility of a sellout and the great look for the league that entails, than shift the game to ANZ Stadium apparently because the final crowd figure might – but probably won’t – be a couple of thousand more than the SFS’s capacity?

The whole things smacks of short-termism from the NRL. In a month’s time league fans will no doubt start getting promotional material telling us why we ought to become club members. This will come accompanied by the usual self-flagellating articles about how Collingwood has membership numbers approaching six figures while most NRL clubs can’t even break five.

And, once again, the majority of casual to semi-serious fans will consider taking up NRL club membership and thousands of them will conclude that it isn’t worth it. As a ticketed member myself I don’t like that attitude, but with the main value of membership – getting priority access to finals tickets – effectively worthless I can understand why people take it.

The fact is that virtually no game in the NRL in Sydney sells out. Even when they do, if you can be bothered to book tickets online more than a day or two in advance, you will get in. If it looks like a crowd is going to be anywhere near capacity at a finals game, the NRL will just move the game to ANZ Stadium or the SFS anyway, ensuring that the stroll up punter still doesn’t need to go out of their way to ensure attendance.

I don’t understand why every half-hearted bandwagon jumper gets the divine right to rock up to one game a season and assume they can get in. If 2,000 people can’t get tickets for Tigers v Dragons at the SFS, so far as I’m concerned that’s a positive outcome. Maybe next season they’ll think about buying a membership (or supporting Souths, where they won't have to worry about whether or not they can get finals tickets). And if they decide to switch their supposed allegiance to the new AFL team in Sydney, well that’s also positive: good luck to that team building a long-term fan base out of people who only want to show up to finals.