It’s difficult to know where to start with the barrage of positive media commentary about the Auckland Nines, other than perhaps to highlight the inevitability of it. Well in advance of the tournament the main media outlets appear to have decided that the competition was a wonderful thing and was to be presented in only the most glowing terms.
Obviously News Corp covered the whole thing via Fox Sports so had a vested interest in making it successful, which presumably explains the months of pre- and post-tournament ballwashing offered by the Telegraph. I imagine the Herald was just desperate for something to attract sports readership between the Ashes and the start of proper football.
Don’t get me wrong, here: it was good to see a big crowd turning up for pre-season rugby league. But some of the stuff being said about the tournament is over the top bordering on insane, and there’s a pretty nasty undertone to a small amount of it.
Taking a step back from the hype, a lot of the football played at the nines was pretty thin fare enlivened by the kind of huge line breaks you’ll always get in short-handed games and assisted by rule interpretations designed to maximise excitement at the expense of structure. Describing the nines, as many have, as some sort of glimpse of the future of the game is not a million miles away from suggesting the Ashes be played as a best of three T20 tournament all on the same weekend.
In the spirit of all the “what we learned from the Auckland Nines” commentary that is appearing across the NRL media like a nasty case of jock itch, here’s my “what we learned from the what we learned from the Auckland nines articles” article.
Hyperbole is king
The Telegraph takes the gong for the most overblown statement, albeit in a competitive field, with the following intro penned by David Riccio: “The undeniable success of the Auckland Nines has changed the rugby league landscape forever.”
Difficult to argue with that, isn’t it? When the NRL comp kicks off in a couple of weeks’ time what you’ll notice is that all the grounds are full of people in fancy dress, no-one will care about the results of the games and… actually I don’t know how the game has changed forever.
Strangely enough, reading Riccio’s full article leaves me none the wiser, either. From what I can work out the game-changing features of the Auckland Nines are as follows:
- “Multi-millionaire Eric Watson… invited all 16 NRL chief executives and NRL chief executive Dave Smith for a barbecue at his house, which has its own golf course.” GAME CHANGER.
- Watson says: “The NRL has matured so much. When I was first involved in the game, the CEOs didn’t like each other, the coaches didn’t like each other…. The CEOs are all on the same team. They have a brand, they have a business and they have a sport that competes with others.” Hmm. This sort of sounds like a thing that happened which maybe possibly helped the Auckland Nines come together, rather than something the Auckland Nines did which changed anything of itself. Also, call me crazy, but I’m not totally convinced that even the old-style warring CEOs wouldn’t have been able to take part in a bit of pre-season hit and giggle with several million dollars waved in front of them. It’s not exactly the Treaty of Versailles.
- “It was a celebration and an advertisement that will leave a footprint in New Zealand long after the yellow five-point try paint has been removed from Eden Park.” As it turns out the 90,000 Kiwis in the crowd had literally never heard of rugby before the Auckland Nines.
It would be great if everyone could try to calm down just a little about this nines business. It was great that lots of people showed up and apparently had a good time, and no doubt its sets a positive mood for the start of the proper season. But, seriously, can we wait to see if the whole thing is still going strong in a few years’ time before proclaiming it as the day everything changed?
The big winners
Congratulations to the Bulldogs and the Melbourne Storm for achieving everything they could have hoped for at the Auckland Nines: taking as few important players as possible and getting the hell out of there at the earliest opportunity without any serious injuries. This seems like the most sensible way of approaching the tournament and is one I’m sure more clubs will follow in future.
Actually it seems to me that the fact that the tournament demands clubs bring a minimum number of their top 10 and top 25 players offers a great opportunity to realise some value from bad contracts. Hey, Adam Blair/Chris Sandow/Peter Wallace – you’re wildly overpaid and useless, please piss off to Auckland to fulfil our top 10 player quota and ensure we don’t risk injuries to anyone important. The Bulldogs played this one perfectly, incidentally: their big guns were Tony Williams and Michael Ennis, stopping off in Auckland en route to reserve grade and the knacker’s yard, respectively.
Most likely to have their season well and truly derailed by the nines? Happily, I’d have to say Souths. They were an injection of flair away from a grand final last season, and losing Luke Keary for most of the season means they may not get that injection in 2014. Maybe they should call the Sharks: they have a guy, apparently.
Incidentally, it’s illustrative of the Stalinist Russia approach to the nines that the wave of injuries has been glossed over with a catch-all take of “oh but players get injured in trials every year”. Obviously this is true, but I’d be amazed if as many players got injured in one-off trials as they did playing three to six hard sprinting, short-sided games in two days.
Good work, Cronulla!
Speaking of looking after your players, it was heartening to see the Cronulla Sharks have learned from their devastating recent experience of being fined $1 million for “serious failings in regard to the welfare of players”. Oh hang, on, that Cronulla Sharks – the one that let an obviously dazed Andrew Fifita carry on playing after a blow to the head… in a pre-season kickabout.
You can have it quick, or you can have it correct
Various branches of the media were all over the lack of video referee at the nines, inevitably pumping this up as a massive win. Here’s the Telegraph, for instance: “With no video help, referees had to back themselves — and in most cases they made the right calls. Endless replays have become one of the big momentum killers in the 13-a-side game.”
And the Guardian’s version: “Another refreshing aspect for the viewer was the absence of video replays on try adjudication… It was interesting to see how few errors the officials made – certainly no more than they make in the average NRL match even after watching half a dozen replays.”
First of all I would seriously question whether the officials “certainly” made fewer mistakes than they would with video refs available. In fact I would say “utter bollocks” to that; the only thing that was different was that there weren’t sufficient replays to show where the refs were making mistakes. “Certainly” a lot of mistakes were made, and equally “certainly” many of those could have been overturned with the benefit of video technology.
Again, it’s context that’s important here. Yes, in some ways it was good to have non-stop action without video ref interruptions (though it has to be said the “video referrals slow the action and lessen the spectacle” argument is one I’ve heard about a thousand times more frequently in print and broadcast media than I’ve ever heard among fans at games). But I really wish someone would acknowledge that this was only possible because nobody really gave a toss about the results.
It’s all well and good seeing a winger go over in the corner with two defenders in close attendance, in a massive flurry of arms and legs, and have the ref and touchy say “Sure, close enough – try. Now bang over a drop goal attempt and get on with it.” But I suspect there would be a somewhat different reaction if the same try is scored in, say, a grand final, no referral is called, and a subsequent replay then clearly shows the winger going into touch before the put down. I’m not sure how “refreshing” that would be.
Stop fucking patronising us, Josh Massoud
An impressive effort from the Telegraph’s Josh Massoud after day one of the nines managed to combine both the most patronising commentary around the tournament and the stupidest.
On the former front, Massoud rolls out the Telegraph’s old favourite view that sport, particularly NRL, would be much better if it was watched by gurning, face-painted applause monkeys who are best off kept as far away from the booze as humanly possible. Take it away, Josh: “Patrons at Eden Park were limited to two drinks each, rather than the standard four. The precaution led to massive queues at every bar, but none of the drinkers seemed unhappy as they compared costumes or exchanged phone numbers.”
I dunno, Josh, I wasn’t there myself but I’ve been to a few events with excessively long bar queues and I’m yet to see one which isn’t characterised by a metric shit tonne of moaning about how impossible it is to get a beer. I guess the nines might have been a little different in the sense that at least no-one there really gave a monkey’s about the games being played. Score another win for the Telegraph’s vision of an ideal sporting crowd, which is mainly there for the jumping castle and the ample parking but might sit through a few minutes of sport provided there’s never any dull bits and nobody swears.
Oh yeah, and by the way, Josh: stop fucking patronising us. Go stand in a beer queue yourself, or at least show some indication of having spoken to some people who have, before you unilaterally pronounce that everyone was just happy to be here, oh yessir massa.
As an aside, Massoud also suggests the crowd at the nines “boasted an equal gender split”. Well I saw plenty of crowd shots on TV, Josh, and if that was an equal gender split all the women must have been in the bar queues. Maybe the TV directors decided to mainly use shots with mostly men in them, which I guess is possible though it seems an unlikely change of direction from the normal approach of “if you see a blonde chick with her norks out get it on ASAP”.
Now onto the stupidity. Here goes: “Much of the talk in New Zealand centred how this event would measure-up against last weekend’s annual rugby union sevens tournament in Wellington. That event had been running successfully for 15 years, but, in a godsend for league lovers, the latest edition was it’s [sic] most shameful.”
[“Shameful” in this sense presumably refers to lots of people being thrown out of the stadium rather than the poor attendance.]
Given that the whole point of Massoud’s article is to laud the nines as “a blueprint of how to evolve rugby league” I can only posit that join the dots was never his childhood speciality. Here’s his attempt: Wellington rugby union sevens starts 15 years’ ago and is immediately popular, with lots of people in fancy dress and a party atmosphere. Over time Wellington sevens becomes less popular as novelty wears off. Auckland rugby league nines starts this year and is immediately popular, with lots of people in fancy dress and a party atmosphere. Auckland rugby league nines is the blueprint for the future, has totally beaten rugby union in New Zealand and is the greatest thing ever.
Here’s the bottom line: yes, the nines did really well and it seems everyone had a laugh (except all the players with season-ending injuries). But it’s still, fundamentally, a bit of pre-season fun. I wonder if we could contemplate holding back on spunking all over the place until it has (a) been around for a few years and is still successful, and (b) we see if teams are prepared to risk players having seen the brutal injury toll from the 2014 event.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Kids today
Is there anything more tedious than reading an embittered old sports hack banging on about ‘kids today, they ain’t got no respect’? It’s such a tiresome cliché most media providers don’t even bother with it any more unless there’s a really good hook: a recent series of criminal incidents, for instance, or a cluster of contract rebels. Certainly if a journo is going to waste everyone’s time pursuing the ‘kids today’ trope they will generally need at least some outraged comment from legends of the game tired of seeing its great legacy spurned by blah blah blah.
Not so the Daily Telegraph’s Andrew ‘Pulitzer’ Webster. This fearless seeker of truth doesn’t waste time with such banalities as ‘evidence’ or ‘some kind of worthwhile angle for a story’ – he just goes straight for the jugular with “NRL’s new brigade young, rich, selfish”.
[Incidentally, I am aware that Pulitzer in all likelihood did not write his own headline. But it certainly matches his article in both tone and writing style. As a quick aside to the Telegraph sub who came up with the headline in question: what in the name of arse is a “new brigade”? Were you struggling because you’d already pegged “young” as one of the derogatory adjectives for the second part of the headline? Listen, mate: the only thing you have to write is headlines. You must do better than this effort.]
Back to Pulitzer. Leading off the article are no fewer than 13 paragraphs breathlessly outlining the latest outrage committed by one of the NRL’s new brigade, Penrith’s Michael Jennings. This particular crime against humanity was having two drinks on Anzac Day, while injured.
Now let’s get this straight. It is more than possible that Michael Jennings is a selfish dick. He’s got a record of alcohol-related incidents as long as Pulitzer’s good contacts list (two?), the last of which cost him a reported $44,000 and public humiliation without appearing to change him for the better.
But seriously, is a spectacularly minor Jennings incident really an adequate launching pad for “But why would Michael Jennings, humming along on $600,000 a year, do that? Maybe it’s because he couldn’t care less. He’s not alone.”?
Of course he’s not alone. Some people, and especially some relatively well-paid young men, have a tendency to be, y’know, cocks. Jennings may well be one. That’s not good enough for Pulitzer, though: according to the old windbag Jenning’s two public holiday beers are enough to condemn a generation.
Here’s the pay-off: “There’s an unspoken and unwritten problem in the game that coaches and officials and senior players will tell you about privately but dare not speak publicly. As one NRL coach said to me recently: ‘I’ve never known a group of players to be so selfish. It’s not about the team, it's about themselves. What’s in it for me? What can I get out of the game? When I played, the team and my teammates were everything.’”
I’d like to take the opportunity to throw in a little journalistic tip for Pulitzer: if something is “unspoken and unwritten” then I’m afraid you don’t have a story. Your job is to get people to speak things, and then write them. What follows does not fulfil those basic principles.
According to Pulitzer, while not all young players are selfish – ta for that, by the way – the kids today are definitely different from ones in the past. “The problem is, coaches are beholden to them. Because as Whitney Houston might have said, they are the future.”
Nice Whitney reference, by the way. But surely a better 90s star with a drug problem to bring into an article about how today’s NRL players ain’t got no respect would be Andrew Johns?
The “beholden” argument is an interesting one to make, and by ‘interesting’ of course what I mean is ‘ridiculous’. Why are today’s coaches any more “beholden” to players than ones in the past? So far as I’m aware rugby league teams have always had to pick 13 players so if all the blokes decide not to turn up there’s still going to be a problem. If Pulitzer is trying to suggest that the star players are somehow starrier nowadays then surely he also has to acknowledge that the old players were fundamentally more replaceable. If Reg Gasnier had turned up five minutes late to training he could just have been sacked and replaced with some quick lad from the pub (not that players ever took a drink in those days, of course).
Having set forward this nonsense, Pulitzer starts to back it up with the predictable Telegraph standbys: quotes from unnamed sources, quotes that don’t actually support what the article is trying to say, and irrelevant material.
Example number one: the unnamed source. Speaking about Manly half-back Daly Cherry-Evans’s demand for a release or a new contract, Pulitzer claims the Manly “senior playing group” was unhappy. One unnamed player supposedly told Pulitzer “Here he was asking for the world – after one [year in the team].”
The Cherry-Evans case is one of the most stupid examples anyone could possibly come up with in an attempt to demonstrate player greed. Cherry-Evans was the playmaker on a premiership winning team at the age of about six and subsequently got called up to the Australian national team, all while on a salary of $85,000 a year. His manager asked Manly to either pay him something closer to what he’s worth or let him earn it elsewhere. Manly agreed to do the former, problem solved, everyone happy.
Incidentally, I don’t think Pulitzer would survive pre-season training at Manly, and if he could be persuaded to give it a go I expect he’d want a bloody sight more than 85 grand.
Example number two: the quote that doesn’t support the argument. Two options here, as Pulitzer leads off with Gorden Tallis saying: ‘“I don’t care how different [players] are: I don’t care what he owns, what tattoos he wears. If you’ve got a great culture, it doesn’t matter. If they don’t fit in, you find someone else that fits in. You can’t cheapen your culture.’”
Not totally beholden to the players as it turns out then, hey Pulitzer? Seriously, you spectacular half-wit: what possessed you to include a coach saying he is not beholden to players as a supporting statement to the claim that coaches are beholden to players?
Then there’s Roosters coach Brian Smith, who Pulitzer quotes saying: ‘“In our place, the younger blokes are as sensitive to and aware of the team’s responsibilities as any of the older players.’”
This is quite astonishing: Pulitzer is actually managing to lose an argument in which he gets to pick all the content. Oh hang on, there’s more: “Mastercoach Wayne Bennett has regularly dismissed the Generation Y theory, saying it is not an issue for him. He treats them all the same.”
And here’s another “prominent NRL coach”: ‘“The older [players] get, the more self-centred and less club-orientated. They expect everything for nothing, and they won’t do anything for nothing. Younger blokes are grateful for their opportunity. They don’t expect people to fall at their feet to do everything for them.’”
Fortunately, Pulitzer fights back with example three: the irrelevant material. In this case he has assembled some damning evidence from rugby union. This consists, in its entirety, of the fact that an Australia team with a lot of (boo!) young players didn’t do very well at the last world cup, that James O’Connor once referred to himself as a “brand”, that Quade Cooper only signs one-year deals, and that there is “a yarn doing the rounds” that a Melbourne Rebels player may have acted like a dick during a team meeting.
Throwing in the claim of terrible coach Brad Fittler that young players are more likely to question coaches nowadays (which one would have thought more than likely to be a good thing in the case of Fittler, with the questions in question perhaps starting with “have you been drinking, coach?”) Pulitzer happily concludes with the suggestion that coaches ought to sack more players.
I suggest that this approach to staff management might also be gainfully employed by tabloid newspapers.
Not so the Daily Telegraph’s Andrew ‘Pulitzer’ Webster. This fearless seeker of truth doesn’t waste time with such banalities as ‘evidence’ or ‘some kind of worthwhile angle for a story’ – he just goes straight for the jugular with “NRL’s new brigade young, rich, selfish”.
[Incidentally, I am aware that Pulitzer in all likelihood did not write his own headline. But it certainly matches his article in both tone and writing style. As a quick aside to the Telegraph sub who came up with the headline in question: what in the name of arse is a “new brigade”? Were you struggling because you’d already pegged “young” as one of the derogatory adjectives for the second part of the headline? Listen, mate: the only thing you have to write is headlines. You must do better than this effort.]
Back to Pulitzer. Leading off the article are no fewer than 13 paragraphs breathlessly outlining the latest outrage committed by one of the NRL’s new brigade, Penrith’s Michael Jennings. This particular crime against humanity was having two drinks on Anzac Day, while injured.
Now let’s get this straight. It is more than possible that Michael Jennings is a selfish dick. He’s got a record of alcohol-related incidents as long as Pulitzer’s good contacts list (two?), the last of which cost him a reported $44,000 and public humiliation without appearing to change him for the better.
But seriously, is a spectacularly minor Jennings incident really an adequate launching pad for “But why would Michael Jennings, humming along on $600,000 a year, do that? Maybe it’s because he couldn’t care less. He’s not alone.”?
Of course he’s not alone. Some people, and especially some relatively well-paid young men, have a tendency to be, y’know, cocks. Jennings may well be one. That’s not good enough for Pulitzer, though: according to the old windbag Jenning’s two public holiday beers are enough to condemn a generation.
Here’s the pay-off: “There’s an unspoken and unwritten problem in the game that coaches and officials and senior players will tell you about privately but dare not speak publicly. As one NRL coach said to me recently: ‘I’ve never known a group of players to be so selfish. It’s not about the team, it's about themselves. What’s in it for me? What can I get out of the game? When I played, the team and my teammates were everything.’”
I’d like to take the opportunity to throw in a little journalistic tip for Pulitzer: if something is “unspoken and unwritten” then I’m afraid you don’t have a story. Your job is to get people to speak things, and then write them. What follows does not fulfil those basic principles.
According to Pulitzer, while not all young players are selfish – ta for that, by the way – the kids today are definitely different from ones in the past. “The problem is, coaches are beholden to them. Because as Whitney Houston might have said, they are the future.”
Nice Whitney reference, by the way. But surely a better 90s star with a drug problem to bring into an article about how today’s NRL players ain’t got no respect would be Andrew Johns?
The “beholden” argument is an interesting one to make, and by ‘interesting’ of course what I mean is ‘ridiculous’. Why are today’s coaches any more “beholden” to players than ones in the past? So far as I’m aware rugby league teams have always had to pick 13 players so if all the blokes decide not to turn up there’s still going to be a problem. If Pulitzer is trying to suggest that the star players are somehow starrier nowadays then surely he also has to acknowledge that the old players were fundamentally more replaceable. If Reg Gasnier had turned up five minutes late to training he could just have been sacked and replaced with some quick lad from the pub (not that players ever took a drink in those days, of course).
Having set forward this nonsense, Pulitzer starts to back it up with the predictable Telegraph standbys: quotes from unnamed sources, quotes that don’t actually support what the article is trying to say, and irrelevant material.
Example number one: the unnamed source. Speaking about Manly half-back Daly Cherry-Evans’s demand for a release or a new contract, Pulitzer claims the Manly “senior playing group” was unhappy. One unnamed player supposedly told Pulitzer “Here he was asking for the world – after one [year in the team].”
The Cherry-Evans case is one of the most stupid examples anyone could possibly come up with in an attempt to demonstrate player greed. Cherry-Evans was the playmaker on a premiership winning team at the age of about six and subsequently got called up to the Australian national team, all while on a salary of $85,000 a year. His manager asked Manly to either pay him something closer to what he’s worth or let him earn it elsewhere. Manly agreed to do the former, problem solved, everyone happy.
Incidentally, I don’t think Pulitzer would survive pre-season training at Manly, and if he could be persuaded to give it a go I expect he’d want a bloody sight more than 85 grand.
Example number two: the quote that doesn’t support the argument. Two options here, as Pulitzer leads off with Gorden Tallis saying: ‘“I don’t care how different [players] are: I don’t care what he owns, what tattoos he wears. If you’ve got a great culture, it doesn’t matter. If they don’t fit in, you find someone else that fits in. You can’t cheapen your culture.’”
Not totally beholden to the players as it turns out then, hey Pulitzer? Seriously, you spectacular half-wit: what possessed you to include a coach saying he is not beholden to players as a supporting statement to the claim that coaches are beholden to players?
Then there’s Roosters coach Brian Smith, who Pulitzer quotes saying: ‘“In our place, the younger blokes are as sensitive to and aware of the team’s responsibilities as any of the older players.’”
This is quite astonishing: Pulitzer is actually managing to lose an argument in which he gets to pick all the content. Oh hang on, there’s more: “Mastercoach Wayne Bennett has regularly dismissed the Generation Y theory, saying it is not an issue for him. He treats them all the same.”
And here’s another “prominent NRL coach”: ‘“The older [players] get, the more self-centred and less club-orientated. They expect everything for nothing, and they won’t do anything for nothing. Younger blokes are grateful for their opportunity. They don’t expect people to fall at their feet to do everything for them.’”
Fortunately, Pulitzer fights back with example three: the irrelevant material. In this case he has assembled some damning evidence from rugby union. This consists, in its entirety, of the fact that an Australia team with a lot of (boo!) young players didn’t do very well at the last world cup, that James O’Connor once referred to himself as a “brand”, that Quade Cooper only signs one-year deals, and that there is “a yarn doing the rounds” that a Melbourne Rebels player may have acted like a dick during a team meeting.
Throwing in the claim of terrible coach Brad Fittler that young players are more likely to question coaches nowadays (which one would have thought more than likely to be a good thing in the case of Fittler, with the questions in question perhaps starting with “have you been drinking, coach?”) Pulitzer happily concludes with the suggestion that coaches ought to sack more players.
I suggest that this approach to staff management might also be gainfully employed by tabloid newspapers.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Zzz’s latest revelation: bad teams may be less popular
Congratulations to Phil “Zzz” Rothfield for penning an early contender for most pointless article of the year, in the ever-dreary Daily Telegraph. In this earth-shaking missive, Zzz scoops the world by pointing out that the three NRL teams in Sydney’s west have, so far this season, not been very good.
Of course, Zzz being Zzz it’s not enough simply to point out the bleeding obvious. Instead our fearless correspondent attempts to crowbar in some implications about the state of the game or the supposed battle between the NRL and AFL in western Sydney. Here’s the (abridged) dramatic intro: “It was supposed to be the most competitive battleground in Australian sport…Instead, it’s become nothing but a battle of the also-rans with crowds falling and merchandise down by 50 per cent.”
Let’s look at Zzz’s shocking evidence. First up: “crowds falling”. Scanning the article for crowd figures I am shocked to discover that Zzz actually doesn’t mention this assertion again; perhaps the truth is so self-evident he doesn’t feel the need to back up the claim? Surely more plausible than the idea that he just shoved it in there without bothering to check?
Well, it’s obviously too early in the season to make a fair comparison of average crowds year-on-year. But I’ve taken the time to make one quick – and, I think, especially relevant comparison. Last season, Parramatta played the Wests Tigers at home in July in front of a sold-out crowd of 19,654. In 2012, the two underperforming sides met in late April… in front of a sold-out crowd of 19,654.
Incidentally, the Parramatta home game against Penrith did drop 2,000 in crowd between 2011 and 2012. Though I suspect the fact that it was arsing down with rain on the night of the 2012 game might have been a factor – what do you reckon, Zzz?
Anyway, let’s be fair and call “crowds falling” an unproven claim (actually that’s bloody fair considering no evidence is offered). Also, frankly, even if crowds were falling what would be the big deal? Teams playing poorly don’t pull as many fans shocker? Is Zzz somehow surprised to discover that in sport occasionally there are teams that don’t win very often?
Next up: “merchandise down by 50 per cent”. That doesn’t sound good, does it? But let’s look at Zzz’s evidence which, in its entirety, consists of the observations of “former legend Peter Wynn” who runs a sports shop in Parramatta which is “normally thriving at this time of year”.
According to Zzz, Wynn says: “It’s [Ed: no explanation of what ‘it’ is here – presumably underperforming western Sydney teams but the previous paragraph in the Telegraph article is actually about competition with the AFL so who knows, really] had a huge impact on retail sales….The Eels and Wests Tigers are our most popular clubs but their jersey sales are down by 50 per cent. They played last Sunday and it should have been our busiest day but it was nothing like it.”
So the 50 per cent decline in merchandise sales is in fact the (claimed) experience of a single shopkeeper. Zzz, please allow me to throw some other thoughts into the mix here. Firstly, were you aware that Australia is in the middle of a retail recession, with particularly hard-hit areas including Sydney’s western suburbs?
Secondly, did you know that the Tigers are now into their second season of wearing a particularly nasty jersey, while the Eels are in year two of a moderately average one? Could it be that many people bought the team jerseys when they were new in 2011 and are not buying the same one again in 2012? Could it be that you are a spectacularly lazy journalist who can’t be bothered to string together a vaguely coherent, structured or backed-up argument?
But wait! Here’s Zzz getting one over on me with some really good quoted material to back up his case: “A punter on Twitter @jamiec06 summed it up well by tweeting: ‘People of Sydney’s west spoilt for choice this year – eels [sic], panthers [sic], GWS. No wonder A-League fast tracking [sic] a team.’”
I stand corrected! Man do I feel a fool for spending all this time asking what the hell Zzz is on about when he’s got the globally-renowned anthropological insights of @jamiec06 on his side! And what wisdom is this contemporary prophet bestowing on us? Here it is, parsed for clarity: in 2012, there are a number of professional sports teams in the greater western Sydney area.
(By the way, Zzz old boy, you might want to pick your tweets more carefully next time: the phrase “spoiled for choice” suggests that having all these teams is somehow a positive thing, whereas I’m fairly sure your article has a largely negative flavour).
Next up, Zzz tries – half-heartedly, quite frankly – to stir up an NRL v AFL angle to his non-story. All he can really muster is “the NRL hoped to combat the AFL invasion by winning footy games,” but quite frankly it’s limper than Zzz’s own winkie after a heavy evening in the Cronulla Sharks’ hospitality box (post Gallen exit). He’s forced to acknowledge that the new GWS AFL team’s less-than-impressive zero-and-five record is unlikely to be grabbing the attention of the punters.
Which leaves me wondering what the point of all this is. Does Zzz think it’s newsworthy to point out that the Panthers, Eels and Tigers haven’t been very good this season? The Tigers’ poor performance is surprising to most, but the other two outfits were right up there in the wooden spoon odds before the season started.
Writing rubbish like “Penrith hired Phil Gould and Ivan Cleary to restore pride but they’ve gone backwards” is spectacularly disingenuous. The Gould/Cleary project may or may not work but all concerned acknowledged before the start of the season that a rebuilding period would have to take place before the Panthers became challengers again (and the team has been injury decimated). I don’t believe for one second that Zzz isn’t aware that rebuilding a mediocre playing list takes time so I can only conclude that once again he’s shit-stirring for the lack of anything actually insightful to say.
Right down the bottom of the article (well, just ahead of a spectacularly generic and entirely pointless quote from Mark Bosnich about how a new A-league team will do better if it wins games) comes a comment from “NRL marketing boss”, Paul Kind, who points out to Zzz the stunning revelation that good teams tend to be more popular. “While all our clubs work hard to build membership and their supporter base regardless of results, it helps to win. There’s no question that success on the field brings fans to our games. Like their passionate fans, we'd like to see them winning more often.”
I can’t help but feel Zzz might have been better off making that call first then deciding there fundamentally is no story here.
Of course, Zzz being Zzz it’s not enough simply to point out the bleeding obvious. Instead our fearless correspondent attempts to crowbar in some implications about the state of the game or the supposed battle between the NRL and AFL in western Sydney. Here’s the (abridged) dramatic intro: “It was supposed to be the most competitive battleground in Australian sport…Instead, it’s become nothing but a battle of the also-rans with crowds falling and merchandise down by 50 per cent.”
Let’s look at Zzz’s shocking evidence. First up: “crowds falling”. Scanning the article for crowd figures I am shocked to discover that Zzz actually doesn’t mention this assertion again; perhaps the truth is so self-evident he doesn’t feel the need to back up the claim? Surely more plausible than the idea that he just shoved it in there without bothering to check?
Well, it’s obviously too early in the season to make a fair comparison of average crowds year-on-year. But I’ve taken the time to make one quick – and, I think, especially relevant comparison. Last season, Parramatta played the Wests Tigers at home in July in front of a sold-out crowd of 19,654. In 2012, the two underperforming sides met in late April… in front of a sold-out crowd of 19,654.
Incidentally, the Parramatta home game against Penrith did drop 2,000 in crowd between 2011 and 2012. Though I suspect the fact that it was arsing down with rain on the night of the 2012 game might have been a factor – what do you reckon, Zzz?
Anyway, let’s be fair and call “crowds falling” an unproven claim (actually that’s bloody fair considering no evidence is offered). Also, frankly, even if crowds were falling what would be the big deal? Teams playing poorly don’t pull as many fans shocker? Is Zzz somehow surprised to discover that in sport occasionally there are teams that don’t win very often?
Next up: “merchandise down by 50 per cent”. That doesn’t sound good, does it? But let’s look at Zzz’s evidence which, in its entirety, consists of the observations of “former legend Peter Wynn” who runs a sports shop in Parramatta which is “normally thriving at this time of year”.
According to Zzz, Wynn says: “It’s [Ed: no explanation of what ‘it’ is here – presumably underperforming western Sydney teams but the previous paragraph in the Telegraph article is actually about competition with the AFL so who knows, really] had a huge impact on retail sales….The Eels and Wests Tigers are our most popular clubs but their jersey sales are down by 50 per cent. They played last Sunday and it should have been our busiest day but it was nothing like it.”
So the 50 per cent decline in merchandise sales is in fact the (claimed) experience of a single shopkeeper. Zzz, please allow me to throw some other thoughts into the mix here. Firstly, were you aware that Australia is in the middle of a retail recession, with particularly hard-hit areas including Sydney’s western suburbs?
Secondly, did you know that the Tigers are now into their second season of wearing a particularly nasty jersey, while the Eels are in year two of a moderately average one? Could it be that many people bought the team jerseys when they were new in 2011 and are not buying the same one again in 2012? Could it be that you are a spectacularly lazy journalist who can’t be bothered to string together a vaguely coherent, structured or backed-up argument?
But wait! Here’s Zzz getting one over on me with some really good quoted material to back up his case: “A punter on Twitter @jamiec06 summed it up well by tweeting: ‘People of Sydney’s west spoilt for choice this year – eels [sic], panthers [sic], GWS. No wonder A-League fast tracking [sic] a team.’”
I stand corrected! Man do I feel a fool for spending all this time asking what the hell Zzz is on about when he’s got the globally-renowned anthropological insights of @jamiec06 on his side! And what wisdom is this contemporary prophet bestowing on us? Here it is, parsed for clarity: in 2012, there are a number of professional sports teams in the greater western Sydney area.
(By the way, Zzz old boy, you might want to pick your tweets more carefully next time: the phrase “spoiled for choice” suggests that having all these teams is somehow a positive thing, whereas I’m fairly sure your article has a largely negative flavour).
Next up, Zzz tries – half-heartedly, quite frankly – to stir up an NRL v AFL angle to his non-story. All he can really muster is “the NRL hoped to combat the AFL invasion by winning footy games,” but quite frankly it’s limper than Zzz’s own winkie after a heavy evening in the Cronulla Sharks’ hospitality box (post Gallen exit). He’s forced to acknowledge that the new GWS AFL team’s less-than-impressive zero-and-five record is unlikely to be grabbing the attention of the punters.
Which leaves me wondering what the point of all this is. Does Zzz think it’s newsworthy to point out that the Panthers, Eels and Tigers haven’t been very good this season? The Tigers’ poor performance is surprising to most, but the other two outfits were right up there in the wooden spoon odds before the season started.
Writing rubbish like “Penrith hired Phil Gould and Ivan Cleary to restore pride but they’ve gone backwards” is spectacularly disingenuous. The Gould/Cleary project may or may not work but all concerned acknowledged before the start of the season that a rebuilding period would have to take place before the Panthers became challengers again (and the team has been injury decimated). I don’t believe for one second that Zzz isn’t aware that rebuilding a mediocre playing list takes time so I can only conclude that once again he’s shit-stirring for the lack of anything actually insightful to say.
Right down the bottom of the article (well, just ahead of a spectacularly generic and entirely pointless quote from Mark Bosnich about how a new A-league team will do better if it wins games) comes a comment from “NRL marketing boss”, Paul Kind, who points out to Zzz the stunning revelation that good teams tend to be more popular. “While all our clubs work hard to build membership and their supporter base regardless of results, it helps to win. There’s no question that success on the field brings fans to our games. Like their passionate fans, we'd like to see them winning more often.”
I can’t help but feel Zzz might have been better off making that call first then deciding there fundamentally is no story here.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Five things we imagined last night
It’s been a long, barren off-season during which I thought at times that the Daily Telegraph had the monopoly on crappy rugby league writing. But the NRL is back, back, back and to mark the beginning of the 2012 season the Sydney Morning Herald has launched a new column which has kicked off with a rich seam of bullshit.
In a straight rip-off of similar columns seen all over the world’s sports media, the Herald is running “five things we learnt from last night’s game” after NRL fixtures. Unfortunately, the content of the two columns I’ve seen so far mostly leaves me asking: ‘Did we learn that? Because it sure seems like a cliché that could have been thought up long before the game and is now being recycled with some bland puffery even if it is directly contrary to what actually happened on the field.’
I knew I’d stumbled upon a potential goldmine from the very first thing we “learnt” from the Knights v Dragons five: “It has taken just three months for Wayne Bennett to turn the Knights into premiership contenders.” Apparently, the Knights “showed more confidence and composure than last season when the team limped into the top eight”.
Well, maybe. I mean, that’s certainly what a lot of people were saying would happen before the game. It's just that the evidence of what happened during doesn’t necessarily back that up. What I witnessed was a solid but uninspired Dragons team huffing and puffing to a narrow victory over a Knights outfit that showed creativity in flashes but made far too many mistakes.
Of course an average performance in round one means virtually nothing: there is no reason why the Knights can’t be turned into premiership contenders by Wayne Bennett (well, apart from the whole ‘Kurt Gidley is five-eighth’ thing) but on the other hand there was very little to support the view that this transformation has already taken place.
Incidentally, in round one 2011 the unconfident, lacking in composure Knights side that limped into the top eight at the end of the season played away at a Penrith outfit that finished second in 2010. The Knights won, 42-8.
Anyway, that little nugget was no more than a hors d’ouevre to the five things we apparently learned from the Parramatta v Brisbane game.
If I was asked to come up with five things I learned from the game that would be both vaguely relevant (in other words, ‘watching two people in blue and yellow ponchos clapping their hands and shouting “Parra! Parra!” is not the same as the majestic sight of a 100,000-plus crowd at the Maracana’ does not count) and could justifiably claim to have been learned from the game rather than made up several days or weeks in advance, I might go for something like:
1) If Parramatta thought Chris Sandow was going to suddenly turn them into a team with consistently creative attacking options they might be disappointed.
2) The new NRL season is unlikely to really fire until it stops raining.
3) If Brisbane don’t develop some more attacking options we are going to be hearing even more about Darren bloody Lockyer this season than we did last.
4) Parramatta are going to have to figure something out regarding Sandow’s defence because he was too easy to target.
5) Watching two people in blue and yellow ponchos clapping their hands and shouting “Parra! Parra!” is not the same as the majestic sight of a 100,000-plus crowd at the Maracana.
Ok, so I cheated a bit at the end. But at least my five weren’t:
1) Life after Locky is a work in progress.
2) There’s hope without Hayne.
3) Sandow is the real deal.
4) Brisbane’s attack is an organised mess.
5) Parramatta still don’t know how to close out games.
Let’s deal with these in order. The first and fourth points are, to all intents, the same thing. Brisbane looked clueless with ball in hand against the Eels, wasting a large quantity of attacking sets without threatening the line, dropping the ball frequently, slinging it wildly left to right without looking like finding a gap in the line and generally playing like a team that has recently lost its star playmaker. These things are all true, but really only need to be said once.
As for the Hayne point, well, hmm. Parramatta scored 6 points against a very, very mediocre Broncos side. Their only try came from a nothing kick that a defender did a hilarious bar of soap act with under minimal pressure. In 80 minutes of football Parramatta made a grand total of two offloads and zero line breaks. I am going to say right now that the suggestion that Parra “finally had players at their disposal who could fill the playmaking void and create something in attack” is unmitigated nonsense.
Speaking of which: Chris Sandow. As it happens, I think Sandow went ok. He scored a (massively fortuitous) try, kicked pretty well, only got spectacularly run over in defence once or twice and, well, it probably wasn’t the right night for his ball or running skills. We certainly didn’t see much of them.
The Herald column, however, chooses to emphasise the positives. Namely: “For one who thrives on confidence, he couldn't have asked for a better start than a try in the opening minutes”, and “his kicking game was not only accurate, but smart, finding touch at the right times to give his team a well earned break”.
Wowser. Is it fair to say that one might want a little more out of one’s half-million dollar new half back than the ability to fall on a ball in the in goal and kick for touch? Fair enough, it was a rotten, damp night and there was precious little opportunity to impress with ball in hand. But surely the conclusion there could only be something like ‘we need to see better conditions to judge whether the Sandow signing is a good one’? Simply anointing Sandow on the basis of some reasonable kicking and managing to fall over successfully seems just a touch soft.
Finally, “Parramatta still don’t know how to close out games”, which to me sounds like taking a potentially interesting point – Brisbane looked eminently beatable, but Parra couldn’t do it – and turning it into cliché.
First of all, it’s not based on even the most cursory examination of what actually happened in the game. The Herald article says Parra “dominated for most of the match”, which is simply untrue. The possession figures were 50/50, while Brisbane made more total run metres and Parra made more tackles. Parramatta completed two more sets (32 to 30) but Brisbane had more sets to start with (44 to 40). That’s not to mention the fact that Parra’s best period was at the start of the game, before Brisbane enjoyed a period of supremacy in the second half.
The point is that “closing out the game” wasn’t Parramatta’s problem at all, at least in the sense that “not scoring any points” was so much of a bigger problem that anything else pails into insignificance. “Closing out the game” puts me in mind of a team holding on to a narrow lead or getting a vital go-ahead try in a close game. But Parra weren’t ahead after 54 minutes and were behind on 59. If anything, the only team that even had a chance to “close out the game” was the Broncos, which they did by scoring a game-icing try on 72.
I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on “five things we learnt” and will update as and when I learn anything.
In a straight rip-off of similar columns seen all over the world’s sports media, the Herald is running “five things we learnt from last night’s game” after NRL fixtures. Unfortunately, the content of the two columns I’ve seen so far mostly leaves me asking: ‘Did we learn that? Because it sure seems like a cliché that could have been thought up long before the game and is now being recycled with some bland puffery even if it is directly contrary to what actually happened on the field.’
I knew I’d stumbled upon a potential goldmine from the very first thing we “learnt” from the Knights v Dragons five: “It has taken just three months for Wayne Bennett to turn the Knights into premiership contenders.” Apparently, the Knights “showed more confidence and composure than last season when the team limped into the top eight”.
Well, maybe. I mean, that’s certainly what a lot of people were saying would happen before the game. It's just that the evidence of what happened during doesn’t necessarily back that up. What I witnessed was a solid but uninspired Dragons team huffing and puffing to a narrow victory over a Knights outfit that showed creativity in flashes but made far too many mistakes.
Of course an average performance in round one means virtually nothing: there is no reason why the Knights can’t be turned into premiership contenders by Wayne Bennett (well, apart from the whole ‘Kurt Gidley is five-eighth’ thing) but on the other hand there was very little to support the view that this transformation has already taken place.
Incidentally, in round one 2011 the unconfident, lacking in composure Knights side that limped into the top eight at the end of the season played away at a Penrith outfit that finished second in 2010. The Knights won, 42-8.
Anyway, that little nugget was no more than a hors d’ouevre to the five things we apparently learned from the Parramatta v Brisbane game.
If I was asked to come up with five things I learned from the game that would be both vaguely relevant (in other words, ‘watching two people in blue and yellow ponchos clapping their hands and shouting “Parra! Parra!” is not the same as the majestic sight of a 100,000-plus crowd at the Maracana’ does not count) and could justifiably claim to have been learned from the game rather than made up several days or weeks in advance, I might go for something like:
1) If Parramatta thought Chris Sandow was going to suddenly turn them into a team with consistently creative attacking options they might be disappointed.
2) The new NRL season is unlikely to really fire until it stops raining.
3) If Brisbane don’t develop some more attacking options we are going to be hearing even more about Darren bloody Lockyer this season than we did last.
4) Parramatta are going to have to figure something out regarding Sandow’s defence because he was too easy to target.
5) Watching two people in blue and yellow ponchos clapping their hands and shouting “Parra! Parra!” is not the same as the majestic sight of a 100,000-plus crowd at the Maracana.
Ok, so I cheated a bit at the end. But at least my five weren’t:
1) Life after Locky is a work in progress.
2) There’s hope without Hayne.
3) Sandow is the real deal.
4) Brisbane’s attack is an organised mess.
5) Parramatta still don’t know how to close out games.
Let’s deal with these in order. The first and fourth points are, to all intents, the same thing. Brisbane looked clueless with ball in hand against the Eels, wasting a large quantity of attacking sets without threatening the line, dropping the ball frequently, slinging it wildly left to right without looking like finding a gap in the line and generally playing like a team that has recently lost its star playmaker. These things are all true, but really only need to be said once.
As for the Hayne point, well, hmm. Parramatta scored 6 points against a very, very mediocre Broncos side. Their only try came from a nothing kick that a defender did a hilarious bar of soap act with under minimal pressure. In 80 minutes of football Parramatta made a grand total of two offloads and zero line breaks. I am going to say right now that the suggestion that Parra “finally had players at their disposal who could fill the playmaking void and create something in attack” is unmitigated nonsense.
Speaking of which: Chris Sandow. As it happens, I think Sandow went ok. He scored a (massively fortuitous) try, kicked pretty well, only got spectacularly run over in defence once or twice and, well, it probably wasn’t the right night for his ball or running skills. We certainly didn’t see much of them.
The Herald column, however, chooses to emphasise the positives. Namely: “For one who thrives on confidence, he couldn't have asked for a better start than a try in the opening minutes”, and “his kicking game was not only accurate, but smart, finding touch at the right times to give his team a well earned break”.
Wowser. Is it fair to say that one might want a little more out of one’s half-million dollar new half back than the ability to fall on a ball in the in goal and kick for touch? Fair enough, it was a rotten, damp night and there was precious little opportunity to impress with ball in hand. But surely the conclusion there could only be something like ‘we need to see better conditions to judge whether the Sandow signing is a good one’? Simply anointing Sandow on the basis of some reasonable kicking and managing to fall over successfully seems just a touch soft.
Finally, “Parramatta still don’t know how to close out games”, which to me sounds like taking a potentially interesting point – Brisbane looked eminently beatable, but Parra couldn’t do it – and turning it into cliché.
First of all, it’s not based on even the most cursory examination of what actually happened in the game. The Herald article says Parra “dominated for most of the match”, which is simply untrue. The possession figures were 50/50, while Brisbane made more total run metres and Parra made more tackles. Parramatta completed two more sets (32 to 30) but Brisbane had more sets to start with (44 to 40). That’s not to mention the fact that Parra’s best period was at the start of the game, before Brisbane enjoyed a period of supremacy in the second half.
The point is that “closing out the game” wasn’t Parramatta’s problem at all, at least in the sense that “not scoring any points” was so much of a bigger problem that anything else pails into insignificance. “Closing out the game” puts me in mind of a team holding on to a narrow lead or getting a vital go-ahead try in a close game. But Parra weren’t ahead after 54 minutes and were behind on 59. If anything, the only team that even had a chance to “close out the game” was the Broncos, which they did by scoring a game-icing try on 72.
I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on “five things we learnt” and will update as and when I learn anything.
Friday, February 3, 2012
The sound of a tune being changed
Ever since NRL bad boy Todd Carney joined the preferred club of the Daily Telegraph’s propagandist-in-chief, Phil “Zzz” Rothfield, I’ve been waiting for a steady tide of positive coverage of how Carney is a changed man, Dally M frontrunner, leading humanitarian and philanthropist and so on ad infinitum.
And so it begins on February 3, as James “Snivelling Toady” Phelps pens an article in the Telegraph that manages to convert a decent Cronulla debut by Carney in a trial match against a one-third strength Manly into something akin to the second coming.
According to Snivelling Toady, Carney “proved beyond a doubt that he could be indeed the man to save the Sharks” with a two-try performance in a 38-6 demolition of “a near premiership-strength Sea Eagles out-fit [sic]”.
Impressive stuff, no doubt – and that’s certainly a hell of a score line against the reining premiers. However, my doubts started when I glanced down at the list of scorers. The hapless Sea Eagles’ only try scorer was one “M Jowett” – not a player I recall starring in last season’s grand final, to say the least. The successful conversion of said try was knocked over by someone called “S Blanch” – again, not one of the blokes I recall lining up a lot of touchline conversions for Manly in recent times.
So I decided to hold my nose and pop over to the Sea Eagles’ website (don’t worry, I’ve deleted my browser history) to check out this “near premiership strength” side they picked for the trial.
Well, it should be said that Manly did indeed pick 10 of the players who contested the grand final. However, what the Telegraph’s Carney hagiography failed to mention is the fact that these 10 made up less than a third of a 31-man squad (I assume they were all men, though in the case of individuals like “Jason Annear” and “Liam Higgins” I’m afraid I’ve only got first name conventions to go on).
Given Manly are also two weeks out from the world club challenge in the UK, and that their new coach said in advance of the trial “our first grade strength players will only get 20 to 30 minutes”, and that Cronulla scored most of their points in the second half, I’m going to hold off for a little on my own “Carney is back” conclusion.
And so it begins on February 3, as James “Snivelling Toady” Phelps pens an article in the Telegraph that manages to convert a decent Cronulla debut by Carney in a trial match against a one-third strength Manly into something akin to the second coming.
According to Snivelling Toady, Carney “proved beyond a doubt that he could be indeed the man to save the Sharks” with a two-try performance in a 38-6 demolition of “a near premiership-strength Sea Eagles out-fit [sic]”.
Impressive stuff, no doubt – and that’s certainly a hell of a score line against the reining premiers. However, my doubts started when I glanced down at the list of scorers. The hapless Sea Eagles’ only try scorer was one “M Jowett” – not a player I recall starring in last season’s grand final, to say the least. The successful conversion of said try was knocked over by someone called “S Blanch” – again, not one of the blokes I recall lining up a lot of touchline conversions for Manly in recent times.
So I decided to hold my nose and pop over to the Sea Eagles’ website (don’t worry, I’ve deleted my browser history) to check out this “near premiership strength” side they picked for the trial.
Well, it should be said that Manly did indeed pick 10 of the players who contested the grand final. However, what the Telegraph’s Carney hagiography failed to mention is the fact that these 10 made up less than a third of a 31-man squad (I assume they were all men, though in the case of individuals like “Jason Annear” and “Liam Higgins” I’m afraid I’ve only got first name conventions to go on).
Given Manly are also two weeks out from the world club challenge in the UK, and that their new coach said in advance of the trial “our first grade strength players will only get 20 to 30 minutes”, and that Cronulla scored most of their points in the second half, I’m going to hold off for a little on my own “Carney is back” conclusion.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Anatomy of a beat up; or, stealing someone else’s cake and eating it
A mucky little episode perpetrated by the Daily Telegraph occurred yesterday, with the filthy rag making up a story, kind of sort of retracting it and then following up with a directly contradictory story – without a hint of shame – all in the space of 24 hours.
It all kicked off with the explosive allegation made by Telegraph pygmy Dean “Grub Street” Ritchie that “the relationship between Wests Tigers coach Tim Sheens and his star hooker has broken down to the point where Robbie Farah could be forced out of the club”.
Matching its usual standards of research and journalistic integrity, the Telegraph made a series of claims about Sheens and Farah with little or no supporting material (at a time, it should be remembered, where Farah is dealing with his mother’s potentially life-threatening illness – all class, Grub Street). The claims:
• “Sheens and Farah fell out during the recent Four Nations tour”.
• [Wests Tigers] “officials are aware both may not be able to remain at Concord”.
• “Farah has told close friends about his deepening issues with Sheens while Wests Tigers players are openly discussing it [sic].”
• [Farah] “has been tenuously linked with Parramatta”.
• “Farah'’ manager, Sam Ayoub, has discussed the situation with his high-profile client.”
• “Farah became irritated when overlooked for the major Four Nations Tests in England.”
Wow! It certainly seems that everyone’s in on this rift: Farah and Sheens, of course, various Tigers officials, Sam Ayoub, and presumably various people in the Australia and Parramatta set-ups. With a clutch of key sources from within those groups it certainly seems Grub Street has a hell of a scoop here.
Sadly, Grub Street actually has none of those sources. Not on the record – of course – and not even on background. In fact, the only supporting evidence offered for this series of claims is, unedited and its entirety, the following: “One source close to the Tigers said: ‘I am not sure they will both be there next year. I was talking to a high-profile Wests Tigers player the other day and he said teammates aren’t getting on great with Robbie.’”
I’m going to break the fourth wall here and offer a piece of direct advice, journalist to journalist: Grub Street, if you wrote for a legitimate newspaper and that’s your only source material, you ain’t got a story at all. Because – and this is the key – that is pathetic. A “source close to” whose only evidence is “I was talking to” is something called “hearsay”, and it’s rubbish.
Follow down
Even this source, however, was stronger than the basis for the Telegraph’s online follow-up article. Penned by one Tyson “Iron Shite” Otto, the piece claimed that “Tim Sheens and Robbie Farah will meet face to face in the next few days – the first time the pair have seen each other since falling out during the Kangaroos’ Four Nations campaign.”
Far be it from me to mention that the lack of a meeting since the tour might possibly have something to do with the fact that Farah left said tour early to be with his sick mother while Sheens was – amazingly enough – on tour.
What I will point out is that the Iron Shite article contained not a single source to confirm this explosive meeting between coach and captain (which actually doesn’t seem that explosive when you think about it – kind of like “company chairman meets company chief executive shocker”).
However, Iron Shite did drum up one actual-factual, on-the-record named source: Parramatta chairman Roy Spagnolo, to comment about Grub Street’s Farah-to-Parra line. And what did Spagnolo say, in its entirety? “There’s been no contact. I’ve got no knowledge of it.”
The plot thickens
Still, and predictably enough, Grub Street’s guff was enough to get Tigers fans in a right flap. Some panicking, others pointing out how miserably weak the source material is, others – the more reactionary and stupid – wading in with “there’s no smoke without fire”. Mission accomplished for Grub Street and the Telegraph, of course, with no acknowledgment of the outlandish possibility that Farah and Sheens might have had an argument but that their relationship did not completely break down as a result. You know, like happens in the real world every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
On this occasion, though, Farah and the Tigers weren’t willing to simply bathe in the Telegraph’s effluent and decided to fight back. By mid-afternoon, Farah released a strongly-worded statement through the club in which he said: “the reports create a totally false impression of things”.
While acknowledging he was “disappointed” not to be picked for Australia’s game against England, he added: “I totally accepted Tim’s decision. To now suggest that I would be seeking to leave the club that I love is just ridiculous and unfounded. Tim has been my coach since I came into first grade in 2003 and whilst we agree to disagree on things from time to time, our working relationship has never been adversely affected.”
Back on the front foot
Farah then got support from the same players he is supposedly not on speaking terms with. In a move that must have made the sports desk almost faint with excitement – well, that and the overpowering stench of fried onions and failure that presumably permeates the office – they got a call from none other than Benji Marshall. The same Marshall, it should be mentioned, who the Telegraph slurred less than three months ago over his shameful behaviour in being found not guilty of some bullshit trumped-up charge that should never have come to court in the first place.
Marshall’s call, it can be imagined, was not friendly. “Robbie and I are great mates and given the situation that Robbie is going through with his mum, something like this is really annoying,” he said – using, it would seem, remarkably controlled language.
To be fair, Marshall does seem a little naïve. Firstly by wasting his time calling the Telegraph at all. Secondly by saying: “I don’t where this stuff always comes from. Unless you see me quoted with my name, don’t believe it.” Er, Benji – there’s no point telling the Telegraph that. They’re the ones who make it all up in the first place.
Still, at this point it would seem inevitable that the Telegraph would have to back down on its initial story. The combination of outright denial from one party involved and angry calls from related individuals (it’s amazing how every direct quote the Telegraph gets is denying their rubbish) are pretty conclusive reasons for a retraction.
Of course not. What Telegraph “readers” get instead is a third article, penned by Josh “Bottom Feeder” Massoud, which makes no mention at all of Grub Street’s apology (which has mysteriously vanished from Twitter) and presents Marshall’s angry call as “in a pro-active move, star Tigers playmaker Benji Marshall last night approached The Daily Telegraph to silence persistent rumours about player disharmony”. Yeah that and to call you all a bunch of lowlife scumbags, I sincerely hope.
The whole affair reminds me of the classic Sunday Sport “World War Two Bomber Found On Moon” headline. The true genius of that story was not the headline itself, but the follow-up story the next week. The Sport, spiritual journalistic brethren to the Telegraph, covered its tracks perfectly with “World War Two Bomber Found On Moon DISAPPEARS”.
It all kicked off with the explosive allegation made by Telegraph pygmy Dean “Grub Street” Ritchie that “the relationship between Wests Tigers coach Tim Sheens and his star hooker has broken down to the point where Robbie Farah could be forced out of the club”.
Matching its usual standards of research and journalistic integrity, the Telegraph made a series of claims about Sheens and Farah with little or no supporting material (at a time, it should be remembered, where Farah is dealing with his mother’s potentially life-threatening illness – all class, Grub Street). The claims:
• “Sheens and Farah fell out during the recent Four Nations tour”.
• [Wests Tigers] “officials are aware both may not be able to remain at Concord”.
• “Farah has told close friends about his deepening issues with Sheens while Wests Tigers players are openly discussing it [sic].”
• [Farah] “has been tenuously linked with Parramatta”.
• “Farah'’ manager, Sam Ayoub, has discussed the situation with his high-profile client.”
• “Farah became irritated when overlooked for the major Four Nations Tests in England.”
Wow! It certainly seems that everyone’s in on this rift: Farah and Sheens, of course, various Tigers officials, Sam Ayoub, and presumably various people in the Australia and Parramatta set-ups. With a clutch of key sources from within those groups it certainly seems Grub Street has a hell of a scoop here.
Sadly, Grub Street actually has none of those sources. Not on the record – of course – and not even on background. In fact, the only supporting evidence offered for this series of claims is, unedited and its entirety, the following: “One source close to the Tigers said: ‘I am not sure they will both be there next year. I was talking to a high-profile Wests Tigers player the other day and he said teammates aren’t getting on great with Robbie.’”
I’m going to break the fourth wall here and offer a piece of direct advice, journalist to journalist: Grub Street, if you wrote for a legitimate newspaper and that’s your only source material, you ain’t got a story at all. Because – and this is the key – that is pathetic. A “source close to” whose only evidence is “I was talking to” is something called “hearsay”, and it’s rubbish.
Follow down
Even this source, however, was stronger than the basis for the Telegraph’s online follow-up article. Penned by one Tyson “Iron Shite” Otto, the piece claimed that “Tim Sheens and Robbie Farah will meet face to face in the next few days – the first time the pair have seen each other since falling out during the Kangaroos’ Four Nations campaign.”
Far be it from me to mention that the lack of a meeting since the tour might possibly have something to do with the fact that Farah left said tour early to be with his sick mother while Sheens was – amazingly enough – on tour.
What I will point out is that the Iron Shite article contained not a single source to confirm this explosive meeting between coach and captain (which actually doesn’t seem that explosive when you think about it – kind of like “company chairman meets company chief executive shocker”).
However, Iron Shite did drum up one actual-factual, on-the-record named source: Parramatta chairman Roy Spagnolo, to comment about Grub Street’s Farah-to-Parra line. And what did Spagnolo say, in its entirety? “There’s been no contact. I’ve got no knowledge of it.”
The plot thickens
Still, and predictably enough, Grub Street’s guff was enough to get Tigers fans in a right flap. Some panicking, others pointing out how miserably weak the source material is, others – the more reactionary and stupid – wading in with “there’s no smoke without fire”. Mission accomplished for Grub Street and the Telegraph, of course, with no acknowledgment of the outlandish possibility that Farah and Sheens might have had an argument but that their relationship did not completely break down as a result. You know, like happens in the real world every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
On this occasion, though, Farah and the Tigers weren’t willing to simply bathe in the Telegraph’s effluent and decided to fight back. By mid-afternoon, Farah released a strongly-worded statement through the club in which he said: “the reports create a totally false impression of things”.
While acknowledging he was “disappointed” not to be picked for Australia’s game against England, he added: “I totally accepted Tim’s decision. To now suggest that I would be seeking to leave the club that I love is just ridiculous and unfounded. Tim has been my coach since I came into first grade in 2003 and whilst we agree to disagree on things from time to time, our working relationship has never been adversely affected.”
Back on the front foot
Farah then got support from the same players he is supposedly not on speaking terms with. In a move that must have made the sports desk almost faint with excitement – well, that and the overpowering stench of fried onions and failure that presumably permeates the office – they got a call from none other than Benji Marshall. The same Marshall, it should be mentioned, who the Telegraph slurred less than three months ago over his shameful behaviour in being found not guilty of some bullshit trumped-up charge that should never have come to court in the first place.
Marshall’s call, it can be imagined, was not friendly. “Robbie and I are great mates and given the situation that Robbie is going through with his mum, something like this is really annoying,” he said – using, it would seem, remarkably controlled language.
To be fair, Marshall does seem a little naïve. Firstly by wasting his time calling the Telegraph at all. Secondly by saying: “I don’t where this stuff always comes from. Unless you see me quoted with my name, don’t believe it.” Er, Benji – there’s no point telling the Telegraph that. They’re the ones who make it all up in the first place.
Still, at this point it would seem inevitable that the Telegraph would have to back down on its initial story. The combination of outright denial from one party involved and angry calls from related individuals (it’s amazing how every direct quote the Telegraph gets is denying their rubbish) are pretty conclusive reasons for a retraction.
Of course not. What Telegraph “readers” get instead is a third article, penned by Josh “Bottom Feeder” Massoud, which makes no mention at all of Grub Street’s apology (which has mysteriously vanished from Twitter) and presents Marshall’s angry call as “in a pro-active move, star Tigers playmaker Benji Marshall last night approached The Daily Telegraph to silence persistent rumours about player disharmony”. Yeah that and to call you all a bunch of lowlife scumbags, I sincerely hope.
The whole affair reminds me of the classic Sunday Sport “World War Two Bomber Found On Moon” headline. The true genius of that story was not the headline itself, but the follow-up story the next week. The Sport, spiritual journalistic brethren to the Telegraph, covered its tracks perfectly with “World War Two Bomber Found On Moon DISAPPEARS”.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Refusing to understand the purpose of a court: Ryan Tandy’s fine
A classic tactic of columnists looking to stir up shit where none was previously visible – the journalistic equivalent of forcing a banger round the u-bend – is to take two things that are not really equivalents and make a direct comparison between them. Here’s Glenn “LA Law” Jackson in the Sydney Morning Herald giving a textbook demonstration:
“So a price has been placed on defrauding a code. It is $4,000. To place it into context, if someone had run onto Dairy Farmers Stadium on August 21, 2010 – the night Ryan Tandy’s Canterbury played North Queensland – he or she might have been fined the same amount.
“The maximum penalty for streaking at Dairy Farmers Stadium is $4,000. That fine can be doubled if you interfere with the on-field play. But for interfering with the integrity of rugby league by attempting to manipulate the first scoring play of that Saturday night fixture, Tandy has been hit with a $4,000 fine. Or a $571 successful outlay on that option.”
Let’s swiftly deal with the rather odd last sentence, which seems to imply that Tandy could have covered his fine in advance by placing a bet as part of his own gambling scam. A course of action which, one would have to assume, he did in fact choose to take: Tandy is clearly not the first name on the list for Rhodes Scholarships but it’s difficult to imagine that even he would try to pull of a betting scam without placing a bet.
I’m not sure if LA Law has figured out that fines tend to be higher if the guilty party actually benefits from their fraud – perhaps he thinks Bernie Madoff, for instance, would have effectively got away with it if he’d just stolen enough money to cover the fine. In this case, the requirement of Tandy’s fine to repay his ill-gotten gains is presumably negated to quite a large extent by the fact that the whole ludicrous scheme didn’t pay off in the first place.
Anyway, back to the main point: the idea that the $4,000 fine is “the price [placed] on defrauding a code”. Which, of course, is utter nonsense: the fine (and a 12 month good behaviour bond!) is the price that has been placed on being convicted of providing false information to the NSW Crime Commission and attempting to dishonestly obtain financial advantage by deception. So far as I’m aware, neither New South Wales nor the Australian Commonwealth has a law against defrauding a sporting code. If they do it seems rather odd that Tandy wasn’t charged with breaking it – he’d have been bang to rights.
Legally, what were the actual charges against Tandy equivalent to? Getting caught trying to pull of an insurance scam and lying about it, perhaps? It’s startlingly obvious to anyone who actually spends two seconds thinking about it that it’s the job of the court to enforce the law and of the NRL to uphold the integrity of the game. Ergo one minor league fraud equals a $4,000 fine (and a 12 month good behaviour bond!) and one spot fixing scam equals a life ban from the NRL. Seems to me that everyone’s done their job here.
Fortunately for LA Law, there’s one man who’s always prepared not to spend two seconds thinking about things: Mark “Slower” Geyer. Here’s Slower’s view: “Every spectator went there thinking they’re going to get a fair game, and they didn’t. You can do a lot in the game but you can’t rob the fans. What’s the price for that? It’s all about making people aware of what they’ve done. Does a $4,000 fine do that?”
Personally I’d argue that it is, in fact, perfectly possible to rob the fans in rugby league: the South Sydney Rabbitohs continue to charge for membership, for instance. But that’s beside the point, which is of course why Slower and LA Law are – accidentally or on purpose – suggesting that it’s up to a court of law to do the NRL’s disciplinary job for it. I can only assume these two would be in favour of tasering refs for making bad decisions, or even the death penalty for players who lie down faking head injuries to milk penalties. It’s the only language they understand.
“So a price has been placed on defrauding a code. It is $4,000. To place it into context, if someone had run onto Dairy Farmers Stadium on August 21, 2010 – the night Ryan Tandy’s Canterbury played North Queensland – he or she might have been fined the same amount.
“The maximum penalty for streaking at Dairy Farmers Stadium is $4,000. That fine can be doubled if you interfere with the on-field play. But for interfering with the integrity of rugby league by attempting to manipulate the first scoring play of that Saturday night fixture, Tandy has been hit with a $4,000 fine. Or a $571 successful outlay on that option.”
Let’s swiftly deal with the rather odd last sentence, which seems to imply that Tandy could have covered his fine in advance by placing a bet as part of his own gambling scam. A course of action which, one would have to assume, he did in fact choose to take: Tandy is clearly not the first name on the list for Rhodes Scholarships but it’s difficult to imagine that even he would try to pull of a betting scam without placing a bet.
I’m not sure if LA Law has figured out that fines tend to be higher if the guilty party actually benefits from their fraud – perhaps he thinks Bernie Madoff, for instance, would have effectively got away with it if he’d just stolen enough money to cover the fine. In this case, the requirement of Tandy’s fine to repay his ill-gotten gains is presumably negated to quite a large extent by the fact that the whole ludicrous scheme didn’t pay off in the first place.
Anyway, back to the main point: the idea that the $4,000 fine is “the price [placed] on defrauding a code”. Which, of course, is utter nonsense: the fine (and a 12 month good behaviour bond!) is the price that has been placed on being convicted of providing false information to the NSW Crime Commission and attempting to dishonestly obtain financial advantage by deception. So far as I’m aware, neither New South Wales nor the Australian Commonwealth has a law against defrauding a sporting code. If they do it seems rather odd that Tandy wasn’t charged with breaking it – he’d have been bang to rights.
Legally, what were the actual charges against Tandy equivalent to? Getting caught trying to pull of an insurance scam and lying about it, perhaps? It’s startlingly obvious to anyone who actually spends two seconds thinking about it that it’s the job of the court to enforce the law and of the NRL to uphold the integrity of the game. Ergo one minor league fraud equals a $4,000 fine (and a 12 month good behaviour bond!) and one spot fixing scam equals a life ban from the NRL. Seems to me that everyone’s done their job here.
Fortunately for LA Law, there’s one man who’s always prepared not to spend two seconds thinking about things: Mark “Slower” Geyer. Here’s Slower’s view: “Every spectator went there thinking they’re going to get a fair game, and they didn’t. You can do a lot in the game but you can’t rob the fans. What’s the price for that? It’s all about making people aware of what they’ve done. Does a $4,000 fine do that?”
Personally I’d argue that it is, in fact, perfectly possible to rob the fans in rugby league: the South Sydney Rabbitohs continue to charge for membership, for instance. But that’s beside the point, which is of course why Slower and LA Law are – accidentally or on purpose – suggesting that it’s up to a court of law to do the NRL’s disciplinary job for it. I can only assume these two would be in favour of tasering refs for making bad decisions, or even the death penalty for players who lie down faking head injuries to milk penalties. It’s the only language they understand.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Amateur hour: Channel 9 and its commentators’ pokie embarrassment
Regardless of what you think about mandatory pre-commitment for gaming machines, there can be little doubt that the response to the proposals is, once again, giving the NRL and people connected with the game the opportunity to make themselves look like clowns. Channel 9 and its commentary team, Ray Warren and Phil “Frog Man” Gould, are among the first out of the comically overcrowded car with wobbly wheels.
As far as the actual proposal goes, personally I find it depressing to think that the NRL is genuinely dependent for its financial future on the conscience-salving handouts given by pokie palaces. If the game really can’t survive without the proceeds of a tax on the stupid (and by this I don’t mean ticket revenue at Souths games) then, well, maybe it doesn’t deserve to exist anyway.
Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I like to think that a well-run game that got its head out of its arse and tried to plan for the long term rather than twisting itself in knots for the next ten bucks would manage fine without the grubby reality of pokie money.
And let’s be honest: much as Frog Man and his corporate backers are keen to portray the pokies as a bit of fun down at the club the reality is that most of the revenue is coming from the misguided and the desperate, blindly feeding money they can’t afford to lose into the coffers of institutions that don’t care how much it hurts them when they inevitably do. If you’ve ever set foot in, say, the Dragons club in Kogarah or Bulldogs in Belmore you’ll be fully aware that these places are not – despite what their websites depict – primarily social clubs. The overwhelming majority of their floor space is taken up with gambling machines; they are, in effect, casinos.
I don’t have a problem with casinos at a fundamental level. But then I’m not a gambling addict, I hardly ever go to them and when I do I’m pretty well aware that I’m throwing – a limited quantity of – money away. Others are not so fortunate, and – whether or not you think mandatory pre-commitment will achieve its goals – it is unfair to present an attempt to assist problem gamblers to deal with their addiction as a conspiracy against a purely social activity.
That, of course, is exactly what Channel 9, Warren and Frog Man have been using live NRL broadcasts to do. Oddly enough, while he’s perfectly capable of being a bumptious arse I actually have least issue with Frog Man on this. He is a senior executive at a rugby league club that relies on pokies for a significant portion of its income, and while his interests should be openly declared (perhaps a caption saying “Phil Gould’s employer, Penrith Panthers rugby league club, derives over $10 million a year from its associated leagues club where the overwhelming majority of main room floor space is used for gambling machines”) it’s hardly surprising that he is pushing them on air.
Warren’s position, much as I hate to admit it, is considerably worse. This is a man who acknowledged in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald barely a year ago that he has suffered from a gambling problem. “When I think about the money I spent, it crosses my mind that I could now be living on the shores of Sydney Harbour,” he said. “I was never able to gather money around me. It’s not like I live in a fibro house, but I certainly don't live in opulence.”
Most importantly, Warren wanted to warn others about the perils of gambling. “I’d bet on the Saturday, but also on the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday….Then I realised there’s no future in it. If I could get that message across, I certainly would. It took me a long time to realise.”
Very laudable. Or at least it would be if Warren hadn’t felt the need to join in with Frog Man in attacking, on air, the mandatory pre-commitment proposals. Granted, it’s possible that Warren is completely in favour of rules attempting to help problem gamblers deal with their addiction and he simply doesn’t think this particular proposal will be effective. That seems pretty unlikely – and certainly none of that nuance came across in Warren or Frog Man’s comments – but it is, perhaps, possible.
Unfortunately, Warren has now apparently decided to take the war criminal defence and go with the line ‘I was just following orders’. “It was a directive from up top that it be read by at least somebody, so I read it,” Warren has said. Which is wonderful: a man who acknowledges his own gambling problem and claims to want to “get that message across” about how gambling has “no future in it” is happy to attack anti-gambling regulations to millions of viewers just because he’s told to.
Of course, the worst offender in this is clearly Channel 9. At first, the station tried to worm its way out of the impending shitstorm by throwing Warren and Frog Man under a bus. It issued a statement saying: “The comments relating to the federal government proposed poker machine tax were purely the opinions of the commentators”.
Which is interesting, given the supposedly unscripted comments were accompanied by an on-screen caption with the name of an anti-pokie law website. Dare I suggest that shows rather more technological facility than I expect from Warren and Frog Man? (though I do recall Frog Man brandishing an iPhone on The Sunday Roast once, so perhaps he did whip up a graphic to back his comments while playing Angry Birds with his massive sausage fingers).
I wonder what Warren feels, having dutifully toed the company line (which, to be fair, he says he agrees with), to find that his bosses are happy to wash their hands of the whole affair and leave him and Frog Man dangling in the wind? My prediction is that Warren will soon ‘clarify’ his remarks about the original comments being “a directive from the top” to get his bosses off the hook; after all, he’s already admitted that he can’t afford to walk away.
As far as the actual proposal goes, personally I find it depressing to think that the NRL is genuinely dependent for its financial future on the conscience-salving handouts given by pokie palaces. If the game really can’t survive without the proceeds of a tax on the stupid (and by this I don’t mean ticket revenue at Souths games) then, well, maybe it doesn’t deserve to exist anyway.
Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I like to think that a well-run game that got its head out of its arse and tried to plan for the long term rather than twisting itself in knots for the next ten bucks would manage fine without the grubby reality of pokie money.
And let’s be honest: much as Frog Man and his corporate backers are keen to portray the pokies as a bit of fun down at the club the reality is that most of the revenue is coming from the misguided and the desperate, blindly feeding money they can’t afford to lose into the coffers of institutions that don’t care how much it hurts them when they inevitably do. If you’ve ever set foot in, say, the Dragons club in Kogarah or Bulldogs in Belmore you’ll be fully aware that these places are not – despite what their websites depict – primarily social clubs. The overwhelming majority of their floor space is taken up with gambling machines; they are, in effect, casinos.
I don’t have a problem with casinos at a fundamental level. But then I’m not a gambling addict, I hardly ever go to them and when I do I’m pretty well aware that I’m throwing – a limited quantity of – money away. Others are not so fortunate, and – whether or not you think mandatory pre-commitment will achieve its goals – it is unfair to present an attempt to assist problem gamblers to deal with their addiction as a conspiracy against a purely social activity.
That, of course, is exactly what Channel 9, Warren and Frog Man have been using live NRL broadcasts to do. Oddly enough, while he’s perfectly capable of being a bumptious arse I actually have least issue with Frog Man on this. He is a senior executive at a rugby league club that relies on pokies for a significant portion of its income, and while his interests should be openly declared (perhaps a caption saying “Phil Gould’s employer, Penrith Panthers rugby league club, derives over $10 million a year from its associated leagues club where the overwhelming majority of main room floor space is used for gambling machines”) it’s hardly surprising that he is pushing them on air.
Warren’s position, much as I hate to admit it, is considerably worse. This is a man who acknowledged in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald barely a year ago that he has suffered from a gambling problem. “When I think about the money I spent, it crosses my mind that I could now be living on the shores of Sydney Harbour,” he said. “I was never able to gather money around me. It’s not like I live in a fibro house, but I certainly don't live in opulence.”
Most importantly, Warren wanted to warn others about the perils of gambling. “I’d bet on the Saturday, but also on the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday….Then I realised there’s no future in it. If I could get that message across, I certainly would. It took me a long time to realise.”
Very laudable. Or at least it would be if Warren hadn’t felt the need to join in with Frog Man in attacking, on air, the mandatory pre-commitment proposals. Granted, it’s possible that Warren is completely in favour of rules attempting to help problem gamblers deal with their addiction and he simply doesn’t think this particular proposal will be effective. That seems pretty unlikely – and certainly none of that nuance came across in Warren or Frog Man’s comments – but it is, perhaps, possible.
Unfortunately, Warren has now apparently decided to take the war criminal defence and go with the line ‘I was just following orders’. “It was a directive from up top that it be read by at least somebody, so I read it,” Warren has said. Which is wonderful: a man who acknowledges his own gambling problem and claims to want to “get that message across” about how gambling has “no future in it” is happy to attack anti-gambling regulations to millions of viewers just because he’s told to.
Of course, the worst offender in this is clearly Channel 9. At first, the station tried to worm its way out of the impending shitstorm by throwing Warren and Frog Man under a bus. It issued a statement saying: “The comments relating to the federal government proposed poker machine tax were purely the opinions of the commentators”.
Which is interesting, given the supposedly unscripted comments were accompanied by an on-screen caption with the name of an anti-pokie law website. Dare I suggest that shows rather more technological facility than I expect from Warren and Frog Man? (though I do recall Frog Man brandishing an iPhone on The Sunday Roast once, so perhaps he did whip up a graphic to back his comments while playing Angry Birds with his massive sausage fingers).
I wonder what Warren feels, having dutifully toed the company line (which, to be fair, he says he agrees with), to find that his bosses are happy to wash their hands of the whole affair and leave him and Frog Man dangling in the wind? My prediction is that Warren will soon ‘clarify’ his remarks about the original comments being “a directive from the top” to get his bosses off the hook; after all, he’s already admitted that he can’t afford to walk away.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
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
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
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
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.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
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.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
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.
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.
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.
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