AGB Footy

DUMMY SPIT

Front page of the Herald Sun:

Sam Newman told to take break from The Footy Show

CONTROVERSIAL Footy Show star Sam Newman will be missing from the program tonight after Channel 9 management ordered him to take an extended break.

Everyone - Caroline Wilson, women at the AFL, women in general, Channel Nine, squawk-back radio, assorted honkers, professional outragists - has got it wrong. As usual. This is not an issue of gender respect, sexism, yobbism, taste, manners, ratings, or whether the Footy Show will tank while Sam's "recovering and convalescing". Categorically, this is an issue of diction. Suddenly everyone is saying mannekwin, not mannekin. You people make me sick.

POUT OF BOUNDS

Poor things. Footbawlers have been banned from reading blogs and websites because they will get sad:

Players cop a blogging

AFL players have been banned from scouring fan websites, for fear the vicious player appraisals could lead to depression.

At one club, support staff also have been threatened with the sack if they are caught blogging or leaking valuable information to the websites.

Labelled "cyber bullying" and "big brother" blogging by the AFL Players' Association, clubs have taken the drastic step of encouraging a boycott of the popular fan sites.

Doesn't look like Robbo knows the difference between a fan forum and a blog.

UNHAPPY AT LARRY

The journalist below, who probably didn't do the headlines, is John Ralph. Ralphy was on SEN this morning trying to suggest that Trevor Grant (News) and Richard Hinds (Fairfax) were well within their rights to criticise David Schwarz's commentary on SEN and Seven because they put their names to their articles, but that Leaping Larry L (Fairfax) has no right to criticise Schwarz because he hides behind a nom-de-keyboard.

"At least people who take issue with Grant and Hinds can ring them up at their papers and ask to speak to them." If someone like Schwarz has a problem with Leapster, surely they can pick up the phone, call the Age, and ask to speak to Leapster.

"Grant has been a well credentialled journalist for 40 years and has earned the right to make criticisms." If a pundit has something worthwhile to add, it doesn't matter how long they've been at the caper. Nevertheless, Leaping Larry L has been around as Leaping Larry L for at least 20 years and his opinions, always backed up, are every bit as valid as Grant's.

For the record. I happen to agree with Leapster's column on Schwarz:

Tough nut in the cliche clinches, or thrilled to be skilled

Special comments man Schwarz was unambiguous about the latter, making sneering reference to one section of the ground as "the worst stand ever designed for spectators" (who else, giraffes?), and taking the sneer up to Warp Factor 12 in describing the local supporters as, quote, ferals, unquote. Right. Lead us out of feral-dom, oh Great One.

Over the course of the day, Schwarz also managed to disparage the level of courage shown by certain players, the umpiring (frequently), cited Steve Johnson atop his half-time list of the most disappointing players, complained about "stupid" actions that one gathered were being committed by everyone outside the commentary booth, possibly including the pie-boys, and inserted a bizarre swipe at the courage of Richmond players, a reference that seemed starved to the point of malnutrition for anything resembling context. During this broadcast, Schwarz frequently manifested a tone of nose-lofting disdain like he'd just discovered a Great Dane turd nestling atop his prize begonias. The last football notable to perfect this approach on the airwaves was Sam Newman, and it's interesting that you don't hear him so much on the radio any more.

Schwarz is an ordinary commentator, offering nothing in the way of insightful analysis. He is much better as a cheeky oaf, which he uses to good effect on SEN's drive program.

Anyway, Trevor Grant is Trevor Grant just as Leaping Larry L is Leaping Larry L. The journalist IS the name on the byline. It would only matter if Leapster was an alias for another journalist, say, Catherine Deveny.

Maybe there is more to it. "There are a few people out there very unhappy with this Leaping Larry." A few people. Has Ralphy been talking to a mate with a grievance? You probably won't be surprised to know that both Ralphy and Schwarz work at SEN. Because I'm wondering WHY he's is even slightly interested in taking aim at Leapster. It's not as if the Herald Sun isn't full of pseudonymous writers. Come to think of it, 3AW have had loads of people working under an alias: Ross Stevenson, Sly of the Underworld, Truth Serum, Doctor Feelgood, even Caroline Wilson used to operate as Anne Tenna.

And apart from anything else, if anonymity is a problem, wouldn't The Age step in and insist Leapster use his real name, Jumping Johnny J.

(Mind you, the Age just sacked their sports editor, so who knows.)

SAME SHIT, SAME BUCKET

Must be a slow news day. What sort of rumpus is this?

Back flip? Back flop, more like. I know the Herald Sun is one of your more tabloidy, sensationalist newspapers, but how is the AFL changing the grand final, ahem, entertainment anyone's idea of a backpage splurge and a backflip gotcha? That sort of thing should be reserved for grand political squibbery, not pissant pageant details. Going from a motorcade to last year's tribute and back to a motorcade strikes me as being about as important as changing from girls waving streamers to boys waving balloons and back again.

TO DREAM PERCHANCE TO SLEEP

Victoria versus the Dream Team: wake me up next week.

Greg Baum:

No to state football

OVERWHELMINGLY, fundamentally, footballs fans follow the game through the wonderfully irrational prism of their allegiance to clubs. 

Fans admire other clubs, but love only their own. They would no more change club than gender. Even the unmoved in this city feel compelled to declare for a club at some stage. 

A club provides its fans with important links, to a place, to the past, with all its resonances, and to each other. It provides a sense of tribalism, of belonging, of righteous struggle — week by week, season by season, decade by decade — in which no game stands alone, but is a step one way or the other in that ceaseless and unifying struggle. 

The Tribute Game, by definition, sits outside this dynamic. It is a one-off, an exhibition, between two representative teams, one rarely seen, the other made up. Little, if any, emotion bubbles up in anticipation of it. I am not excited by it, but nor can I work up enough feeling to loathe it. 

I feel indifference.

Me, too.

That's in spite of living in WA in the 70s and 80s and having to put up with wall-to-wall West Aussies droning on about how they'd beaten "you" as in me as in Victoria again.

There was even this one bloke, Blubsy, who would get stuck into me when Victorians lost on It's a Knockout. He seems a bit mad, but Blubs maintained he had an excuse: he played in a WAFL grand final, but a prominent Victorian football identity screwed his chances of a premiership. So he wasn't nuts, he was bitter. As, I suppose, were many other 'Gropers who were sick of seeing WA get spanked by Victoria despite the Victorian sides being loaded with the likes of Polly Farmer and Barry Cable.

After enduring 15 years of that you'd think I'd have been driven to support the Vics, but no, I never identified with my state team the way the West Aussies identified with their state team. I didn't care who won. I probably would have if I'd had to put up with it every week, like what happened when the Toast entered the VFL/AFL, but with state games being scheduled only once in a while I built up no animosity. Not that there weren't some good matches, but many of them were on weekdays so I didn't get to see them, and the one match I actually went to (1987) was a bore.

The only thing that did shit me was the number of locals who refused to accept that I didn't care. They thought I was trying to take the edge off their sledges.

No, for me a state game has always been a match in which Carlton* or the Demons aren't playing.

* "They would no more change club than gender." I've changed from Melbourne to Carlton to Melbourne, so I guess I'm a bloke again. Last time I checked, anyway.

BELABOURING THE POINT

"Without harbouring the point..."

~~ Tim Watson, 8:13 left, 2nd qtr, Melbourne vs Fremantle

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT WONAEAMIRRI

FULL STOP IT!

Dear ABC

I understand you are "redefining television". That's nice. But could you please refrain from also redefining the language of football. A News reporter tonight referred to the third "period" of the Hawthorn Collingwood match, not the third quarter. What next? Stepping up to the plate? Coast to coast? Turnover?

Let it happen again, and I will refuse to pay my licence fee.

Thank you
Cheesed of Richmond