On Thursday, in the plastic posh environment of the North Sydney Leagues Club, a wonderful gathering of sportsmen and women and journalistic talent in sports reporting gathered to honour one of the greats of Australian journalism, David Lord.
Norm Tasker, one of the galaxy of speakers, told how the youngish Lord wandered into the sports section of The Sun to sell the journalists some insurance. When he was told that the journos got free tickets to all the sports events and that they finished at midday (The Sun was an afternoon paper), Lord was hooked.
He cajoled the sports editor to give him a job.
An outstanding journalism career was launched. He worked in radio, television and print with equal facility. About 20 years ago he started broadcasting as the sports reporter on the ABC’s Radio News program.
Lord presided over a series of interviews with most of the greats of Australian sport that Simon Poidevin says is a national treasure of an archive.
His sports wraps in the mornings and weekends for Radio News were astonishing feats of information, precision and accuracy.
At other times in his career he has broadcast rugby and rugby league on television and radio. He was the manager of Viv Richards and Jeff Thomson during the Cricket Revolution of the 1970s. He engaged in a ferocious court case with Kerry Packer. During the case he was co-opted into playing a village cricket match by Ian Chappell.
Chappell arranged for Packer to play in their side.
The great man arrived in a helicopter and took his place behind the stumps as a wicket-keeper. In an earlier life, Lord had captained Mosman in Sydney first grade cricket. He scored 3000 runs and took 177 wickets at an average of 18.
So he was a handy player.
In this village cricket match, he bowled to an English cricket administrator who was opposed to Packer and Lord. Lord got the administrator to snick the ball.
Packer, a big man of agility and sporting ability, tumbled across to snaffle the ball in a great catch. Even though they were bitter rivals in court, Lord and Packer, two fierce competitors, rushed up and hugged each other as if they’d won a Test match.
Lord is also famous for secretly signing up 208 of the best rugby players in the world in 1983 for a rugby equivalent of Packer’s cricket circus. Nick Farr-Jones, another great mate of Lord’s, asserts that the IRB blazers were so worried about Lord’s entrepreneurial efforts in rugby, they set up the Rugby World Cup tournament to thwart him.
Kay Cottee told how Lord tried to contact her every weekend of her 189 day single-handed journey around the world. Because radio contact was difficult in those days, Lord often had to sleep in the ABC offices waiting for her calls to come through.
Lord’s knowledge and passion for what she was doing changed her attitude to journalists who had annoyed her with questions like, “Do you intend to hug the coast-line on your voyage?”
David Campese also acknowledged how relentless Lord was in getting the interview he wanted. The great Wallaby winger was once on the toilet when a call from Lord came through to his hotel room in London.
“Lordie, I’m on the toilet,” he said.
“So what. Just do the interview,” Lord told him, and he did.
David Lord pioneered an early morning Christmas Day and Boxing Day interview with John Howard during eleven years of his prime ministership. Howard, a cricket tragic, told us that he loved these interviews as a welcome change from the heavy political interviews he had to endure.
Howard also came up with one of the best lines of the tribute lunch. “I could have used David’s entrepreneurial ability in my dealings with the ICC. I might not have been dismissed from the chairmanship, stumped Mugabe, bowled Murali,” he said, to roars of laughter.
So many other great names of Australian sport and sports journalism were there to give their support and tell their tales: a trim Ken Rosewall, Mike Cleary (one of only two Australian triple sports internationals), David Colley, Mike Gibson, Peter Fenton, Debbie Spillane and many others, including Jim Maxwell, who threatened to stay on until midnight …
As I walked into the Sydney sunshine many hours after the start of the event – and hours before its closing, presumably – I thought about what to me, anyway, is the dreadful modern tendency of getting inarticulate former sportsmen (and sometimes women) to pretend they are sports journalists.
Great or good sportsmen can make great broadcasters as Richie Benaud, Ian Chappell, Peter Sterling, Rod Kafer and a few others have shown. But there is no real link between being a great athlete and being a great broadcaster. I won’t bore readers with yet another diatribe on the usual suspects, say, in Fox Sports, who were stars in their codes and dunces as broadcasters.
Unfortunately, though, celebrity broadcasters rather than professional broadcasters are the new norm. Old pros like David Lord are now as rare as fast bowlers who don’t break down.
Sky News, though, continues to show David Lord and Andrew Logan and Andrew Jones on a weekly evening segment that promotes The Roar.
So the good Lord of Aussie sports reporting is still flourishing, and long may his voice be heard.
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