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The AFL media has a trade rumour problem

24th August, 2016
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Riewodlt is facing a delayed start to 2017. (AAP Image/Julian Smith) NO ARCHIVING, EDITORIAL USE ONLY
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24th August, 2016
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Earlier this week, Jack Riewoldt was forced to deny he wanted out of Richmond on the basis of a radio take from a journalist pretending to be a pundit. Get ready for more of this as the league’s trade period kicks off in earnest.

In many ways, we’ve been in trade mode for a month. The Roar’s Josh Elliott began publishing a weekly trade rumours column on August 6, while many movements have been pre-ordained if we believe reports.

Josh is responsible in what he publishes; nothing I have seen in his pieces has been idle speculation.

Unfortunately, those standards are not uniform.

In the past week, we’ve seen two examples of the unfortunate direction that more and more coverage of player movement is heading in.

The first was the Riewoldt farce. On a Sunday morning Melbourne radio show, Herald Sun journalist Jay Clark posited that the Richmond key forward should look at moving from the Tigers. The quote reads:

“I’m thinking that Jack Riewoldt needs to seriously consider his trade options. This is a man who’s not in the leadership, strangely has been snubbed from it for the past couple of seasons for reasons I still don’t understand, because when I listen to Jack I am always quite impressed by maturity and his passion for the Richmond Football Club, which is undoubted.”

Brian Taylor, in his inimitable way, agreed. The only thing missing from the quote below is a “Good call Lingy” or “That’s right Darce” as a prefix.

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“I think he has already got in his mind that he wants out.”

Pure, unadulterated, idle speculation. There wasn’t even the veil of sources, or whispers or ‘the vibe’, this was a journalist playing the role of pundit, throwing stuff at the wall.

Clark’s comments spawned an article on the radio station’s website:

Unfortunately, the spitball stuck. Since Sunday, the ‘Riewoldt wants out’ narrative has been pervasive, like the bindi grass infiltrating my pristine(ish) Sir Walter wintergreen in these winter months. Every major online news outlet has published a story on it:

“Richmond forward Jack Riewoldt says he has no interest in leaving the Tigers”

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“Bruise-free Jack Riewoldt playing as if he doesn’t want to be at Richmond”

“No need for Jack to leave Tigers, says Bomber”

“Riewoldt is going nowhere: Ox”

(As an aside, the first article in the list above was published on the Herald Sun, Clark’s news house, but without attribution.)

It culminated in Riewoldt batting away the rumours on his regular spot on AFL 360 on Tuesday night, expressing disappointment that his name had been caught up in trade rumours. Riewoldt also had a dip at the media culture more broadly.

“At the moment it’s just click bait,” he said. “Back in the good old days … they [journalists] were actually reporting the story, rather than lighting the fire under it and seeing if there’s any smoke there.”

Sage words indeed. Ironically, Riewoldt’s quote both confirms Clark’s view of the spearhead as a mature head, while simultaneously calling the rumour mongering as precisely what it is.

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That’s the egregious example of this week; the hullabaloo surrounding the reigning AFL MVP and Brownlow Medallist Nat Fyfe is somewhat more defensible. Barely.

In a live TV spot on Channel Seven news in Perth, Fyfe answered a question about his future with a great degree of candour. We as fans often bemoan athletes’ rent-a-quote stylings, and Fyfe is one of the good ones in that he lets his personality shine through. Indeed, on this occasion, he might have been a bit too straight down the line.

“The idea of free agency is that players do have a say in their career and it would be remiss of me not to look at every possible option,” he said. “But if I see a strong future at Freo, then that’s where I’ll be playing my footy.”

Red alert! Red alert! Fyfe to leave Fremantle!

If you squint a little, then that’s the take, right? If he sees a strong future at Freo then he’ll stay. So, it holds that if he doesn’t see a strong future, then that’s not where he’ll be playing. And I, football writer, don’t see a strong future at Fremantle, so it means he’s gone. Seems logical.

Of course, if the Dockers were 18-3, not 3-18, then this wouldn’t even be a discussion. But that’s not where we find ourselves, and boy it set tongues wagging. Fyfe was linked to St Kilda, to Gold Coast, to Hawthorn, and in recent days, Collingwood.

Never mind that Fyfe was answering a direct question about free agency about as well as he possibly could have: “there’s this thing called free agency and it exists and I will be sure to explore what it could mean for me as a professional footballer.” Perhaps his mistake was the second half of the answer.

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Regardless, the ‘Fyfe leaving Fremantle’ cottage industry sprung up overnight, and the takes were flying. It became so wild that there was talk Fyfe wasn’t liked at Dockerland because he was too into himself, and he’d prefer to play football in Melbourne so he could build his budding fashion brand.

You can’t make this stuff up – or maybe you can, and maybe that’s the problem.

It forced Fremantle (and Fyfe’s) hand, with the Dockers star taking to the club’s website to pledge allegiance and intimate he’ll begin talks regarding a contract extension post-haste.

It did bring to mind memes from across the pop culture spectrum, but still, definitive words like this are powerful in this new reality.

This might be the root of the AFL’s trade rumour problem. Fyfe committing to Fremantle isn’t newsworthy, because it’s unlikely to generate much interest beyond excited fans of the Dockers. But ‘Fyfe is going to explore free agency’ opens up a world of possibilities.

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As I say, the Fyfe example is at least mostly rational, because they are the words that came out of his mouth – even if they were contorted somewhat to fit a neat narrative. But the Riewoldt example is an egregious example of how rumour and innuendo are set to drive the conversation.

Unfortunately, there is very little anyone can do to stop it. The dynamics and incentives of the media industry across the board, let alone in the AFL, are skewed overwhelmingly towards creating content that gets people to click. Trade rumour stories are the cleanskin reds to the fine wine of genuine, thought-provoking news and opinion content that carries with it much greater costs and risks to delivering page views.

There are always going to be trade rumours in the AFL; that cannot be denied. But it would be unfortunate if the events of this week, where a thought bubble that grew into a story, became a normalised part of the AFL media’s culture.

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