If there is a unique aspect of Australian sport coverage, it is the way commentators can get parochial to a tizzy. At times too much.
You’ve heard the cliches. Didn’t you know rugby league is the toughest game in the world, or rugby union is the game played in heaven, or that football is the beautiful game?
Feel free to supply any Aussie Rules anecdotes that come to mind.
Even so, reading two stories in the sports section of the Sun-Herald today got me squirming. First was a piece by the divisive Phil ‘Gus’ Gould – league coach extraordinaire, and more famously, uber-opinionated pundit.
He talks up the merits of Jarryd Hayne as the best player of every football code in Australia.
I quote the man himself. ‘Every sport is looking for its new superstar – a poster boy to laud and promote. Quite often commentators are too hasty to elevate an individual to this lofty position and the player suffers because he’s not really ready to assume the mantle.’
I continue: ‘I’ve never met Hayne. However, I’ve witnessed his development from a distance.’
In fairness, Gus earns his coin for comments such as this: championing the sport he undoubtedly has served with utmost passion, application and quality.
Yet comparing the talented Hayne as the undoubted superior of so many other talents in our country smacks of parochialism at its arrogant worst.
Does Gould still value the opinion he’s penned if Hayne announces tomorrow he’s walking out of Parramatta for a lucrative Japanese or European rugby career or AFL ambitions?
Or is the new topic the betrayal of Jarryd Hayne shortly before Gould settles on another darling to bestow momentary praise?
But Gould is not the first, nor the last. To come on the same day was an equally cringe worthy effort by former Socceroo Craig Foster entitled ‘Tim’s army is winning code war’.
Wonderful work Fozzie. If that wasn’t enough, here’s a quote to ram home his agenda down our throat: “the Socceroos’ marketability and class is ever more evident as the standards of conduct slip in other codes.”
Nice to know Foz has a firm moral position, and feels imbued to share that with us to join him firmly in the football camp.
The truth is that rugby league can be dogged by another sex scandal, another drug bust can occur in the AFL, a group of quokkas should be wary of drunk rugby players, and bartenders should be warned about Tim Cahill’s next bar incident.
Yet the Australian public will still flock out in numbers.
Jarryd Hayne may be the best footballer around, and football (other codes need to use their feet more before deserving that title) may be encroaching on our sporting landscape.
Yet leave us our right to make that happen by sparing us these pathetic excuses for journalism, rather than the experts shoving their agenda down our gullets.
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