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The Foxtel sports panel show, ‘The Back Page,’ is a joke. What was once an average sports-discussion show has desended to an unwatchable one-hour soap-box for arch-conservative Telegraph host, Mike ‘Gibbo’ Gibson, and a revolving door of blokey blokes who seem to know nothing about anything more than their one favourite sport.
Perhaps the head-honchos at Fox are aware of this decline, too, given that the show has recently been moved from Fox Sports to the Fox Sports News channel.
Since former Wallaby and (often) genuine funny-man Peter Fitzsimmons left (or was axed), the ‘Back Page’ has had no-one who appears know anything about the game of rugby.
The total sum of knowledge of the revolving panel seems to amount to a mere four sports: league, AFL, cricket and golf.
One feels sorry for the new young-ish English sports writer on the panel who has to deal with nonsensical and ignorant remarks by the other panelists and the utterly predictable Pom-bashing unleashed by the Telegraph stalwarts Gibbo and Paul Kent (see below).
The English guy does try to make some points in favour of rugby and soccer, to his credit.
Unfortunately the producers seem to have dropped the various women they used to have on the panel, perhaps not wanting to appear ‘politically correct’; one of Gibbo’s favourite insults.
Speaking of the host, evidently the man still thinks it’s 1979 and the Paul Hogan show is still on TV. And I’m not just referring to his 70s hairstyle and moustache!
His views are also outdated but, unfortunately, now there is no-one to call him out, as Fitzsimmons once did when Gibbo proclaimed that all Australians must be proud of the flag and that we had ‘moved on’ and that indigenous people like Cathy Freeman have no reason to fly the Aboriginal flag.
Fitzsimmons, quite correctly, tore him down, perhaps precipitating his ultimate downfall on the show.
For now, Gibbo continues on unchecked, using the show as a platform to air his reactionary opinions, from national flags to the use of recreational drugs by athletes.
Most recently, he bizarely labelled Anthony Mundine ‘a racist’ as well as proclaiming his lack of talent, whilst expressing deep sympathy for Joey Johns, saying that he had been ‘hung out to dry’ and declaring Tahu’s reaction as unnecessary.
The silver-haired, chubby AFL bloke, whose name escapes me, is at least amiable.
However, as is to be expected from a Victorian, he knows little about anything except ‘our great game’ and thus always tries to chime in with an irrelevant AFL anecdote when the panel is discussing a different sport.
The fact that, upon learning that the 2010 English rugby team currently had no fast wingers, he invoked the name of Rory Underwood as a ‘recent’ (circa 2003) fast winger, shows that he needs to go.
The worst panelist, however, is that other Telegraph man, Paul Kent.
He somehow manages to mumble in a particularly difficult-to-decipher broad ocker accent and speak over the top of everyone at the same time, with an aggressive little sneer that makes him look like he’s about to emulate one of his boxing heroes and knock someone’s lights out (particularly the poor new weedy Englishman)!
His defence of the ugly and aggressive way the Dutch football team played in the World Cup final was pathetic. A reminder, Paul: football is not League, and you’re not on the show to promote the game that your newspaper bankrolls.
Then again, maybe you are.
Anyway, what can you expect from someone who admits to a love of ‘ultimate’ fighting.
Kent’s claim that the Football World Cup wouldn’t generate a financial windfall for Australia was absolute Andrew Demetriou-esque propaganda.
He finally showed his true colours when Gibbo triumphantly declared the World Cup over for another four years, Kent replied in an apparently hilarious off-camera aside, “Thank god”, which promptly sent the host into fits of laughter.
Now, I’m not a football fan, but to dismiss the World Cup just like that is idiotic, especially considering he was sent by the Tele to cover the World Cup in South Africa, where he obviously learned nothing about the truly world game.
I’m aware that commentators of the other three football codes in Australia regularly bag football, but it can, and should, be done with a bit of humour and grace (e.g. Fitzsimmons).
All in all, this show is terrible and needs to be axed post-haste.
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