Good Lord of Aussie sports reporting still flourishing

By Spiro Zavos / Expert

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.

The Crowd Says:

2010-08-20T03:03:19+00:00

Zac Zavos

Editor


Rabbitz, I suspect I may have missed your point. The Roar is explicitly not a sports news website. That's already done on many other sites. We're 100% about sports opinion and do this by combining the experts' views (Red) with the crowd's views (blue).

2010-08-20T03:00:02+00:00

Zac Zavos

Editor


For those Roarers interested, Andrew Logan and Andrew Jones appear with Lordy on Sky News' Sportsline every Tuesday night at 10pm (ish).

2010-08-20T00:35:32+00:00

Brett McKay

Guest


Great article Spiro, thanks for sharing it. And thanks too, Loges, for your contribution here too. This sports writing thing is still very new, and still very much a hobby for me, but it's people like David Lord, and indeed my columnist colleagues on The Roar (always wanted to write that!) that inspire me to keep persisting, and to keep improving, and maybe, one day, make something of this. It's just a pity that there aren't more David Lords out there...

2010-08-20T00:02:04+00:00

Andrew Logan

Guest


Spiro, I was disappointed to miss this lunch through prior commitments, and by the sound of it, I was one of the few who didn't make it. Probably just as well, as I would have been at the plankton end of the spectrum given some of the big sporting fish who were swimming around there. As you say, I am fortunate enough to have been able to sit alongside Lordy for the last 6 months or so on Sky's Sportsline show. It has been a rapid learning curve for me, because although my expertise is primarily in rugby, we discuss the whole spectrum of sports, from golf, to cricket, to tennis, to track and field. The thing that Lordy taught me early on, was that facts and specifics are the only currency in broadcasting. Anyone can get on there and blather along in general terms, casting their opinions about like so much confetti. But the real cut-through happens when you talk facts and numbers. An argument built on the rock of hard facts is a very difficult thing to refute, and Lordy has such a massive knowledge of sport in all its guises, that the word "encyclopaedic" is inadequate and cliched. Lordy lives and breathes sports. To borrow a Cousinism, it is "in his marrow". He can speak fluently and at length about a 15 year old kid who won the US Junior Amateur golf title, when no-one else has ever heard of him. He can gleefully recount stories of the confusion he created at Joburg International Airport as a white man travelling to South Africa on a Fijian passport (Lord was born in Fiji). He remembers wickets in Sydney grade cricket from the 70's, and can also tell you who performed well in yesterday's one day match in Mumbai. He personally knows great league players from the 60's, and can tell you who are the stars of tomorrow that you should be watching in this weekends Toyota Cup. His knowledge is flabbergasting, but the thing that makes him great is his strength of conviction balanced by his interest and openness to the views of others. We have disagreed on many things - notably Lleyton Hewitt and Mark Weber. But Lordy has the gift of making you feel that your opinion is valid, even though it may be misguided. Eventually he wins you over, not through belligerence, but sheer weight of knowledge. As an aspiring broadcaster, you could ask for no greater gift than an hour a week with David Lord, so I couldn't be more fortunate to have scored the chance to be on air with him. Well done Lordy, and sorry I missed the party. See you next Tuesday to continue the lessons! Loges.

2010-08-19T22:07:55+00:00

Rabbitz

Roar Guru


While David Lord may be an icon of sports journalism this article is an example of where journalism and journalist have now retreated to. Have a look at all of the 'news media' available, the vast majority is either opinion or even worse, one journo interviewing another journo and asking for an opinion. In the absense of real journalism we have op-ed presented as fact. Please don't let the 'red side' of the Roar slip firther into this quagmire.

2010-08-19T21:39:58+00:00

Vinay Verma

Roar Guru


Spiro the question to me is whether journalisitc integrity is being sacrificed for what bean counters euphemistically call fiscal responsibility. The standard of English in the print media is dropping and the sub editors,in many cases,do not know the possesive power of the apostrophe. Good journalism is an eye for detail,proper research(not Google) and reporting devoid of vested interests. When our politicians are compromised it is not hard to extend it to the media. The line between an editorial and an advertorial is increasingly blurred.Thank God,for the Lord!

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