ABC's Q&A meets The Roar

Most Mondays I tune into ABC’s Q&A – the controversial show that, in its own words, “puts punters, pollies and pundits together in the studio to thrash out the hot issues of the week.”

And with the Olympics here, the focus this week was on sport – with Michael O’Loughlin, David Pocock, Louise Savage, John Alexander and Shane Gould making up the five-strong panel.

Great, this’ll be halfway interesting, I thought to myself.

But given that the Q&A studio audience is generally comprised of effete, weedy left-leaning UTS comms students and hand-picked, carefully screened migrants, the discussion was never going to steer towards analysing Pocock’s peerless skills at the breakdown.

It was, as expected, a chance for the “punters” to air their gripes with the current state of sport – and, specifically, how athletes are portrayed in the media.

The Roar has taken the time to respond to some of the questions posed on Q&A last night, the way they should have been answered.

* * * *

Q&A audience member #1: “In the past 24 hours, Australia’s results in the swimming have been met with outrage and petulance, as if we were children who expect to always win and who can’t cope when we don’t.

What does the panel think about this sense of entitlement and arrogance? Why don’t athletes at the highest level (and the media) act like dignified losers when Australia doesn’t win?”

Dave Edwards (DE) for The Roar: Well, I’ll give you the lowdown on this one. We are a country that prides itself on its sporting ability and fetes its heroes above all those in other fields.

Stem cell research breakthroughs? Australian scientists’ role in discovering a new particle believed to be the Higgs boson? The average Australian doesn’t understand half of the stuff I just mentioned. But sport – and the science of winning? That’s pretty bloody easy to understand and celebrate.

You live in Australia. We are all about winning in this country. Historically, sport was a means for Australia to prove itself on the world stage; it was a chance to prove itself against the motherland, England.

This early lust for international success continues to today and…. before you say it, yeah, I can see you itching to bring up the subject of gender… it outweighs sexual prejudice. We are just as hard on our female athletes as our male athletes. Which probably leads us to the next question…

Q&A audience member #2: Liesel Jones has been criticised in the media about her body shape. She said in a recent pool-side interview, that while she was disappointed, the comments spurred her on to hopefully silence her critics with stellar performances.

Do the panellists think that negative comments mainly hinder or enhance performance? Do any of you perform better from healthy criticism or is support the best and only thing our sportspeople require?

DE: Thanks for your question, madam – and for the superfluous context, which Q&A questioners are famous for. Who writes these essay-style questions anyway, the University of Sydney English department? Christ. Anyway, I digress.

Negative comments are essential to drive athletes on to great heights. Of course, this strictly applies to athletes only. The rest of us are reliant on constant approval – both at home and in the workplace – if we are to maintain a good-humoured and productive approach to life and our body of work. If somebody told you or I that we were out of shape, we’d probably go bury ourselves balls-deep in a tub of Neapolitan.

But athletes are fundamentally different to you or I; they require a heavy dose of criticism to balance out all the hero worship they get via Twitter and Facebook, not to mention in certain nightclubs, where they are treated as demi-Gods.

Now, the whole Leisel Jones thing. I’m totally against people being called fat as a rule, but as I understand it this was more a comment on whether she was Olympic fit. Consider the context. Olympians have four years to prepare physically for one race, with hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers money behind them in the way of facilities, training programs, dietitians and the like. It is expected that they be in the peak of their fitness once the event comes around; to not be demonstrates a lack of professionalism.

But of course, people come in all shapes and sizes, etc, blah blah f***ing blah, so in the end all that matters is how she performs. Although she came fifth, so maybe we should revisit this topic *sound of pot being stirred*…?

Q&A audience member #3: Several athletes including Nick D’Arcy and Stephanie Rice have negatively exposed themselves through social media mishaps, which has resulted in the loss of sponsorship dollars and tarnished their image in the public eye.

How much should these athletes ‘pay’ for their mistakes? Do we follow their personal lives too much and lose focus of their sporting achievements?

DE: It’s actually not that hard to follow Stephanie Rice’s life. She is a prolific twitterer and has an Instagram account that gets updated more regularly than my Windows 7 software.

As for her “sporting achievements” – what has she won, a few gold medals? And that was four years ago? I’m not surprised we lost focus on her achievements given the time lag, so in the meantime she kept us entertained with a bunch of provocative photos, a high-profile relationship and a homophobic tweet – so in that sense, everyone wins.

But yeah, D’Arcy. You can tell by the glint of lewd in his eyes that this guy is a natural born fiend. If you have any sense of what is newsworthy, you’d know that the D’Arcy incident – and subsequent court case/bankruptcy claim – deserved every column inch it got.

Sure, he got sent home early from the Games for a minor misdemeanour, but that wasn’t the media’s decision. That was the overreaction of an Olympic committee that was shit scared that, by doing nothing, it would stoke the flames of collective outrage among the Australian public.

Seriously, I kinda feel for the guy. If he isn’t bankrupt now, he will be pretty soon. What the hell company would want to sponsor him, or even be remotely affiliated with him? It’s not like you can make a living from being an unmarketable Olympian.

Q&A audience member #4: Should politics play a part in sport? Should athletes voice an opinion on issues they feel passionately about or should they stick to running faster, jumping higher, or kicking and catching a piece of inflated leather and leave the politics to the politicians?

DE: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!! Glad you brought this one up, pal. Love your haircut, by the way. Nothing is better than hearing a sportsman espouse poorly thought-out political commentary.

Look at Anthony Mundine’s comments regarding 9/11 more than a decade ago, which curtailed his career in the US and forced him to recently make a public apology. That was fantastic!

If we leave athletes to – as you say with more than a hint of condescension – “catch a piece of inflated leather,” we will simply stifle their minds. Athletes are capable of so much more – if only we’d give them a platform to do so. As for leaving the politics to the politicians… that’s just a terrible idea.

I, personally, would love to see each NRL player quizzed on their political stance in regards to a range of issues – like what’s happening in Syria, for example. Whether we should change the Marriage Act to include same-sex couples; whether the carbon tax places an unfair burden on businesses and working families.

Whether Bob Carr should take over from Ray Warren as chief rugby league commentator once the doyen retires (or, conversely, whether the two should just swap roles).

This would be a refreshing change from the usual questions they receive on the Footy Show, which range from ‘who would your top three dinner guests be”‘ to ‘what body part does your partner most like about you?’