The A-League is in full swing, crowds are booming and the bandwagon has taken off. So it is no surprise the mainstream media is engaging in a bit of online click-baiting, with some predictably xenophobic results.
Last weekend’s Sydney derby was everything an A-League fan could hope for – a packed house, two colourful sets of supporters and a Shinji Ono special volleyed home for good measure.
It was the sort of game A-League fans have been enjoying for years, and lo and behold, a couple of Sydney-based News Corp journalists decided to hop on board for the ride.
“Soccer-hating journo goes to Western Sydney Wanderers/Sydney FC A-League match. Sees the light,” read the chest-thumping headline on a piece published on the somewhat spuriously-named news.com.au website.
“Soccer, (t)he most boring sport in the world,” followed the first line of more than 300 comments – a sentiment so predictable you couldn’t possibly get to the TAB fast enough to lay a bet on it.
Plenty of A-League fans responded positively to the article written by Walkley Award-winning sports journalist Anthony Sharwood, but to scratch the surface of his new-found enthusiasm is to reveal some uncomfortable truths.
Sharwood went along to the derby with former ABC Online journalist Chris Paine – a self-confessed Aston Villa fan – but despite his background as a highly-regarded writer for both Inside Sport and Alpha, Sharwood admits he was attending his first ever A-League game.
Yet as far back as August 2009, Sharwood wrote on the now defunct Punch website: “(k)nockers will tell you the A-League is about the same standard as the Slovakian third division. So what? It’s our league, and it deserves our full attention”.
The sort of attention which sees an award-winning sports journalist attend precisely zero A-League games in the past four years? Sounds fishy to me.
However, any A-League fan with an analytical mind and five seconds to spare can connect the dots.
Want to know why News Corp is suddenly running positive pieces on the A-League? Because journalism ain’t paying so well and the net must now be cast far and wide to lure as many readers as possible.
It used to be that outlets like News Corp acted as gate-keepers, publishing about topics it had a vested interest in and keeping stories about rival interests out of the newspaper.
But the internet age has rendered the mainstream media obsolete, leading to a frenzy of click-baiting aimed at attracting parochial respondents from polar-opposite ends of the spectrum.
Sharwood’s article fulfilled the brief perfectly, insomuch as it attracted A-League fans pleased to see some positive coverage from a traditionally anti-football outlet, as well as the usual assortment of boofheads unwilling to let the opportunity slip to inform the world how much they hate the game.
Indeed, one of the most depressing aspects of every news.com.au article about the A-League is the mind-boggling amount of xenophobia and casual racism which transpires in the comments section below.
The responses are so predictable someone should create a cut-and-paste template; “soccer is boring, the players are divers, the fans are all hooligans, the sport is un-Australian,” etcetera.
Yet, the bleating negativity is as futile as senior journalists like Sharwood, Richard Hinds and Phil Rothfield belatedly clambering aboard the A-League bandwagon – as all have recently done.
The ship has sailed, and A-League fans learnt long ago they’re capable of pouring their money into the competition with or without the support of mainstream media.
The crowd of 40,000 who turned up at the Sydney Football Stadium last weekend weren’t there because of coverage in The Daily Telegraph, they were there in spite of it.
Journalists writing puff pieces for an industry with an outlook bleaker than the Dodo’s may not top the list of A-League concerns, but football fans would do well to exercise some caution here.
After all, today’s populism is tomorrow’s footnote, and the annals aren’t exactly replete with Johnny-come-latelies who’ve changed history.
Androo
Guest
LOL and good point. Gosh, in 50 years time, as global warming intensifies, Underwater Polo will be the big winner on account of it having already established a market position!! Underwater Football, Underwater League, Underwater Union, Underwater AFL and Underwater everything else will be playing catchup. Forget outdoor ice hokey - it'll be well screwed. National teams from Oceania will be based in host cities in NZ and Oz, meaning world cups might see England v. Ulladulla Samoa or Wales v. Wagga Wagga Fiji. Not to forget continental drift and the reemergence of a super continent. It'll be Super Continent v. Nobody in a WC final. Geez, I hope they find extraterrestrial life or football as we know it is stuffed!
JonJax
Guest
Guaranteed to be released in hardcover – just before Christmas!
Statler and Waldorf
Roar Guru
yeah, that was a shocker.
Squizz
Guest
Next we will see the Peter Fitzsimons book 'Conversion on the Road to Brazil - The Gospel according to St Peter'
Realfootbal
Guest
For my money, and this is not a code wars bait, NRL is screwed long term - and I mean over 50 years. The demographics are with football and AFL. Summer and winter. Rugby is already gone, and cricket is on the way. Of course we may not have a summer and winter in 50 years time.
mahonjt
Guest
Click baiting indeed. That they have arrived is welcome, whatever their motives, however, despite this, Mike is dead right that football fans (multi coders included) don't need Phil, Ant or Bec to get us to games and hand over our wallets to the FFA at every opportunity. Football has arrived - and that's all the news that for to print. The rest is just piss and wind for a dying business model.
Kasey
Guest
of course not, he's probably working a 2nd job as well as driving a taxi to put food on the table! But hey according to News(very) Limited...Immigrants don't work and are a drain on the economy! I'm sure I recall a headline recently where the winner of an Australian Idol type show was abused because she was of Korean heritage: yes, my country seems to have decided to cease trying to hide its racist undertones:( http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/entertainment/television/dami-im-the-subject-of-racist-tweets-after-winning-channel-7s-x-factor-last-night/story-fni0cc2b-1226748748958
Kasey
Guest
NFL GamePass is great! Unlike FoxtelGo, its not region blocked, meaning if you are a subscriber( team or whole league season passes) game vision is available no matter where you are in the world..if I have a WiFi signal I can watch my NFL team play live and at my leisure on my iPad:)
ZipGunBop
Guest
“Soccer-hating journo goes to Western Sydney Wanderers/Sydney FC A-League match. Sees the light,” read the chest-thumping headline on a piece published on the somewhat spuriously-named news.com.au website. ^^^^.
Middle of the road
Guest
No pal the irony is that you think cricket & rugby were invented in Straya !
Australian Rules
Guest
You guys are pathetic. I don't care if you think Wilson is a poor journo. Posting slimy little comments about her on the Internet is just crass and cowardly.
JonJax
Guest
Reports of the death of our “legacy media” dinosaurs have been greatly exaggerated. Although it helps if Rupert is in town and guest of honour at Frank’s soiree. I’m sure Hinds, Rothfield, Sharwood and Wilson were soiling their incontinence pads at the thought of a legendary late night call from their boss.
Kasey
Guest
Do any news organisations treat AFLMedia like AP and just run the AFLM 'story' as they receive it off the wire?"or do we still expect to have a journalist review it before publication?
Kasey
Guest
You're probably right Chris...the thing with the Ashes is that Cricket can't have them every Summer. Media Interest in non-Ashes cricket has been noticeably lower in recent Summers.Next Summer is India touring here. Then we'll see just what sort of a hit our under-performing Test team has delivered to Cricket's media coverage levels.
Towser
Guest
Interesting irony really,the non football journalist drivelers stop for a moment writing the same old drivel about football,then football journalists & fans become the drivelers. Suggest as football fans we bin drivelling in all forms & concentrate on how the game is travelling. The football motto of the moment is then " lets dribble not quibble about drivel".
Statler and Waldorf
Roar Guru
and that's not bagging the taxi driver
Statler and Waldorf
Roar Guru
Wilson normally has two threads in her 'journalism' 1) spreading rumours 2) claiming that she 'knew before everyone else" - as in, when she is late to get in on a story she claims that she wrote about it last week At least in this story she avoids both of those usual traits but getting a scoop from a Somali taxi driver for a story must be a new all time low for a journalist.
Simoc
Guest
They may sell it out but the supporters don't turn up when the team is losing like now. The new Perth Stadium will mostly be half full being further away for most and a pretty stupid move given the better 45-50000 capacity options available. Full stadiums give the atmosphere and being in demand can drive up the ticket price to pay for the stadium. With a much larger population base how many 60,000 seat stadiums did Germany build for the World Cup in a Football nation. Maybe none.
Androo
Guest
So, if I've got this right, News Corp. owns Fox, which screens A-League. With no BBL, futbol (including A-League, EPL, La Liga and Serie A) is now Fox's banner sport over the summer. Meanwhile, in another part of the Murdoch (ooopps ... News Corp.) Empire, the press is becoming increasingly more aware of the A-League and giving it greater coverage. The tone is less demeaning now than in previous years, to be sure. Increased coverage is probably reactionary but there might be a whiff of cross-promotion in all of this. Of course, one absolutely should NOT assume Murdoch's Empire would brazenly stoop to employing such a nefarious tool! As we are told repeatedly, Rupert takes no interest in such trivial matters as editorial input, especially if it is conducive to the company's bottom line. Yes, Midfielder. Summer now is a battlefield and looking crowded; I am glad Rebecca has finally twigged to this. AFL and NRL are reasonably impregnable and Union still has a solid base to recover off.
Simoc
Guest
Whose Rebecca Wilson? Surely not that blonde bimbo off an ABC semi-funny panel a few years back. Isn't she supposed to be a comedian. Certainly hopeless in sporting knowledge compared to every other sporting person.