When it comes to inaccurate reporting of football in Australia, I’ve usually engaged my inner Buddha and sailed through the falsehoods and hack journalism in a tranquil state. But the tag team of Rebecca Wilson and Alan Jones are enough to knock even the most enlightened yogi off the stupa.
This week, Wilson revealed details of 198 people supposedly banned from attending A-League matches.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Jones then asked Wilson in a radio interview, “Is this like terrorism in France? The leaders have no guts?”
In one fell swoop, Jones and Wilson managed to compare A-League fans to terrorists, belittle French authorities dealing with a terrible crisis, and somehow tie support for the A-League in with the troubling events in Europe caused by the conflict in Syria.
In a week when a real journalist – Sarah Ferguson – presented a marvellous, albeit harrowing report on domestic violence against women in Australia, it’s worth remembering that Jones once advocated for our former female prime minister to be thrown into the ocean in a chaff bag.
Both Wilson and Jones are apparatchiks for big media organisations that seem to fear football’s popularity. Wilson draws in crayon for The Daily Telegraph, a News Limited paper, the company that until recently owned the NRL. Jones broadcasts on Macquarie Radio, who have lucrative broadcasting deals with the NRL.
Their anti-football bias, especially Wilson’s, is clearly symptomatic of larger interests, yet it is a mystery as to why there should be a fear or bias in the first place.
Wilson doesn’t like football – not everyone does. But while I’m not a big fan of Olympic dressage, I don’t take potshots at it. Last year, she got stuck into Western Sydney Wanderers fans, especially their active support group the Red and Black Bloc (RBB).
She continued this ill-informed, factually bereft assault just this week, with such lurid quotes as the “savagery of hundreds of A-League fans”. This might have been in response to a highly amusing banner the RBB raised at a Wanderers home game that read, “Rebecca Wilson should worry about RBT not RBB”, a reference to Wilson’s drink-driving conviction. Not the kind of wit you associate with savages.
Ironically, the Wanderers and the RBB remain the best hope for a long-overdue revamp of Parramatta Stadium, including an upgrade and increase in capacity that will not only benefit the Wanderers, but also NRL club the Parramatta Eels.
In fact, with A-League clubs as summer tenants at five other grounds that also host NRL clubs, the increased revenue and use makes expansion and improvements to grounds in Brisbane, Gosford, Newcastle, Sydney and Melbourne much more viable. In a way, Wilson’s anti-football rants could damage her beloved rugby league.
In a week where football is still celebrating a decade since the Socceroos’ historic victory over Uruguay and qualification for the 2006 World Cup finals, Wilson and Jones’ attempts to give the sport an ice-bath smack of ignorance and hysteria.
There has been a lot for football to celebrate in the last 10 years. Since the A-League began, attendances have increased by 33 per cent, a growth figure unmatched in any other sport. A crowd of more than 50,000 for a match between Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC in 2007-08 was not only the biggest crowd for a regular-season game, but at the time bigger than all but a couple of English Premier League games.
The A-League grand final has become a showpiece event, as have the league’s two big derbies. In fact the Sydney Derby has sold out the 42,000 capacity Sydney Football Stadium on its last four occasions.
Football is not the number one sport in the country at the elite level, and it doesn’t matter to me if it never becomes number one, but it does not deserve the kind of anti-media that Rebecca Wilson manages to cough up on a regular basis.
She doesn’t like it and is clueless when it comes to the sport, so she would be best advised to ignore it and stick to what she knows.
Mandos
Guest
She is married to the ex News Limited boss, so she can say what she likes and is guaranteed a pay cheque. Jobs for the boys
peeeko
Roar Guru
i think you need a little lie down. he needs football as well to keep fox sports viable
apaway
Roar Guru
Um, okay, Vic, that's a fair old conspiracy theory you've got going there. One measure of the Frank Lowy decade is whether he has left the game in a healthier state then he found it. I don't think there's much doubt about that answer. Sure, there are things that could have been done better, and it's weak of FFA not to have issued a much stronger response to the Wilson-Jones drivel. However, football at club and national level is unrecognisable from where it was in 2004.
josh
Guest
So she is angry that there is only one Sydney Derby and her Battle of the Bridge goes unnoticed.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
Every now and then Foz goes on a bit of a bender and produces something a little bit silly.
Vic
Guest
This morning comes the "NEWS" that News Ltd have paid $2B for the NRL! So News Ltd's game plan ALL along has NOW been fully revealed to ALL! And this IS the EX-FFA Chairman's REAL LEGACY to Football! He has FILLED EVERY position in the game's hierachy with Football haters and moles from other sports who have slowly but surely undermined the game's foundations to achieve his aim of destroying the game & driving down it's value and ultimately killing it off! He ONLY became re-involved in Football in the first place so he could USE the game to turn himself from a nobody that noone had ever heard of, let alone recognise, into a WORLD player and the same for his company! HE USED AND ABUSED THE GAME, THE CLUBS, THE PLAYERS & THEIR FAMILIES &THE GAMES' FANS FOR HIS OWN ENDS!! Every stakeholder in THIS game has been stabbed in the back! IT'S TIME FOR EVERY supporter to besiege THEIR clubs into beginning legal action against this EVIL TAX EVADING JUDAS to recover from his 'ILL-GOTTEN' family fortune the BILLIONS of dollars in revenues that he has cost the game over the past twelve years!
Punter
Guest
He's only telling as it is, maybe a bit blunt a bout it.
Anthony Ferguson
Guest
Foz is channeling Ghandi. It's the apotheosis of Foz, the God of Oz football. Foz likes to get his sly little digs in and remind Strayans that football is massive and AFL and to a lesser extent NRL are not.
peeeko
Roar Guru
could i get some comment on this piece by Craig Foster one of Australias most passionate football mouth pieces?. obviously an expert but in my mind (as a supporter of many sports) he goes too far and trumpets football in an arrogant way. i am not comparing him at all with the gutter journos of News corp. a lot of good stuff in here but this i found very pompous "Football does that to us. It is a collective, and gives us a social conscience that makes the game weep for Paris, and Africa, and all the atrocities around the world as much as for our kids that can’t pay to play, who face challenges in life that we can identify and help with. That is why football has more social causes and charities than all other games put together, tens of thousands in Australia alone, a charity everywhere you look with a passion to change inequity, because that is football." http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/blog/2015/11/26/australias-football-fans-have-won-pr-war
Up the Wahs
Roar Guru
Craig foster usually has something to say about nrl, I'm not arguing with you but rugby kind of is played year round (north winter and south winter)
Vic
Guest
And what did your hero, the ex FFA Chairman do about it??? Answer - SFA!!!
Vic
Guest
Absolutely CORRECT!
marron
Roar Guru
Yeah. Wanderers crowds especially with all the violence and everything are way down ....... oh wait.
Chivasdude
Guest
Wilson and Jones have a particularly nauseating Friday sports segment on Jones' 2GB radio show. Their smug often ill informed rants in a variety of sports is so off beam..it is at times unlistenable. But their narrow mindedness and inconsistency is what can make it entertaining. Wilson has no credibility in sports reporting. Her partner, John Hartigan, is an ex-News Corp senior executive who is still close to the Murdochs. Would she still have a gig but for that?
Fear the Smell
Guest
"Not one football writer bothered to attack any other sport despite the litany of offences by fans & players from other sports." Except for you, of course. Repeatedly. On this very website, and in spite of the apparently all-consuming nature of football.
Midfielder
Guest
Spa Decent article sums up my thoughts .
apaway
Roar Guru
Please enlighten us on what those valid points were, Crashy.
apaway
Roar Guru
I didn't make comparisons with domestic violence, I made comparisons with journalistic quality.
Brendan J.
Guest
Anyone who thinks Rugby League is "beloved" to Rebecca Wilson clearly has read nothing of her work past last Sunday's article. AFL, in particular the Sydney Swans, is her thing, as anyone who has read her nauseating puff pieces on them can attest too.
Simoc
Guest
Rebecca Wilson is clueless fullstop. But she fits the bill as a dizzy blonde, so some broadcasters love her.