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In this line of work, writing columns like this, you have to draw the line somewhere. I draw it at placing insulting adjectives before people’s names.
Sure, point out someone’s incompetence. But don’t call them incompetent. Expose someone’s lies. Don’t call them a liar.
Even in opinion pieces – but definitely in news – your job is to give people enough information for them to decide if someone is trustworthy or capable.
You shouldn’t have to say it yourself and, also, just because I once looked at porn doesn’t make me a pervert. Just because I had a few beers doesn’t make me a drunk (although, in my case…).
There are practical reasons for demuring just short of besmirching someone’s character, before dismissing them as a worthwhile human being. Calling someone incompetent will get you sued if you’re not careful – so it’s an all-round bad idea.
Which brings us to the Parramatta Eels board.
The evidence placed before us this week suggests that they discussed at a board meeting flouting salary cap regulations by providing inducements to so called third party sponsors.
Wait, there’s more.
Not only did they openly discuss it in a board meeting, they painstakingly notarised the discussion about breaking salary cap rules and had it signed by the chairman!
I am not sure than in 30 years I have ever felt so tempted to place an unkind and possibly actionable epithet before the names of a person or group of people.
But I will resist.
Let me just say their apparent actions were brain dead to an extent not seen this side of the Darwin Awards.
It has been compared to a game of thieves setting up a Facebook page for an approaching bank heist.
Remember the Cronulla player Pat Gibson? He was convinced he needed a passport to go to Townsville, he went to Homebush because he read the Storm were playing a game at Olympic Park, when told about frequent flier programs he was conned into asking a stewardess if he could join the mile high club.
Without casting any aspersions on his mental capacity, or those of the Parramatta directors, I would submit that Gibson would be a MENSA member compared to them.
This is what the ARLC is talking about when they want to dictate who is, and is not, on club boards. Perhaps it’s clue as to why successful business people like David Smith and Suzanne Young are no longer at League Central.
In my line of work, bumbling mea culpas from butchers, bakers and candlestick makers are priceless.
In their line of work – which was running a professional sport underwritten by $2 billion in TV rights – they are humiliating beyond words.