While it’s possible for a commentator to call their own team, should they?
It’s a precarious tightrope which is always awkward for the commentator and the listener.
Special comments by Garry Lyon for a Melbourne game, Eddie McGuire for Collingwood, Mark Ricciuto for the Crows games and James Brayshaw for the Kangaroos. It’s commonplace these days to hear a legend or president of a football team commentating. Until recent years, there was a separation of functions.
30 or so years ago, if you had a formal role in a club, it was very unlikely you would commentate at all, let alone your own team. Then ten or so years ago, more big club power brokers started getting commentating gigs, and the uneasy relationship grew. Now the slippery slope has got to the point where it seems deliberate for the broadcaster to pick a club legend to do commentating for their own team.
They try their best to stay neutral, wrestling with the right words to use to conceal their loyalties, making respectful comments about the positive elements of the opponent’s performance and seemingly applying their strong knowledge of the game to give valuable insights in a neutral manner.
So, the obvious question is – does it really matter? Perhaps this a great way to hear from the best minds in the game as the theatre of the game plays out.
The answer to this on the surface would be that it doesn’t matter.
However, another perspective on this question might be quite illustrative of a much bigger problem permeating the AFL institution.
The first part of the concern is that during games, there are moments where the commentator’s loyalties spill over, perhaps subconsciously. Lyon’s call of the Crows handball toward the boundary line in the dying moments of the Melbourne versus Adelaide game might be a case in point. Ricciuto’s comment from the sideline of that game that Taylor Walker and Darcy Fogarty didn’t have much to worry about after being reported might be another.
There is an issue when club power brokers are having such a direct influence on the way that key incidents are communicated to the live audience. Sure, they are entitled to their opinions on these incidents, but not in the moment that it occurs, where the commentator’s response is so pivotal to how the media later reports on it. These commentators are conflicted in their roles, and that matters.
Secondly, and probably more importantly, this relationship further concentrates the power held by a small few in the game. There is an inherent arrogance to think you can commentate for a game that you might be the president or large power broker for. This arrangement sends the message that these figures are bigger than the game. So big that they don’t need to worry about their obvious conflict of interest.
We all just seem to tolerate it. It flies in the face of the concept that Australian football is the people’s game and it negates the ability for a variety of voices to feed into how our game runs. This pluralism is what makes institutions strong. Without many voices, you get decisions made for the benefit of the few, rather than the majority.
As an example, how is it possible that a grand finalist might have only played at the MCG once in the minor rounds, whereas Collingwood, Melbourne, Hawthorn and Richmond play there between ten and 14 times a year? Why is this huge inequality at least partially addressed? Additionally, how is Eddie McGuire able to play puppeteer to Gillon McLachlan on the Port prison bar guernsey issue, even though he’s not formally connected to Collingwood any longer?
There is a reason why Aristotle, the Romans and the forefathers of modern democracies embedded the concept of separation of powers as a key component of a democracy.
As US political philosopher James Madison wrote in 1788, “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
JimmyWP
Roar Rookie
I thought this was going to be a bit of a gee up, and instead it is well thought out and argued. Good article. The best solution I can come up with, I don’t listen to the commentary. And even with the volume muted I swear I can still hear Brian Taylor from two states away!
PeterCtheThird
Guest
No. But it is about time you turned a corner. Are you a Coodabeens fan?
J.T. Delacroix
Guest
Fair enough. Can’t argue with that.
Donmac
Roar Rookie
Obviously those commentators that particular club affiliations are going to be biased to a certain extent. The one's that annoy me are those that regularly say ridiculous comments and who often treat us the viewing public like idiots who know little or nothing about the game. Brian Taylor readily comes to mind. I am of the opinion that he is rapidly going senile.
Gavan Iacono
Roar Rookie
Gee wizz I've been misled. I thought the peezzie's role was to master rhetoric, set up fake internal reviews, miscommunicate-lie to players, avoid contract commitments, mismanage process, replace quality employees with mates, and master phrases like ontherightrack, headingintherightdirection, contributetolocalcommunity, inthebestinterestsof. Where the hell have I been? Did I miss the memo? Do I need to look at myself in the mirror? Do I need some more feedback?
Blitz
Guest
Fair reply, but let’s not forget the Eagles inaugural President and CEO - Richard Colless and Brian Cook - names I’m certain most AFL fans would know ie built on a solid foundation.
Scyphus
Roar Rookie
US Australian Football fan here. In the US, the national network TV and radio broadcasters have nonaffiliated play-by-play callers, and further, the play-by-play callers are lifetime broadcast professionals (à la Sandy Roberts or Anthony Hudson) rather than former athletes or other team-affiliated people. The "color comments" (special commentary) are uniformly former athletes, but I can't remember any of them who ever show a team bias, perhaps because US players get moved around so much they understand that they are commodities and don't have so much team loyalty. The principal exception is for college football, where the color guys' school loyalty is always clear and regularly annoying. Because our media markets are so big, we often have local TV and (always) radio broadcasts for each team; those are the only ones with affiliated commentators. So if you are, say, a Washington Nationals baseball fan, you get the same set of Washington Nationals commentators for every Nationals game, but only if you are watching the Nationals broadcast on the Nationals home channel in Washington DC.
Kick to Kick
Roar Rookie
Really interesting thoughts in this article . But I think there needs to be a bit more definition about team loyalty before calling for separation of powers. The splendid Bruce Dawe poem Life Cycle starts: “When children are born in Victoria they are wrapped in club-colours, laid in beribboned cots, having already begun a lifetime’s barracking.” In other words anyone passionate enough about Australian football to be a commentator or analyst comes with a deep history of club tribalism. Added to that many commentators are former players with clear emotional connections to a team. Finding unaligned footy callers is a pipe-dream. So we have to deal with layers. For me current club presidents or board members commenting on their own club games are a worry. They are privy to confidential information and can have hidden agendas. Current club employees or consultants are the next rung. A bit worrying but some have been good value. I think ex players or ex consultants with clear club histories are fine - so long as the loyalty is transparent. Some of the best and fairest analysts fall into this zone: Nick Riewoldt, Jason Dunstal, Gary Lyon, Gerald Healy, Matthew Lloyd all strive to be fair minded and if anything are more critical of their preferred clubs than others. Commentary teams would be poorer without them. And there are a few analysts who can be positively brutal. Damien Barrett is reputedly a North Melbourne supporter!
J.T. Delacroix
Guest
Be that as it may, Blitz, how onerous could the role of WCE president be? The president of the inaugural & pre-eminent club in a traditional Aussie Rules state with only one other club to contend with market-wise locally. A real tough gig I’m sure.
Mooty
Roar Rookie
Lynch is a bit slow I find, lacks natural humour. The most biased I’ve come across is Billy Brownless calling a Geelong game on the radio. It was too embarrassing to listen to, I had to find another station
XI
Roar Guru
Good piece. I'm working on something similar concerning commentators. Definitely don't understand why we need so many people to cover the games and have them on their own teams. Maybe a copy of what they do in the US with each team having their own set of commentators?
Blitz
Guest
Lynch isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed though. In saying that, few commentators are.
Blitz
Guest
Wrong, it’s the marketing departments job to drive more revenue and also the footy department ie team performace. The president guides the board in choosing and hitting key deliverables and they communicate that to the CEO who in turn gets his team to deliver those outcomes. No point having all the revenue in the world and not keeping costs under control ie deliver a profit. Few fans could name any West Coast President since their inception yet they are the most profitable club in the land, and one the most successful in any key metric you care to name.
Blitz
Guest
Few AFL fans would know any of the Eagles presidents/chairman’s since the clubs inception, yet WC are one of the most successful clubs of the AFL era in many key metrics. Too busy taking care of business it seems.
Former Roarer
Guest
Lol. "Almost scored all the points" doesn't equal "They scored all the points". You are basing your defence on an "almost". They scored 20 points after slipping to a 26-0 deficit and Storm had iced the game. People fool themselves over the last couple of minutes of that game. Penrith threw it around and played some chazzle dazzle because they had nothing to lose, while the Storm were already thinking of the beers. Penrith were dead and buried when it was 16-0.
Former Roarer
Guest
You can do that, but be grounded in reality. Nothing wrong with Phil Gould wanting Penrith to win and urging the team to fight hard etc etc. Everything wrong with him then becoming flatly unprofessional to say Penrith are on top when down 22-0. He's paid for professional insight, not incompetence.
elvis
Roar Rookie
Well to be fair Penrith then scored almost all the points in the second half. Perhaps ol Phil isn't the dummy we all think he is...
Trevor
Guest
I don't think this is the case. The President's primary role is to increase revenue for his club. This is done by getting more members and more attendees to games in order to drive sponsorship and associated revenues. The President's job then is to promote the Club in any way they deem fit. If that means they become the story then that may be an entirely appropriate person to have in that role.
Simon
Guest
I actually like it, I don't understand why the need for neutral calling when we know a person is invested in a club. Take state of origin for example, the caller (Ray Warren) should be neutral, as their job is to describe the action. But do we really want guys like Phil Gould and Wally Lewis who've put so much into their respective sides to pretend to be neutral? Of course not. Knowing that Gus has coached 6 seasons of Origin and JT has won games for QLD off his own back only adds to the experience in my opinion. To sanitise the call would lead to a less exciting experience
Naughty's Headband
Roar Rookie
Generally I have no problem with it. It's nowhere near as bad as the Channel 7 Friday night commentators picking a team and barracking for them all night. I actually enjoy Eddie's commentary.