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Opinion
I’m so tired of the narrative being written about Collingwood’s Jack Ginnivan.
It started with Kane Cornes rebuking Ginnivan for being overly celebratory with a GoPro after Collingwood beat St Kilda in Round 1.
Can’t have that, can we? Can’t have a player showing any personality, even as we complain players are turning into robots.
Cornes went typically hard, and only a little later typically retracted, saying the onus wasn’t (or shouldn’t have been) on Jack Ginnivan, but on Collingwood for putting the GoPro in Ginnivan’s hands.
But, hey, a lot of the damage was already done. Ginnivan’s a pest.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney / Getty Images)
When Collingwood played Adelaide at the MCG in Round 2 this year, Anthony Hudson was quick to inform us all that Ginnivan was a master at drawing frees for high contact.
What!? That Ginnivan must be an old hand at this caper.
Um, no. He’s just seven games into his career. But somehow, he’s gone full Jedi on this already.
And Hudson made sure we knew, repeating this accusation over and over. He had all the zeal of a film lawyer slamming home his closing speech to the jury. Hudson had to make sure we knew this.
In Round 3, Collingwood played Geelong, with Ginnivan being characteristically mischievous.
Here came Kane Cornes again: Ginnivan has no right to be mouthing off to a champion of the game such as Joel Selwood.
Let’s ignore Selwood collaring Ginnivan with a roundhouse forearm, and then holding and choking Ginnivan to the extent that Ginnivan’s teammates Darcy Cameron and John Noble ran into remonstrate.
There’s no mention of that, no mention of why such a champion of the game feels a cheap shot is just.
There is no highlighting of how cowardly this act is – no replaying it over and over and over. There’s nothing to answer for here apparently.
Cornes also fails to talk about the game early in his own career when he celebrated idiotically while giving various Collingwood players the bird after a Port Adelaide victory.
Now this can go two ways: is Cornes a hypocrite, or does his behaviour qualify him to judge when young players are being right old gits?
Just two weeks later, however, after Ginnivan kicked five in Collingwood’s traditional Anzac Day clash against Essendon, Cornes backtracks yet again.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
You’d think somebody who retracts as much as Cornes does would learn to temper his opinion. Cornes shows up on The Footy Show with peroxide blond hair as a tribute to Ginnivan and now lathers him with praise.
Well, if nothing else, I have to give Cornes credit for at least acknowledging that he was premature with his judgement. Most media experts would just continue to push the same barrow.
Like Hudson, who uses his next opportunity commentating a Collingwood game to tell us Ginnivan is playing for head-high contact.
Garry Lyon’s another who’s jumped in. They laugh and jovially chide Ginnivan, even though replays repeatedly show that, hey, sometimes (and more often than not) Ginnivan’s simply being collected high, and he’s doing nothing to draw the frees.
Sometimes, just sometimes, the commentators have the magnanimity to acknowledge that the free kicks are legitimately there.
Does this compel them to revise their opinions? Do they reserve further judgement to see what’ll happen next time there’s such a contest?
Nope.
Why let evidence get in the way of judgement?
Why let facts disprove a conclusion they’ve made months ago?
I would challenge Fox Footy and Channel Seven to go through every Jack Ginnivan free kick this season and count the amount of times the free kicks have been there, and how many Ginnivan has drawn.
Because what I’m often seeing is Ginnivan putting his head over the ball and trying to win it, then being taken high.
This is a crime, though. How dare Ginnivan bend down and put his head over the ball!
Learn to kick it up to yourself while fully upright, son, just like a Gaelic footballer. Then we won’t have to deal with any of this. Because everybody else does that, right?
Against Hawthorn, Garry Lyon had the temerity to identify that Ginnivan was wronged in one instance, but didn’t get the free because he’s developed a reputation for staging.
In just 16 games.
Joel Selwood has played 345 games, but when he draws frees – as he does time and time again – he’s exposing a quirk in the rules.
(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
There are several other midfielders who’ve learned from him and bend the knee just as they’re about to be tackled. We talk about not one of them.
Leigh Montagna has never used his soapbox on Fox Footy to rant about Selwood or anybody else who plays for frees, but he’s now just the latest to castigate Ginnivan.
Count them: Cornes, Hudson, Lyon, now Montagna – and they’re just the ones I’ve heard.
In just 12 rounds this season, they have criticised and condemned Ginnivan. Which other player has drawn this ire?
Lance Franklin clips Trent Cotchin, and that’s fine. Bailey Smith headbutts Zach Tuohy and that’s a small conversation.
But Ginnivan? Well, get the posse out.
If Jack Ginnivan has developed a reputation for staging for free kicks on-field, it has less to do with what he’s doing, and more – much more – to do with the systematic and accumulative character assassination various media figures have shamelessly perpetuated upon him.
Some idiot in the media has decided this is a thing, and the rest have jumped on it. Can’t let that bandwagon leave the station without being on it, and it’s so much easier to be sanctimonious than it is to actually be right.
Ginnivan’s a work in progress. Like every player, there are times he does play for frees.
But his culpability has been exaggerated, and this single-minded narrative has grown into the realms of mass hysteria.
Certain people in the media should honestly consider their own terrible performances before obsessively and repeatedly targeting this one player.
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