The latest Paul Kent fracas has livened up things for rugby league fans this week, and looks like providing plenty of storylines over the coming months.
One of the may subplots involve the fate of Fox Sports’ rugby league chat show, NRL 360, on which Kent has been a panelist since it began in 2013.
Most sports panel shows follow the same formula – issue, opinion, argument – with the key being who is on the panel and the quality of their punditry. Every successful panel show has its own niche – The Matty Johns Show, for instance, is more light hearted, while the Sunday Footy Show is more analysis-based.
NRL 360’s niche might best be described as “loud opinions and gossip, mostly from journalists”. Watching the show was like sitting with your mates on a verandah at the pub arguing about rugby league-related things: who should be sacked/dropped/picked, vague rumours, hot takes, occasional insight. Unlike the majority of league shows, the panels were typically dominated by journalists rather than ex players. This was actually one of the appealing things about NRL 360 – you didn’t have people who were actually good at the game offering opinions, they were more like, well, fans. This made it more relatable.
NRL 360 co-host Paul Kent.
There’s no doubt Kent was the star of the show. With his heavy-set demeanour, one-game first grade career, slurring speaking style, moralising, biases and bombast, he epitomised the league-loving alpha mate many of us had/have – full of himself, prickly and easy to rile, alluding to a sports career in his younger days that actually wasn’t that good, rather entertaining when in rant mode, occasionally capable of an insightful comment.
Kent was especially effective in tandem with Ben Ikin – bespectacled, polite, the designated driver in the group, who came across as one of your mates who’s not drinking at the moment because he and his wife are doing IVF, but who also had genuine top-level playing experience that could be accessed when needed. Braith Anasta, who replaced Ikin as host, does his best but lacks the former Bronco’s big nerd energy that worked so well in tandem with Kent. Ikin was so self-effacing you forgot he was good enough to regularly play Origin; you never forget that with Anasta, and it unsettles the chemistry of the show.
There is of course a wide and rotating support cast on NRL360. Chief among them are Phil “Buzz” Rothfield, looking around 105 years old, the old chirpy bar fly type, full of opinions and gossip; and James Hooper, who gives off “perennial sidekick” vibes, never quite comfortable in his own skin. There were others too but I think the combination of Ikin-Kent-Hooper-Rothfield was probably NRL 360 at its finest, encapsulating a group of white men at a bar talking about league over the top of each other and ignoring texts from their wives asking them to pick up milk on the way home.
The secret sauce of that show is having people who never played at the top level having strong, differing, not entirely well-informed opinions it. No one was/is better at this than Kent because he was/is so full of himself. It was fun watching Paul Kent lecturing decent players and coaches how to play and behave because he seemed so completely obvious to his utter lack of qualifications to do so. Fox couldn’t find anyone to perform the Paul Kent role on NRL 360 – Hooper, and other journos like Dean Ritchie lack his blind self confidence. This is probably good for society, it just makes for less lively television.
My own suggestion: NRL 360 should try a few ex-coaches who never played at the top level and mix them in with journalists. Then you’d see some fireworks. No doubt readers will have their own thoughts (please, comment below). Regardless, one thing is clear: just as in rugby league, when a star player is suspended, the coach has to figure out how to rework that club’s style of play in order to move forward. And that’s what NRL 360 need to do without Paul Kent.
ForeverBok
Roar Rookie
I like Paul Kent. He adds the most fun to NRL360. I always feel short changed when Paul Kent is away. To stand him down for an affray charge is ridiculous. He will always be a target for jealous guys in a pub.
Tufanooo
Roar Rookie
But what about those other 5 days a year, and this year that 6th day? Probably a rugby league TV journalist is subject to the worst abuse of anyone. Parking officers get much more. Much, much more. They don't respond with fists
Phil Browne
Roar Rookie
What any other kind of show would they make that makes Rugby League relevant Nat? It's what attracts the stereotypical RL fan
Phil Browne
Roar Rookie
Go easy on him! He's using the easiest, smallest sport in the world to try and be relevant.
Horses for Courses
Roar Rookie
So are hundreds of other high profile people but when a guy is getting into regular verbal and physical altercations at some point you gotta be thinking maybe he is the problem. The truth is you have no more of an idea of what happened in Rozelle than any of us, unless you are Paul Kent in which case I'd tell you kingplaymaker is a really lame screen name.
Tom G
Roar Rookie
I hope his lawyer isn’t getting notes from you :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: . Your defence appears to be that a) he is spiky b) that he is subjected to being heckled by big rough boys quite unlike any other famous person associated with League and c) his being off his nut played no part in his actions.
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
I just read a little about it. It seems as if virtually everywhere he goes he is abused and threatened. That means all day he's in public, 360 days a year. Probably a rugby league TV journalist is subject to the worst abuse of anyone. Even saints can be pushed too far in the end.
Tom G
Roar Rookie
Well there is a super simple solution for him, one that at 54 years on this planet. There are literally thousands of people in his situation and somehow he is special?? Being loaded with booze and being inherently ‘spiky’ makes a sham of his victimhood.
The Anatolian
Roar Rookie
Great read. Hooper has tickets on himself too but he talks other journos down. I forget his name but the other journo from The Tele is good, Carayannis. Very understated and deferent but I enjoy his work.
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
I don't 'realise' any such thing, clearly.
Gray-Hand
Roar Rookie
You do realise that one of those people that he assaulted is one of the senior staff members of the Roar?
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
Yes but TV personalities are provoked 1000 times more than normal people and far more aggressively/persistently. It takes a saint never to react. This could be the 1000th time for Kent in the past year and finally he snapped.
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
He's not just a 54 year old man, he's publicly known and with a spikey TV presence. This doesn't mean he deserves to be subject to continuous verbal and physical abuse which is clearly what happened there.
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
'allegedly'. More likely they assaulted him and for once one of these abused public figures stood up for himself.
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
'but the smart play is to keep on walking.' Yes it is, but we have no idea how long that had been going on for. If they'd just come out of a restaurant as seems to have been the case this man could have spent the whole evening abusing him and then started to push him. Kent does have a spikey TV persona which probably means he attracts this kind of thing all day long and you can see in the end why he might finally react.
Tom G
Roar Rookie
One would expect a 54 year old man to have more sense mate… plenty, and I mean plenty of others manage just fine. The guy is a spanner
Cam
Roar Rookie
I don't doubt Paul got chipped by the other bloke, but the smart play is to keep on walking. Kent plies his trade commenting on big blokes running into other big blokes and was never pigeon-holed as the sharpest tool in the shed. He just had to find out if he still had it (he doesn't), instead ending up in hospital, charged by police and killing his career. Although I must thank Kenty, he has become a cautionary tale for my teenage son, who has just turning 18 and is embarking on his own drinking career :laughing:
Gray-Hand
Roar Rookie
You do realise that Kent has assaulted other people before. Including other journalists?
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
But isn't Kent AND Rothfield a secret delight no on will admit to...
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
Actually I think it's more likely that the spikey online persona means that troublemakers in the general public look on him as someone to have a go at more. Maybe he said the Rabbitohs can't turn things around this season on air and this army tried to set on him. Again, you don't see the video which the person who recorded it presumably cut as it would show his man in the wrong.