The Giants – A Continuing Eggshell Walk

Posted on May 12, 2013 by prestontowers

Those who know me and my writings about sport will know of my interest and reasons for supporting the GWS Giants. Today was hard, sitting amongst the dismal crowd of 5,300, watching what was possibly the worst performance in the time I have been following the team. I can’t say my supporting life is as hard as that of long suffering Bulldogs, St. Kilda, Richmond or Melbourne supporters – the latter currently writhing in despair.

It’s still hard though. 5,300. Loss by 130 + to a team that probably won’t make the finals. I walked very slowly to my car.

It was clearly also tough on the coach, Kevin Sheedy, whose post match press conference revealed the pressures brought to bear on the club that has so many millions of dollars riding on its long term success. In the press conference, as outlined here, he isolated two key concerns for the club – its growth as a playing group and growth of a supporter base. They are the main issues affecting the club and will be for the next five years.

For passionate Melbourne based football fans, Sheedy’s comments will echo loudly in the next week. He places the blame on the current performance of the Giants at the feet of existing powerful clubs unwilling to let go of existing stars whose presence at a club like the Giants would make an immediate and profound difference. As can be seen by the presence of Gary Ablett Jnr at the Suns, as well as the work of Chad Cornes last year at the Giants, experience and body development count a great deal towards the success of a team in AFL. You just can’t build a team entirely on the promise of 19 year olds. From where I sit, if there were two more experienced players in the back, two more experienced players in the forward line, the difference would be marked. You will hear, however, on the SEN talkback in Melbourne that clubs “shouldn’t be giving up players they developed” from a range of passionate fans. I can understand their point. The idea of transfer, however, is a feature of most football codes in the world, but is considered sacrilege by many in AFL.

This is a key difference between the on field success of the Western Sydney Wanderers and the Giants. The Wanderers had players of varying levels of talent and experience – with key outstanding players like Ono, which helped to create a team that was quick to mature and blossom. This is why their sudden success of the year shouldn’t have been as much of a surprise as it was. Soccer (I will call it soccer here, as distinct from Australian Football) easily transfers players from other clubs, it’s part of their game. In AFL, it is a major, painful sticking point.

What we will also hear is reaction to his other comment – already he is being accused of being a racist.

“…That was probably a reminder of what the Swans have been telling us. (Sydney chairman) Richard Colless says you’re going to do it hard early. So it just tells everybody how tough it’s going to be to build the club. We don’t have the recruiting officer called the immigration department, recruiting fans for (successful A-League soccer club) Western Sydney Wanderers. We’ve got to start a whole new ballpark and go and find fans.”

It’s a silly comment, a clumsy, insensitive attempt at humour and should not have been made. What I suspect Sheedy was trying to say was that soccer has a wide following from people who come from overseas to Australia while AFL, being home grown, doesn’t have that natural, from birth support. It is an accurate observation to make, especially when we consider that the soccer mad UK is the source of the third highest number of migrants to Australia.

DIAC Source Country for Immigration Statistics, 2011 - 12

Source Country for Immigration Statistics, 2011 – 12 – from DIAC.

It is also the case that soccer’s supporter base in Western Sydney was well established amongst various British, Irish and non – British migrant communities long before the Wanderers came along. This explains why the Wanderer support base was quick to form. Due to that heritage, I still think Western Sydney should have had a soccer team before Sydney. I was a supporter of the Parramatta Power back in the NSL days. That the Wanderers was a hurried afterthought was an indictment on the A League’s founders. However, maybe because it was an afterthought that it’s been a success. Perhaps, if there had been more planning, Parramatta Leagues club might have stumbled in and repeated the mistakes they made with the Parramatta Power. Due to the fact almost all games are played at Parramatta, the Wanderers are little more than a reborn Power, but this time with genuine grassroots engagement, as opposed to top – down control.

Thus, what Sheedy should have said in the press conference is that AFL doesn’t have the same cultural roots in Western Sydney as sports like soccer and rugby league and this makes it a hard, long sell. But he didn’t, thus leading us to what will be a bit of a storm on which the media will feed for a while.

Sheedy did come out and explain his comments on Twitter later in the evening, which fit into what I suspected he meant -

What he will find very quickly though, that it’s a thorny field, talking about immigration and Western Sydney. Accusations of dog whistling are always quick to form whenever immigration is mentioned. It will be interesting to see where this issue heads. Soccer fans will be furious, saying that it shows that Anglo Celtic people like Sheedy see soccer as “wogball” and only played by European migrants. Yet others will see it as sour grapes because the Giants haven’t built the support that the Wanderers have. In truth, I don’t think Sheedy should have mentioned the Wanderers at all in comparison to the Giants. They play at a different time of the year for a start and the codes don’t necessarily compete for juniors. The two junior codes play on a different day – Saturday is soccer day, Sunday is AFL day in Sydney.

Ultimately, Sheedy should have focused on the fact there’s still work to be done on the team and on the poor mother’s day scheduling. It would have been less controversial and not make it into an us and them issue. The Giants and the Wanderers should not be fighting against each other, no matter what journalists will ask and write in their articles comparing the two codes.

As for what might happen next, I think we will see Sheedy on the TV in Sydney a bit this week, apologising, showing how he likes the cultural diversity in Western Sydney as well as soccer. In Melbourne, however, he will be quizzed about “stealing” players from the successful clubs.

For me, though, it’s just been a hard Sunday. The Giants have a long way to go, in terms of team and crowd development. I sincerely hope these comments don’t make people think Giants fans and staffers are all racists and that we hate soccer. I just want to see better efforts from the players and more people to be part of what should be a great AFL club representing one of the best – and most misunderstood – parts of Australia.

TedX – Hillsong for Atheists?

Posted on May 5, 2013 by prestontowers

Many people in the business world like going to conferences. They are often subsidised by their employers to go, stay in a nice hotel, listen to some ideas, schmooze and go home recharged – either by the ideas, the schmoozing, the hotel or a little of all of the above. Teachers, too, like conferences, though they are often less swish than the business ones – and often pay their own airfare and accommodation.

These conferences have a various array of themes, concepts and types of presentation tools being used. Powerpoints were the rage until recently, replaced in part by videos and the swooshing of Prezi. While business conferences are usually closed door affairs, however, teacher conferences are marked these days by the lines of teachers tweeting what is being said so that their PLN – Professional Learning Network – can read what is being said. These teachers are more than aware that there are many teachers who cannot make conferences, due mainly to cost and family commitments. They tweet so those colleagues and friends can keep up to date. It is not, as many other teachers used to say at such conferences, a “rude thing to do”. It’s the opposite.

I say this because there is another strain of conference concept emerging – the TED talks. Teachers are aware of TED, largely because there’s not a term goes by where teachers see a TED talk being transmitted during an inservice day. This is not a bad thing – TED talks are often excellent, informative and can be inspiring.

What is intriguing, however, is how regional TED talks are organised and run. In 2012, the first TED talk in Sydney (at least, the first of which I was aware), was held at Carriageworks, in Redfern – a relatively low key venue for the ideas being spread. It was a free event, but one had to “apply” for entry with an interesting biography. Each potential audience member had to prove just how interesting they were to be provided entry to the event. The deciding panel therefore became some kind of doormen outside the hottest thought club in town. I wasn’t cool enough – I thought back and realised I should have just made something up. Something like this:

I am a cutting edge thought leader and shaper living in one of the most culturally intriguing parts of Australia’s most cosmopolitan city. I believe ideas are the key to unlocking the potential all of us have in continuing the cultural conversation and defining the paradigms of our age.

On the day, I put the question out as to whether those of us too uncool for entry could at least read the ideas from the comfort of our lounge rooms. I was told that the TED organisers were not allowing tweeting from inside the room from audience members. This astonished me, considering that the whole philosophy of TED is “Ideas Worth Spreading”. Ideas worth spreading, but not as individual people. It seems from this policy that the way they practice their “Ideas Worth Spreading” idea is through their website. And to the cool people in the room.

Flash forward to 2013 and TED in Sydney has graduated to the Sydney Opera House – a much more expensive venue to hire. There was also, this time around, a ticket cost – $120 – for those who got in. I don’t know if they still had the Thought Club Doormen this time around. You would have thought so, however – TED seemed to be the hottest ticket in town for people interested in Thoughts. If you’re on the outside, you can watch the live stream at home or the videos afterwards. But not reading tweets.

The cult of TED has been interesting to follow – and I think summarised pretty well in this Twitter conversation between the President of the NSW Independent Education Union, Dick Shearman, radio and newspaper veteran Mike Carlton and I:

The adherents of TED do sound a bit like evangelical Christians after emerging from a particularly inspiring church service – high on the propagation of simple, effectively communicated ideas. You also don’t hear many dissenting voices TED being broadcast – restricting the tweets would certainly do that. It is also a bit Hillsong in that they do like to have the flashy, highly attractive venue and control over the material presented.

This is not to say TED is a bad thing, or that all of the presenters and their ideas aren’t excellent – I was pleased, for example, that Lisa Murray, the City of Sydney Historian, was appreciated for her work during yesterday’s event. Her work, and that of other presenters, needs celebration and profile. I do wonder, however, whether people who saw her talk would have gone to the other talks that she would deliver around the City as a part of her role, or just went because it was TED – and therefore cool.

I would be interested, too, whether the organisers of TED would ever contemplate a TEDxPenrith, where ideas could be propagated by a range of people to an audience keen to engage with ideas. This is because there are people who live in the region interested in ideas about society, the planet, education, history and the rest. The cynic in me guesses that it will never happen – TED seem to want the big flashy settings for the videos to get the clicks from their audience. You would wonder too if they would attract some of the Thought Leaders of our Age to make the trip out west.

Twits, Not Tweeps – Journalists Conflating Tweets into Psychological Analyses

Posted on April 28, 2013 by prestontowers

It’s not new for old media journalists and editors to hate Twitter. We have had a variety of journalists selectively edit Twitter commentary on issues to suit their purposes. These journalists have wilfully misrepresented the way Twitter works – that comments come from all angles, all of the time. It’s not something that can be pinned down in the same way we can traditional media forms. One can excuse this kind of reportage in the earlier days of Twitter, where many didn’t use it well or have interns who did. There is little excuse for that to happen these days – but it continues apace.

Andrew Bolt doesn’t see the need to have a Twitter account – his audience would feed him all he needs for his deliberate misrepresentation of everything that occurs on various platforms. This is his blog post, posted on April 28 at 5.55 am.

Bolt is less a journalist, more a self created ringmaster of a circus built for lunatics. (Though the other day, I was speaking to a reasonable fellow netball dad who came out with the phrase “I agree with Andrew Bolt…” which startled me). What is surprising, however, is that the source of his post is a senior journalist in a non News Ltd outlet. It’s from Chris Johnson, National Political Correspondent, writing in the Age. This article highlights much of what is wrong with media’s relationship with politics and social media. As ever in my deconstructions, the original article is in italics.

The left takes a turn for the ugly as power slips through Labor’s grasp

Rising desperation has inspired the use of gutter tactics.

We know from the bald, high modality assertions that this isn’t going to be a nuanced analysis. That and “the left”

Tony Abbott is pushing his pedals between Adelaide and Geelong this week, feeling pretty chuffed about putting in a decent performance on the ABC’s 7.30 program last Wednesday.

I don’t know of many, other than Andrew Bolt and the Liberal Party, who believe that Tony Abbott put a “decent performance” in the 730 interview. Also, whether Abbott is or isn’t participating in a cycle based event isn’t relevant to the subject matter, even though it’s the only time Abbott makes an appearance in what is essentially an anti-ALP piece.

He was on message, disciplined and, as usual, pretty light with details.

This seems to be a “decent” performance in Johnson’s eyes, rather than as a calculated tactic. Not exactly an objective analysis of the interview.

The same can’t be said about the rabid social media commentators who critiqued not Abbott’s performance, but that of the show’s presenter Leigh Sales. As interviews go it was somewhat pedestrian – no killer question or knockout punch.

“The rabid social media commentators”. Rabid? There were critics of the interview – yes, we had the offensive and disgusting, but -many of them reasonable and constructive – but these are ignored so Johnson can use the sensationalist, amplified “rabid” word. It’s little wonder Bolt put it on his blog.

Yet because Abbott emerged from the 13-minute conversation unscathed, some threw the blame directly onto Sales. That’s probably to be expected and there is nothing wrong with an interviewer’s performance being discussed publicly.

No, that’s true. There is nothing wrong with such a discussion about a performance. Not that Johnson would know about how that is often conducted, considering that he does not use Twitter.

What was alarming about the Twitter debate following Abbott’s 7.30 appearance, however, was its ugly tenor. Elements of the political left thought it just fine to describe Sales in abusive and sexist terms because her grilling of Abbott did not meet their expectations.

It’s not OK, yet the debate rolled on for most of the week, sending mixed messages about what the left is up to.

Have they resorted to antics more often employed by the far right?

Sales was accused, in some instances with very vile language, of being too easy on Abbott and even biased towards him. How soon they forget and how quickly they turn.

“Elements of the political left”, “alarming”. This makes it sound like that there are groups of militant “lefties”, abusing people in sexist terms who don’t do what they want. There was, as far as I am aware, one tweet that was widely retweeted that was crude and sexist and a small number of abusive tweets directed at Sales’ performance. There were also a number of reasonable people posting their concerns about the interview, as well as “lefties” expressing the opinion that Abbott’s performance and circular logic made it hard to get any answers of substance. In other words, a vibrant and diverse conversation, as Twitter can have. The abusive people were hardly elements and hardly a “tenor”. Yes, the abusive tweets were wrong and yes, it is a concern, but isn’t particularly surprising to those who regularly use Twitter.

What is a concern here is that Johnson is not putting this Twitter response into a wider context about Twitter usage. Members of the political “right” have hardly been pure in regards to sexist abuse hurled at a person with which they don’t agree. The variety of sexist memes created in relation to Julia Gillard have been manifold and dizzying. Johnson does make a passing comment about the “far right”, but doesn’t elaborate.

Last August Sales had Abbott not only on the ropes but flat out on the mat and wishing for an early end to that bout. During that interview, Sales got Abbott to admit he hadn’t actually read a BHP statement he wrongly claimed was blaming the carbon tax for the suspension of the Olympic Dam mining project.

It was all downhill from there for the Opposition Leader as Sales got stuck into him on a number of fronts.

Abbott haters were more than pleased with that exchange, leaving the right angry and feverishly circulating their own nasty claims of bias.

But now it’s the left that is furious. The commentary says more, however, about where the left is at psychologically in this stage of the electoral cycle. Facing the likelihood of a conservative government and a prime minister Abbott, parts of the left have taken to desperate gutter tactics.

This is where the article becomes ridiculous. A few abusive tweets doesn’t point to “the left” being furious nor does it point to where “the left” is at psychologically. This is one of the longest bows I have seen drawn by a member of the Fairfax press for a while (other than by Paul Sheehan, whose bows are so long he could shoot an arrow the size of a cricket bat).

To say that these tweets point to anything “the left” are thinking would be akin to saying Larry Pickering and the #auspol Liberal shouters on Twitter speak for “the right” alone. If Johnson did think that, then the entire “right” have been abusive and sexist for two and a half years. Yet he doesn’t address that idea here. The earlier passing reference to the “far right” does not adequately balance the conclusion he is making about “the left” on the basis of a few tweets. Nor does he address the idea that Twitter has so many voices and opinions and approaches that it’s next to impossible to authentically identify anything like an approach or element. Truth is, there are a few in “the left” and on “the right” that are using gutter tactics. People who know how Twitter works, however, generally slam them and then ignore them.

Going by the reaction to the Sales interview last week, they seem to be now insisting that media interviewers push their cause and help them prevent a Coalition victory in September.

More conflating – “they”. There are some who seem to come across that way, but again, a small number. Having said that, I am not surprised that journalists unaware of the way Twitter works are continuing to take tweets out of context and make poor analyses of them. It is partly suspicion of that occurring that led me to write my Megaphones piece in Ausvotes 2013 – commenting that repeated shouting and abuse doesn’t help the cause of the ALP, it could hinder it. Having articles like this appear in The Age does hinder rather than helps. On the other hand, maybe it was inevitable, no matter the caution of people tweeting support for the ALP, that some journalists would still conflate isolated tweets into representing some kind of “psychology”.

This is the article that keeps on providing evidence of the malaise in journalism – We then get more leadership nonsense from Johnson.

Meanwhile, Julia Gillard’s ability to win over the electorate remains far from where she and her party would like it to be, but Labor MPs have mostly now resolved they must fall in behind her.

As obvious a statement as that might be, it is only over this past week that most inside Labor have reached that conclusion. Just two weeks ago there were rumblings that despite her vanquishing yet another move to bring back Kevin Rudd, Gillard would be facing renewed leadership pressure before the election. The possibly honourable, but certainly kamikaze, move by Simon Crean last month in calling for a spill sent the member for Hotham to the backbench.

Rumblings? From where?

But it also fuelled speculation that he would throw his own hat into the leadership ring. Even as Gillard’s newly promoted frontbenchers were moving into their plush ministerial offices, word was getting around to some of them that their reward for loyalty to the PM would not last long.

They were not referring to the likelihood of losing government in September, the message was that a post-budget leadership challenge was on the cards and the old frontbench would be back to reclaim some jobs.

And the leadership contender? None other than Simon Crean.

I thought the Crean, Get On Top movement ended a while ago. Yet Johnson is bringing it all back from the place of irrelevance in which it should belong.

That’s what the previous Rudd backers and some of the wider anti-Gillard forces in the ALP were mooting among themselves.

They considered Crean would be a ”safe pair of hands” following a budget they expect won’t go down too well with voters.

Crean helped fuel the fire with a recent Fairfax Media interview in which he talked of Gillard’s ”tin ear” for sound political strategy and her apparent wont to engage in ”class warfare”.

When a backbencher criticises his government, it’s a leadership challenge? Apparently so – and so is criticising Kevin Rudd for not contest for leadership.

During the same interview he declared Rudd to be ”finished” because he refused to contest the leadership spill his backers had encouraged Crean to call for – implying he might put himself forward as a leadership choice.

But it seems cooler heads have prevailed, probably with the realisation that if Crean couldn’t mobilise numbers behind Rudd, he most likely wouldn’t be able to muster up a majority for himself either.

Again, this is old news. Nothing of Abbott’s avoidance of media questions about the GST, silly billboards and the Gillard win in gaining a Gonski agreement from the NSW Government. Like the opening of this article, it’s hard to see this article as anything but partisan, desiring to make the ALP look divisive and their supporters as unhinged cyber bullies.

At least voting Australians who can’t stomach either Gillard or Abbott now have another choice, thanks to Queensland’s billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer, who declared on Friday he wanted to be Australia’s next PM.

But then he said he didn’t.

Chances are he won’t.

Personally, I can’t stomach journalism like this whilst good journalists are freelancing and desperate for a job. And Fairfax wonder why people don’t buy the paper as much as they once did.

Less We Forget, More We Fret About

Posted on April 26, 2013 by prestontowers

ANZAC Day this year had its predictabilities. Much of it showing lacking an understanding of history and context. Catherine Deveny firing off her contrarian fireballs, tweeps getting fired up about people typing “Less We Forget” on their social media posts, declaring the death of education, football becoming the focus on more debate on whether football is grabbing the goodwill created by ANZAC Day and making it into some kind of commercial gain. Debates like this lose a touch of context and we, as a population, seem to choose to invest all sorts of wider, deeper meaning into these things for fervent analysis on Twitter and in blogs, only to forget them all the next day – or worse still, hang onto the memory until it becomes more and more bitter.

Also predictable, symbolic and as ephemeral was the reaction to an interview conducted the night before by Leigh Sales of the aspirant Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. Abbott seemed to be much better prepared with his asinine talking points and circular logic than previously, and being in a studio where he didn’t have to look Sales in the eye seemed to also help his ability to appear to deflect close scrutiny. The interview made him look like a robot who was barely remembering his purpose and come out with the absurd line “I’m growing” – even though he has spent more than three years in his current role. It was Abbott as his most Lathamesque – I’m talking the sanitised “no crudity” Latham. The Latham who seemed to have been force fed a diet of an electronic Beethoven’s 9th before he was put on stage. The reaction was predictable in that the crowd of Labor megaphones crashed in on Sales for not eviscerating Abbott. One of the more dignified variations of this criticism came in the Labor leaning Australians For Honest Politics blog project, where Peter Clarke, after a fairly thorough deconstruction of every question Sales gave, concluded with questions such as these :

In short, what is actually happening behind the scenes at 730 to leech this program of its effectiveness just when we need it most to do its fourth estate job effectively without fear or favour?

Has the constant drumbeat of partisan attack on the ABC generally and Sales personally ultimately had the “desired effect”?

Like a lot of what we are seeing as media scrutiny from the Labor leaning news sites, these loaded rhetorical questions and the conclusion of the piece featured more than a whiff of conspiracy theories about the downfall of the ABC as a bastion of truth, justice and the progressive way. Who is “we”? How did Sales “let down” “we” with her questions. The “we”, I suspect, are those who wish Abbott to be taken down by the likes of Sales. As for the concept of “partisan attack”, I am assuming Clarke is referring to the conservative attacks by the likes of Chris Kenny and Gerard Henderson. Reading Twitter, however, that concept of “partisan attack” is a two way street. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t. As for “desired effect” – again, I assume Clarke is referring to a conservative desire. It sounds more like conspiracy than based on known evidence of any kind of actual instructions issued to Sales.

This agonising examination of the ABC by progressive commentators is painful and self defeating – as is covered so well in this blog post. It misses a wider point – that obsessively analysing single interviews misses wider shifts and movements in the election. Most people from the areas in which I have lived and worked – where this election is being fought – especially a lot of swinging voters, don’t watch the ABC very much. My Kitchen Rules would have been where a lot of them would be watching TV at the time of the Abbottbot interview. Or maybe, earlier on, they were The Project, if they were interested in politics. If they are to watch the ABC at all, it wouldn’t be this far out from an election.

These things pass. Less We Forget was more evidence of the fact we as a community don’t use the word “Lest” in everyday conversation and in our media – it usually only exists for most people in the phrase “Lest We Forget”. I’m not saying it’s a good thing that people have misheard the word and are getting it wrong – I dare say most of those people have now learnt their lesson or will do so soon enough. It doesn’t, however, show the downfall of civilisation, as much as misplaced apostrophes doesn’t show the incompetence of our education system. Anyone expressing genuine outrage and judgmental attitudes towards “Less We Forget”, revealed quite a bit about the people getting outraged at something so trivial.

Catherine Deveny, too, exists as an outrage lightning rod – she’s not unique in having an outrageous opinion – but she does like to speak what is often unspoken and is uncompromising in asserting her right to express them. Deveny’s tweets are to ANZAC Day what the Queen’s Message is to Christmas. People don’t have to watch. The chief difference is that people these days don’t put themselves through the act of watching the Queen, just to be outraged by what she says.

As for the idea of football on ANZAC Day, which Wednesday night’s Mad As Hell (it’s at the start of the episode) lampooned so beautifully, the ANZAC Day game was just an idea Kevin Sheedy had in his garden – thinking that an ANZAC Day match might be a nice way to commemorate soldiers who fought at war and Bruce Ruxton, the Collingwood loving RSL head, agreed. A way for people to enjoy some football after the commemoration of war. It’s not a hijack of the ANZAC legend for a football game – though the awarding of the best on ground for “best exhibiting the ANZAC spirit” is fairly absurd. That is unless someone has shot some Turkish soldiers, been shot at, has contracted trench foot or has devised an ingenious retreat whilst playing the game.

Sometimes it’s good to just forget and move on from obsessions. I understand why the Labor megaphones both on Twitter and in blogs get frustrated. The ALP have not had a great run from various media outlets, especially News Ltd. That’s why there’s been the need to establish “Independent” media outlets that act as anti- News Ltd. They are good pressure valves. I understand the excitement that a 730 report appearance by Abbott instils in people. But they forget the long game and the hectoring, blatantly partisan nature of the tweets and blogs have the effect of turning off a number of people in the same way as The Australian has to non rusted on Liberal supporters. It should be reassuring for them that there will be more TV appearances for Tony Abbott. More importantly, he will also have to appear on commercial TV, where he has been less than convincing at times. Plus, if he wins the election, there will be three years of having to step around the landmines that Abbott perceives every time he appears on TV.

In the end, there will also be more occasions for daily, largely impotent outrage. We should be forgetting about the ephemeral and trivial nonsense arguments that are so easy to fall into on Twitter. The less we forget about what is truly important, however, is something we should consider.

Sport Writing and Access – Time for a New Voice

Posted on March 31, 2013 by prestontowers

I like watching sport. Shocking, I know. Many people don’t like it, which they will state on Twitter whenever the feeds are filled with weekend sport watching. The argument many make about sport is that it’s helping to dumb down our society and culture, make it just about watching people kicking a football a long way or making a good dummy and flick pass. When these critics watch the coverage and culture related to sport, it’s easy to agree with their objection – from Brian Taylor’s “wowees” and 1970s style “humour”; to Tom Waterhouse being as welcome a visitor to rugby league coverage as Frank the rabbit is to Donnie Darko; Ray Warren and Phil Gould speaking against poker machine reform on behalf of their employers, Channel 9; those inane ads for VB and merchandise during cricket coverage – and whenever Ian Healy speaks; Footy Shows featuring a range of outrageous activities, from thinly veiled racism, overt sexism, homophobia and picking on pretty much anyone who is an easy target. It’s also easy to find supporting evidence of one of the most accurate charges – that sport reports are little more than recounts of games, repeated gossip, trivia and “insider talk”.

Not all sport reporting is breathless gossip and small stories exploded into massively vital ones. There are notable exceptions in terms of excellent sport writers and broadcasters – people like Brad Walter, Neil Cordy, Richard Hinds, Gideon Haigh, Jarrod Kimber, Francis Leach, Deb Spillane, Caroline Wilson and Malcolm Knox (there are more, fill in the gaps…). These writers and commentators have a way of fitting sport into a wider context, showing why it should matter to us why things happen in sport. Most sport writers, however, don’t. Part of the issue for sport writers is that of “access”- which is often used as a way of justifying an amount of what is written.

Access to all available players and sporting officials is a key claim towards authority for sport writer – we often read “I was at Whitten Oval today, and…” or “Deep inside Panthers, I was talking to Phil Gould about…”. It’s often mentioned in an irrelevant context – such as when a piece on A League starts with something David Gallop texted Phil Rothfield. This question of access is also often used as a defence of their articles by the sport writers on Twitter – the “I talked to X, I saw Y, you didn’t” approach. It’s a similar phenomenon to whenever we hear from Canberra Press Gallery journalists about their level of acces to those notorious “anonymous sources” from the ALP. That level of access raises various questions:

1. Does being too close personally to the figures involved affects the level of objectivity and clarity of the author?

2. Does the level of access renders all “outsider” commentary on sport irrelevant and without authority

3. Does access render the articles as being “safe”, due to the fear of the journalist losing that level of access that allows him or her to write their pieces?

4. Does close access reduce sport commentary and writing to the detailed reportage of intimate details of day to day activities in the sport?

The insistence on “access” (often called “unprecedented access”) as well as experience in sport is something we see dominating sport coverage and commentary. This is why the AFL dedicated channel on Foxtel, is filled with former players or newspaper writers who have “access”. Or Eddie McGuire (there can’t be many Chairmen of any organisations that would be allowed to their own TV show – imagine “Rupert Murdoch Tonight” or the “Alan Joyce Show”). Even the Supercoach Show, a show for people who like playing fantasy football, is now hosted by a former footballer, Brad Johnson, who doesn’t seem to know very much about the Supercoach game. The result is that we have the same talking heads, with their unparalleled access, treading the line of being uncontroversial and largely uncritical of the game or the wider cultural impact of the game. An exception to this is the ABC program “Offsiders”, which is often controversial – even if the panellists are Insiders with Access. It will be a while until we see a Fan Forum show on Fox Sports, where people with no access will be able to discuss issues and comment on the game.

When it comes to be experienced or someone with access, this also shuts out and marginalises a significant sector of sport fans, commentators and writers – female fans, commentators and writers. Fox Footy is like the Marylebone and Melbourne Cricket Clubs of eras past – men only. Women aren’t anywhere to be seen, even the week where it was Women’s Round in the AFL was advertised as “Christmas in July” on the channel. This means that sideline commentators like Barry Hall, when speaking about the “unprecedented access” the channel had to Port Adelaide’s preparations for their March 31 game, said “the women will be disappointed we haven’t got cameras in the change room”. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink… This theme of marginalised female sport fans, commentators and writers is a continuing one. They can be poor “victims” of a partner who likes fantasy football, removed from TV commentary in the case of Kelli Underwood, or the idea that women are best employed writing about women’s sport. Women in commercial football seem to be best employed as readers of sporting odds or as the giggling sidekick – a role Fifi Box played for a while in the NRL Footy Show – or as a target of disgusting activities undertaken by Sam Newman in the AFL Footy Show with a Caroline Wilson mannequin. The exception to this is the ABC, with Underwood doing commentary for them, the continuing presence of Simone Thurtell and Karen Tighe on Grandstand, as well as Deb Spillane both hosting Northern Grandstand and her “Hens FC” panel show.

A solution to all of this – as it has been for the political news community, is for the blogosphere to pick up where traditional sport media leaves off and create blogs and media hubs that provide honest, varied views about sport and the wider context of sport. One about various sports, no matter the gender of the sportspeople. Where a range of good writers write about sport in a meaningful way – but without being fussed about “access”, “exclusives” and other old media methods of excluding readers and possible contributors. We don’t have many templates for such a site.

The US has Grantland, which is an ESPN project. One of the best features in that was one that demonstrates the issue of being a journalist with access as against being a sport fan and member of society demanding the truth, explored by the creator of Grantland, Bill Simmons. None of our sport broadcasters present such a forum. I’m also not talking about Bound for Glory news, which is a commendable attempt at alternative sport writing featuring a range of writers, but is limited, in that it mainly concerns itself about AFL and that world. I am speaking about a sport version somewhere between The Drum or Ausvotes 2013, which has a clean, accessible front page as well as writers who are free to contribute their pieces, no matter their “background” in sport. Not sure whether this will ever happen, but it would be nice if it did.

It’s All About The Numbers – Fantasy AFL

Posted on March 22, 2013 by prestontowers

While Twitter and the blogosphere has been gripped by the rolling maul of Ruddmentum (and to me, the much more amusing Crean – Get On Top movement) these past weeks, I have been gripped by a much more difficult activity. As a generally non sporty person, though as an avid sport watcher, I occasionally try to work out what goes on in the world of sport, get initiated into places that are almost foreign to me. This year, it has been plunging into the (mostly male) world of Fantasy Football – in my case, AFL Dream Team and Supercoach. As with politics, it’s all about the numbers.

Being in a NSW workplace as I have been all my life, I am the only person I know who plays AFL fantasy football. I am fully aware that if I was a teacher in Victoria, I would have had to develop a pretty sophisticated understanding of the workings of the comps, both to keep up with Monday morning staffroom conversations, but also have something to talk about down at the pub on a Friday night. A female teacher friend of mine, in order to have something to talk about, decided to have fun with the concept some time ago and selects a team each year that contains players selected entirely on the basis of their names being a double entendre. Hence, Sidebottom, Suckling, Swallow (x2), Goldsack, Ryder, Plowman, Johncock… (you get the picture). For me, though, it’s a case of having no pressure to be some kind of King of the Staffroom, it’s purely diverting and fun.

In order to help fuel the obsessions, there’s a whole internet community dedicated to the numbers and machinations of the two fantasy football competitions. Amongst the best of these are Dream Team Talk, which features the occasional Youtube show with three friendly blokes talking at a pub; Supercoach Paige, which features one of the few women who talks fantasy football; a page with an amusing title picture, Sargeant Supercoach and probably one of the more interesting projects attempting to emulate 1970s football language, Jock Reynolds. These weeks have been spent trying to work out what all the numbers mean. That’s why my Twitter feed has me following a range of DT and SC experts, all talking in a foreign language. That’s why I’ll have commentary on which sauce bottle Rudd has shaken followed by cries of “Broughton isn’t rebounding the ball in the NAB Cup game”, “Ross Lyon really hates DT coaches”, “This game in Renmark has produced awesome numbers for Port”, “Swan is a definite lock”, “What do you mean Tom Mitchell isn’t playing???”, et cetera. As with any concept foreign to me, it fascinates with its coruscations.

Despite the best efforts of members of this very friendly and helpful Twitter crew (especially fellow Giants member and Dream Team Talk contributor, @RLGriffin85 and that outstanding AFL news source, @janinemcglynn), I still don’t entirely understand how the numbers work. This includes the differences between Dream Team and Supercoach. Both use quite different statistical formulas. All I have worked out really is that some players touch the ball more and get involved in the game, which gives them more numbers. But champion players like Adam Goodes and Nick Malceski aren’t really all that good for the fantasy competitions. Even my favourite player in the AFL, Kieren Jack, is barely mentioned. Apparently it hurts him to be playing with other champion players. What I have learned, however, is that the games are actually outstanding learning activities – especially in terms of providing a workout in terms of statistics, mathematics and speculation based on evidence. This is why parents shouldn’t get too worried if their children like a bit of fantasy football activity.

As an exercise in attempting to understand this world of numbers, statistics and the like, I decided to select two teams in each competition. One is my regular all sides team – the one where I have attempted to listen to all of the advice and tips from the various sources. The other is my Northern States team, consisting of players for the Sydney Swans, GWS Giants, Gold Coast Suns and Brisbane Lions. This is partially because I wanted to track how players from the Swans and Giants go in the competitions, and partially because I am very fond of any team operating in the “league states”. This is why the DT / SC crew like giving me advice on my all sides team, but are sometimes profoundly puzzled by the Northern States team. They possibly don’t understand what it’s like for a Western Sydney boy to have four sides north of the Murray to watch. Plus, they have the torrent of “coaches” asking questions about their legitimate teams. “What about Fyfe?” is more pressing than “why don’t any of these teams have cheap rookies that will get a game?”

Here are my Northern States teams – the Northern States teams are both named in honour of the Flamboyant Icon of Northern States AFL, Warwick Capper.

Dream Team

Super Coach

Then there is the All States team, built from all of the rumours, comments, research.

Dream Team

Super Coach

Summarising the gap between my political Twitter friends and the Fantasy Footyheads, almost no-one took up my invitation to join my “Flamboyant League”, also named for Mr. Capper. That is to be expected though, the worlds have almost no intersection.

Today is the big day for Fantasy Football chat and last minute panics as the numbers of changes that can be made becomes restricted. The Crean Bun Fight barely rated a blip yesterday in their world. Brad Crouch’s non selection for Adelaide made more of an impact. I hope they all remember it really is just fun rather than a reflection of their abilities as people. But maybe that’s just the view from an isolated Sydney person. Ultimately, however, I’m glad this type of thing exists. Otherwise, we’d all just be more than a little depressed about the state of play in this country.

Monday Questions – Education Funding

Posted on March 18, 2013 by prestontowers

Thought I might try something different with the Institute this week – pose some questions about a topic that is being discussed in the twittoblogosphere and give a bit of a comment after those questions. These are questions, not answers. Sometimes I will state both sides in my discussion of the question. Just like Q & A, really – except I am not providing party political talking points as a substitute for answers.

Question 1. Why is it always high fee paying private schools that are used as examples of the independent schooling sector?

Read the Sydney Morning Herald, and funding of the high fee paying private schools like Kings, Scots, Pymble Ladies’ College and the like is a frequent visitor to its pages. It’s almost as if the Herald aren’t aware of Catholic systemic, community Christian and Islamic schools. For it is these schools, out in the suburbs, that receive the bulk of Federal education funding for independent schools. Yet what we see time and again are pictures of new swimming pools and rugby fields, which works to polarise and sensationalise, rather than discuss the complexity of the education system.

It is also the case that many advocates of public schooling want to target independent schools, so they make the high fee paying ones the symbol of the wastefulness of government spending. It could also be that many of these advocates live in relatively affluent areas, where the main schooling options are public schools and the high fee paying school. The question remains – why not look at the schools that receive most of the money, not the lucky few that benefit from former students and from well paid parents.

Question 2. Why Don’t We Hear About Teacher Recruitment Issues?

When I started out in teaching, I could not get a permanent posting. Three years of living in the western suburbs of Sydney, being available to be placed in a Western Suburbs public school and nothing. So, like many teachers in the western suburbs, I worked in blocks, on temporary contracts. Financial security non existent – especially if I was after day to day casual work. This situation remains to this day. Teachers on temporary contracts – often in the same school – who can’t be upgraded to permanency. Teachers on blocks who can’t get an interview for a position or get pushed up “the list”.

It is a worthwhile conversation to have about teach quality. But imagine the quality one could have if more young teachers could gain permanent placements. Somewhere. If that school is considered to be a “rough” school, then provide support to that teacher and encourage support networks.

Question 3. Why Must People Attack Sides?

The education debate is often torpedoed by comments from people – like Catherine Deveny – who insist on labelling parents who choose to send their students to independent schools. Or label supporters of independent schools as “elitists” who “support Knox getting another rugby field”. On the other side, we have people who support education choice by making uninformed and prejudiced comments about the “type” of student who goes to a “typical” public school. We get a polarised dichotomy that doesn’t help. Schools aren’t easily placed into boxes or stereotypes, so attempting to do so by taking a “side” is probably unproductive – but still people do it.

Question 4. Why Aren’t We Talking About Increasing All School Funding?

The old argument about whether independent schools should get funding from governments was fought and lost quite some time ago. Considering that it seems most politicians from the ALP and Liberal Party either went to an independent school, their children go to one – or, more importantly – are frequently lobbied by voting parents of students who attend these schools – funding of independent schools will be a continuing reality for a while.

This is why, maybe, the conversation could turn to discussing whether all school funding should be increased, at the expense of areas where the need isn’t as great, such as defence or asylum seeker processing. The government that stands up and says “we are actually increasing funding for all schools” would actually receive a lot of support – especially in that Western Sydney area people go on about. As I said in my post on education in Ausvotes 2013 – education is very important – for parents who send their kids to all schools. More important than stopping boats and transport.

Question 5. Why Selective Schools?

This is a NSW specific question. We have academically selective schools that are frequently trumpeted on the league tables produced in the HSC result coverage in the Herald and Telegraph. This is rendered almost meaningless when you regard that these schools take students from other schools and group them together in a place where very good is just mediocre. What we don’t hear is how the academically selective system benefits the whole student. They are just made into their result.

Anyway, these are questions. Come up with some answers. Or not. Your call.

The Preston Institute

Seeking obfuscation and receiving it on a daily basis.