Spurs have played friendlies in Sydney & Melbourne in the last two years. In all honesty the games were the least memorable parts of their trips. Going to the training sessions and getting autographs; spending a few days in Melbourne with a close friend with also supports Spurs; having some drinks at the Imperial and then the march to the game; meeting some players at Pitt St Mall & Federation Square; the nights with Ossie Ardiles & Ledley King; the Spurs trivia night in Melbourne; bumping into other Spurs fans; meeting another Spurs friend at the Melbourne game; having a quick chat to Andros Townsend were all more memorable than the actual games.
Anyway the Liverpool vs Sydney FC game was shown on ABC2. The match was arranged only in April (in comparison Arsenal's two games in Sydney were first announced in December 15 with dates announced in April 16). Accordingly the ABC won the rights to the game only very recently.
Most of the post match review wasn't given to the game, but instead to the coverage. To give an idea of how well the coverage went down is that apparently the CEO of the ABC Michelle Guthrie will give a response at the Senate estimates hearing. Also it was so bad that it seems to have scuppered any chance the ABC had of getting the free-to-air rights for the A League.
Of course former Socceroo and now commentator Robbie Slater hated the coverage. Robbie tends to criticise any football coverage he isn't part of although to be fair to him, his criticism of this coverage was warranted. It think Slater is a very ordinary commentator. I quite like most of the ex-players who are on SBS: Andy Harper, Mark Bosnich, Mark Rudan, Ned Zekic. Slater really stands out like a sore thumb on their coverage.
I think generally sports commentators get to much stick. On some social groups I'm part of, whenever any sports commentator/journalist is mentioned, there will be people who will take a dig and who really hate them. I think part of is that with so many of us being sports fans, we think we know more than them and could do a better job. Anybody who has spent much time with me will know my views on Rebecca Wilson, Ben Ikin, Paul Kent and really any sports journalist at the Tele.
What has people upset wasn't the match commentary, but the pre-game, half-time and post-game coverage. I didn't watch it at the time, but did see some of it in the subsequent media storm. I have since watched it on ABC catch up. Oh dear. If I can compare this to a premier league team it would be Derby County in 2007/08, when they had one win all season and were relegated by March.
The coverage contained three comedians Jules Schiller, Tegan Higginbotham and Steen Raskapolous (son of Peter the former Socceroo and the captain of Australia's World Cup youth team) with sideline commentary from another comedian Aaron Chen. The only person I knew before hand was Schiller for his work with Sam Mac on the football show The B Team. I was talking about that show recently and called it a poor man's Santo, Sam & Ed's.
Schiller has made a passionate defence of the coverage. He is right that the fact this is going to a Senate enquiry is a ridiculous. He also made a strong defence of the other people involved in the coverage. My take is that individually they might have been ok (with the exception of Chen). However, together they didn't work well.
Schiller points out that with this being a friendly the went for a light hearted approach. There is nothing wrong with that, but they got the balance between humour and football wrong. Very, very wrong. On the coverage it takes almost 8 minutes before there is any real mention of the game. It might have worked (or at least wouldn't have been a train wreck) if the coverage would have included a proper football person, who could have bought some football perspective to the game and mixed in some humour. Their pre-game show had no real mention of Liverpool's recently completed season or on the career of Steven Gerrard who was playing. Somebody like Andy Harper would have been perfect, although he might not have contractually available. If not there are a whole host of others who would have been good. Peter Wilkins, Andy Paschilidis, Simon Hill, Stephanie Brantz, Ned Zelic etc could have all bought in some football knowledge with some good presenting skills.
Schiller misses the point that whilst their coverage was trying to be funny, that the people who were watching were doing so to watch a game. He is right that the coverage should have been a celebration of football. That's right of football. There was a place for humour but not at the almost total expense of providing some insight into the teams and the match.
Schiller had his moments on the coverage. When Higginbotham was plugging her upcoming show that features sporting couples, Schiller quipped that he hoped Warnie would be on there. A low point was when he said that Milos Ninkovic was a Smurf who might cause Liverpool some problems, only to be told by Raskopolous that Ninkovic wasn't playing, to which Schiller responded that he wondered why his name wasn't on the team sheet. Also I don't trust a man in whose probably in his 40s and still calls himself Jules. Wikileaks would have zero credibility if it had been led by Jules Assange.
Raskopolous was the standout of the three. He had some funny lines and knew his stuff. Higginbotham obviously isn't a football fan. Her comment at half-time that her hope for the second half was that Sydney would 'kick a goal' underscored that she is an Aussie Rules fan (apparently she has copped a lot of criticism on social media because of this).
Aaron's Chan interviews on the sideline with fans were horrendously bad. I rarely think interviews work well then the interviewer is the one trying to be the star of the interview, unless you are a comedy genius like Norman Gunston. I'm a massive Steven Colbert fan, but I though the only part of his former news show that didn't work well were his interviews, until he switched to a more traditional style. Schiller defends Chen's work by saying he saw him getting texts from the producers of Kyle & Jackie O (he doesn't say what the texts said) as they understand the younger demographic. The producers of Kyle & Jackie O also thought this was a good idea. That Chen's half-time 'interview' with Sydney FC fans was shown over an actual interview with Steven Gerrard was an indictment of what was so wrong with the coverage.
Schiller also points out that the coverage was blighted by technical problems. It was clear from very early on that they were having trouble in hearing. The fact that the ABC decided to use a box that wasn't glassed off from the crowd was staggering and was just asking for trouble. I had no problem in they having the teams on a whiteboard with pictures of the players. However what would have been good was if they actually showed the teams and didn't just discuss a few players.
Part of the reason football fans are so sensitive to things like this, is that they think they get a raw deal from the media. It's seen in the Rebecca Wilson/Daily Telegraph coverage of the banned A League fans. When Channel 9 had the rights to the 2006 World Cup their version of the Footy Show included Shane Warne and Peter Fitzsimons, a man who openly hates football and once put out two books on Australia sports people ('Everybody bar Phar Lap' and 'Everybody including Phar Lap') which failed to profiles of any footballers (the first book includes 37 profiles). The other Footy Shows do not give so much time to sportsman from other codes, including from a person who is openly hostile to that sport.
We shouldn't be wasting tax payer money discussing this coverage in the Senate. However, the coverage was exceptionally poor. If there is any good news to come out of it, it is that football fans will no longer sit quietly whilst served such a second rate coverage.
No comments:
Post a Comment