Stand by, sports fans. I can feel a thousand columns coming on, not all of them written by me.
In England on Thursday an agreement was struck whereby Premier League clubs have voluntarily agreed to do away with “match day front-of-shirt sponsorship deals with gambling companies from the summer of 2026”.
Bravo, of course.
Of all the sporting comps in the United Kingdom awash in the gambling logos, the Premier League are simply the first one to respond to a campaign led by a mob called The Big Step who recognise the devastation done by gambling and are holding sport accountable for their role in promoting it.
“Although this outcome isn’t perfect, it’s a huge step,” the key organiser James Grimes told the media of the Premier League’s move. “It’s a significant acceptance of the harm caused by gambling sponsorship. No gambling ads are seen more than those on Premier League shirts, worn by billions around the world.”
The rain in Spain already fell mainly on the plain in 2020 when their government banned such gambling sponsorships outright, seeing six soccer clubs suddenly stripped of their shirt sponsors and tens of millions of Euros of revenue.
Newcastle and Leeds are among eight Premier League clubs with betting companies as front-of-shirt sponsors.Credit: PA
The significance for Australia is that such sane policy will also soon come here. What the UK and Spain has faced and are getting on top of is precisely what we face, and must get on top of. As witness the current Federal parliamentary inquiry into sports sponsorship, people are jack of it and want action taken. It will be taken.
The ABC recently reported that in Australia: “21 wagering partnerships were recorded across 14 major sports midway through last year, according to the Swinburne University of Technology research.” In deepest is rugby league, with no fewer than “nine jersey sponsorships with gambling or casino partners in 2023”.
It will take a while to get traction and see legislation in place, but the news out of the UK is merely a harbinger of what is to come here. The same dynamic that did away with tobacco sponsorship will knock out gambling sponsorship – the damage done is too devastating, and the community won’t cop it.
When the government moves on it, there will be screams from those sports most heavily reliant on the gambling industry’s filthy teat; there will be shaking fists and outcries about “Woke-ism gone mad”, but that is just a bonus.
It’s coming, and it’s about bloody time.
Enough of the clichéd celebrations
Your humble correspondent had a rant mid-week about the tired tropes of sport, those rhythms of sports, sports commentary and analysis so oft repeated we groan from the sheer fatigue, from the sheer soul-sapping exhaustion of seeing them, hearing them, watching them once more.
My special bug-bear is the commentary trope, always gravely intoned after one football team scores twice in the first few minutes, and the cameras focus on the other team standing disconsolately under their own posts: “That’s not the start they were looking for.”
Do tell, champion? Doya think? Actually, I think you’ll find it was always in their game plan!
Anyhoo, after going through 20 or so others, many readers chipped me for the ones I missed, including “We’ll learn from this,” from every losing team in every post-match interview ever, and “We’re taking it one week at a time”.
Most interesting though was the identification of visual tropes, which is a particularly interesting and rarely examined field. The most tedious centred on scoring celebrations.
1. The bloke goes over in the corner and immediately, and theatrically, kisses the bandage on his wrist on which words are written or symbols drawn before pointing to the heavens above.
Yup, we get it. Your god has done this for you – presumably over-ruling the equally pious on the other team – and sent the try your way. You are but a humble vassal for His sporting passions, and you are showing thanks for His munificence. Now, this is, of course your perfect right, never mind the fact it appears to be on the vainglorious side of things to be saying to the world, “Hey everyone, God picked ME!” For variation, do you think, now and then, you might offer a silent prayer?
2. After the said try is scored, we get the acrobatic pile-on. The scorer stands there to be immediately embraced by those nearest. Late-comers charging from as far away as 30 metres then jump on top while joyously slapping down on the scorer’s head. The whole thing starts to look like a human pyramid at the circus which has just collapsed.
Gentlemen, again, we get it. You’re happy. Good on you. Could we just get some variation? Maybe some hand-shakes, sometimes? Perhaps a simple, “Onya, mate, good try”. Just once, could someone on the team be quite pleased, rather than so overjoyed they have to run from afar and jump on? And when you are the top team, and your bloke has just scored the sixth try for your side late in the game against the West Tigers, to go to a 35-point lead, do you think just a wink and a warm look might do? The endless repetition makes it look contrived, not altogether real.
3. In soccer, we often see one player swerving in a cross from 30 metres away with such devastating accuracy that it curls around the defenders, and whistles Waltzing Matilda before dropping onto the swinging right foot of the centre-forward who puts it into the net for a GOOOOOAL! Ever and always though, the scorer runs away from the genius who supplied the pass, so the cameras can soak him up from every angle, before he falls to his knees at which the first to him knocks him over, and they do a flatter version of the collapsed human pyramid above.
Last one on is the forgotten genius who was most responsible for the goal. For variation, just once, could the scorer rush to the crosser, knock him over, and pyramid that way? (Editor, please note, this is first time in history of the universe, that “pyramid” has been used as an active verb. I know, I know. But I like it).
Jack Dyer… the original Rex Mossop?
Meantime, in another online discussion this week, Melburnians sent me some of the more famous lines of their famed commentator Jack Dyer, the former Richmond hero with the moniker of “Captain Blood”. As near as I can work out, he was their version of Rex Mossop – a famed player turned commentator with a particular aptitude for insight presented in a very unique style of English.
Richmond legend Jack Dyer.Credit: Julian Kingma
Here are some of his most beloved all-time greats:
“Mark Lee’s long arms reaching up like giant testicles.”
“I once kicked a goal from such a tight angle that the ball got stuck between the goal posts.”
“I hate Collingwood so much I can’t even watch black and white TV.”
“Bamblett made a great debut today and an even better one last week.”
“My wife and I had a wonderful time on the French Riverina.”
“An Essendon supporter is a Collingwood supporter who can read and write.”
“Fitzroy has copulated to the opposition.”
On Carlton’s Peter Bosustow: “He’s a good ordinary footballer.”
“Things aren’t the same now there are five teams in the four.”
My favourite, though? When phoned by an intrepid reporter for a quote after Carlton great Bob Chitty had died a few days earlier, Captain Blood glibly replied: “Yeah, bit of bad luck for Bob …” Indeed!
In sum, while I always thought that our Rex Mossop was a one-off, the Victorians might have invented him first.
Breaking down the stigma
If you didn’t read my colleague Andrew Webster’s piece on Angus Crichton and his bipolar issues on Friday, may I recommend that you do? It was a stand-out for the fact that Webster drew on his own experience of suffering bipolar and gave insights completely beyond the rest of us to see. It was a brave piece that made us understand the issue better, and good on him.
And I particularly loved this comment from a reader, noting the beneficial effects of such open discussion.
“Thank you, from my heart,” a reader wrote, “for being so open. I grew up in rural New Zealand in the 1980s and ’90s with a parent with bipolar disorder. It was hellish for lots of reasons, but some of the worst parts were being ostracised; social outcasts, the family no one would talk to because of my ‘psycho’ parent. When the All Black John Kirwan took out advertisements to talk about his depression in the early 2000s, and then Mike King the comedian followed suit, it was absolutely life changing. I am eternally grateful for people like you brave enough to share and educate and break down the stigma. Thanks again.”
And so say all of us.
What They Said
Cody Walker on Rabbitohs teammate Jai Arrow: “He’s a dope … but we love him.”
Spanish golfer Jon Rahm on winning the Masters: “For me to get it done on the 40th anniversary of his [Seve Ballesteros’] win, his birthday, on Easter Sunday, it’s incredibly meaningful.”
Tweet from Dean Straka: “Brooks Koepka plays in a league with Greg Norman as its CEO and some of you are still surprised he blew a multi-shot 54 hole lead at Augusta.”
Sydney Swifts coach Briony Akle to her charges in a huddle, midway through a match against the West Coast Fever: “Listen, their number one thing is to try to bash the shit out of you. So what do we do about that? Have two options. Get off the body, change direction.” The third option, of course, is put out the “Cattledog!” call, but I don’t think they do that in netball.
Boris Becker on his time in prison for tax evasion: “I was surrounded by murderers, by drug dealers, by rapists, by people smugglers, by dangerous criminals. You fight every day for survival. Quickly you have to surround yourself with the tough boys, as I would call it, because you need protection.”
Martin Taupau on his tackle-gone-wrong that hurt the Raiders’ Jordan Rapana: “Obviously your arms are higher than your knees. What would you expect me to do? Make a tackle upside down? Honestly, I’m baffled. I don’t know what to do. Do you want me to dive head first into the ground and try and tackle the ankles?”
West Tigers Chair Lee Hagipantelis: “At the end of the day, I get it; there is a perception that we lurch from one inept decision to another. But that’s just not the case.” Maybe. But, prima facie, at this stage, can we agree that the Sheens/Marshall coaching duo is not looking like a masterstroke?
It’s been a rough season for the Wests Tigers.Credit: NRL Photos
64-year-old Larry Mize, who famously defeated Greg Norman to win the 1987 Masters on what it meant: “I don’t think it changed me as a person, but other than that, it changed a lot. It gave me and my family opportunities to do plenty of things we wouldn’t have otherwise done. The recognition I’ve gotten, I mean, it’s amazing to win the Masters and then to do it in that fashion kind of just enhanced it. It’s hard to put into words. It’s been a tremendous blessing, and it has changed my life for the better, no doubt.” All that, and he is renowned for his integrity and decency, too.
Football Australia chief executive James Johnson: “Football is the most popular sport in NSW, with more than five times the number of players than rugby league. Yet, rugby league continues to receive multiples of government facilities funding compared to football. With a change of government, we are calling for a change in approach to facilities in NSW, so that the grassroots football community can have the facilities they need to support their efforts.” Seems fair?
Graham Arnold: “The Japanese have now got a training facility in Düsseldorf, where they’re going to be closer to their players in Europe, and drag all their junior national teams across to Düsseldorf to play European teams. We don’t even have a home of football in our own country. And yet the other night on TV, you’ve got the NRL banging on that they need more resources for stadiums, for training facilities.”
MS Dhoni on his 200th game as captain in the IPL: “I am not big on milestones. How does it matter if it is 199 or 200. It is a compliment to play 200 games. Thanks to Almighty. But as I said nothing special.” Might the Almighty regard him as an ingrate for saying that His gift is nothing special? Discuss.
Team of the Week
Sam Kerr and the Matildas defeat England.Credit: John Shakespeare
Matildas. Beat England 2-0 in a friendly, snapping the 30-match unbeaten run of the Pommesses, over the last two years.
Bella Pasquali and Ryan Tarrant. Won the Stawell Gifts.
Josh Giddey. The Australian basketballer turned it on for his own Oklahoma Thunder against the New Orleans Pelicans, in his post-season debut, scoring 31 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds.
St Kilda. Only AFL team with a perfect four wins from four starts.
Melbourne. Will become the first city in the Southern Hemisphere to host the National Hockey League with the LA Kings and Arizona Coyotes to square off in two pre-season games in September 2023.
Twitter: @Peter_Fitz
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