“Always remember boys, in your dealings with the media,” the president of the Scottish Rugby Union said to the Wallabies and Scottish Test players at the post-Test dinner at Murrayfield in 1988, “it’s like making love to a hedgehog. At the end of the day, yer jus’ one pruk agin’ a thousan’.”
And ain’t that the truth?
This, nevertheless, has been a fortnight when three notable sportspeople have done their best.
The first was Rory McIroy, on the eve of the US Golf Open, skipping a previous press conference.
“It’s just frustration with you guys,” McIroy said. “I have been totally available for the past number of years. I skipped you guys on Thursday. It’s not out of the ordinary as I’ve done it before, but I am doing it a little more often. I feel like I’ve earned the right to do whatever I want to do.”
Frustrated: Rory McIlroy.Credit: Getty Images
In the case of McIlroy, fair enough. With his stature, he really has earned the right. Those pre-match press conferences are about promoting the event, and just the name “McIlroy” is enough to promote any golf event.
Then there was Formula 1 Driver Max Verstappen, who also didn’t like some of the questions he was getting from journalists about being just one penalty point away from a race ban.
“I don’t need to hear it again,” he snapped. “You were speaking about it on Thursday. It’s such a waste of time. It’s very childish. So, that’s why I also don’t want to say too much because it’s really annoying, this world that we live in.”
And the third one of course, was Queensland coach Billy Slater reacting savagely to being called a “grub” by Triple M’s Aaron Woods. Clearly wounded to the quick, Slater reacted emotionally: “When you hold a position in the media or in our game, I feel that’s a privilege. And with that privilege comes a responsibility. I sit in that position most weeks and you amplify your voice to millions of people. You’re not talking to your mates in the pub.”
With him so far.
Billy Slater had a rollercoaster week as Queensland coach.Credit: Getty Images
He went on.
“When you degrade someone personally in a derogatory manner, you probably don’t deserve one of those privileged positions that we’re all in. You don’t know what people are going through. And although I might be able to handle it, the next person mightn’t be. Maybe our last coach didn’t.”
Slater was rightly called to order for bringing the late Paul Green into it – his suicide was to do with CTE, not coaching pressure and the Maroons coach profusely apologised – but he definitely has a point. Woods’ remarks might have cut it on the football field under the banner of “sledging”, when they were both footballers – but as media commentary in the lead-up to an Origin match, when it is nothing all to do with Slater’s coaching, and just outright nasty, it was ill-considered at best.
Time may be up for another concussion-prone Rooster
And when speaking of CTE, as too often happens in league, we have to speak of the Roosters. The latest in a whole string of their players to raise serious concerns about the damage they have suffered through an alarming series of concussions is Victor Radley.
Victor Radley is taken from the field for a head injury assessment in round 13 against the Raiders.Credit: Getty Images
But we’ll get to him. It has always amazed me over the years, how often the coverage of Roosters and concussion includes an almost mantra-like assertion to the effect that the club has a great track record of looking after its players in this field. The least I can say, legally carefully, is that I haven’t noticed it.
In this very spot, I have ranted, many times, about what I have seen as too cavalier an approach in keeping players playing when it seems obvious to everyone but them that the time has come – for their own safety and future – to get them off the field, for good. Of course, we don’t know specifics about medical advice or care given to players, but I have been howled down for saying just that, at length, over all of Boyd Cordner, Jake Friend, Luke Keary, James Tedesco and Radley himself.
Cordner and Friend finally pulled the pin mid-season in 2021 and retired after the number of concussions they were suffering became simply ludicrous – Cordner, four times in his final 10 games – while Keary left the Roosters a year before his contract was up, but continued his career in Super League with Catalans. Tedesco seems OK for the moment, but after three concussions in his first decade of playing, then went through a spate of seven concussions in three years.
Radley is a great and courageous player. He is too great and courageous for his own safety. Call it.
But while still on contract with the Roosters, Keary made strong remarks in 2022 about the damage done by concussion at training.
“We should have had less contact five years ago,” Keary said. “I don’t know why it has taken this long. They do it in the NFL. I don’t know how we haven’t done those studies and tests … I just don’t know how it hasn’t happened. I speak to some of these docs and it’s the repeated hits you get at training. The constant whiplash … things like that. For that not to be controlled, it’s just weird.”
Indeed.
Which brings us to Victor Radley. I have been ranting for three years about the dangers of him continuing to play. Back in August 2022, you might recall, Radley was so severely concussed in a tackle gone wrong against the Storm his eyes rolled back and his whole body convulsed before our very eyes – the most upsetting manifestation of concussion many of us had seen, up to and including in boxing.
None of which prevented Roosters coach Trent Robinson opining on Nine News a few days later: “Based on his symptoms, he could have played this week because he didn’t have any. But as we know there must be things [about concussions] that we don’t know completely just through symptoms. So therefore he’s not playing this week.”
I wrote: “Seriously, Trent? ‘Didn’t have any’? He was convulsing! And yes, you no doubt meant ‘no symptoms since in the ensuing week’, but I put it to you: in the wake of the worst symptoms at the time seen in living memory, and on a player who has had previous concussion issues, even saying ‘he could have played this week’ – and even with your qualifying remarks – bespeaks a culture that all of the football codes must leave behind forever.”
But here we are.
Three weeks ago, on the occasion of Radley’s 150th game for the Roosters, the club put out an Instagram post showing Radley holding up a t-shirt, on which it was displayed: “150 GAMES, 38 CONCUSSIONS, 26 SEND OFFS, 6852 BEERS.”
The image of Radley that (briefly) appeared on the Sydney Roosters’ Instagram account.Credit: NRL Photos
Hilarious. No, really. And it bespeaks a club that for all the carry-on about the seriousness of concussion, do not appear to display that.
Just the following week, Radley had such a sickening tackle with Canberra’s Ata Mariota that it was obvious to the TV commentators he would not be back on, and should not be back on.
No problem though, from the Roosters. Radley was picked again the next week. Last week, another clash, this time when his head came into contact with the thigh of the Knights’ Fletcher Hunt. This time, mercifully, he failed the HIA and has been stood down for 11 days.
On the Sunday Footy Show both Andrew Johns and Darren Lockyer intimated that the time has come for Radley, without directly saying so.
“First thing first is the health of the player,” Johns said. “And you have to take it out of the player’s hands, especially someone like Victor.”
Lockyer agreed, noting that, “The concerning part is that it wasn’t really a big bump, so when players are getting … concussions when it’s not a heavy knock, then that’s alarming. He needs a little spell I think … you’ve got to take it out of Victor’s hands because he’ll want to play every week.”
Guys, can’t we say it out loud?
If it is not obvious now that Radley needs to retire, what does it take? Continue the damage, as happened with Cordner and Friend until they had to pull the pin mid-season? Or bow to the bleeding obvious, and bloody well call it?
Radley is a great and courageous player. He is too great and courageous for his own safety. Call it.
As to the Roosters, I cannot, for the life of me, understand why – for a club that is said to display such great care of concussed players – their roll call of players who have retired, and should retire, on concussion issues is so long.
Fire at will. See if I care.
Kudos to Torvill and Dean – even if they forgot me
The two most famous ice skaters in the history of the world, Torvill and Dean, are appearing in Australia for the last time, this weekend in Sydney, at Qudos Arena. For the occasion, I interviewed them for the Sun-Herald, to be published on Sunday, and reminded them of when I danced with them, while shooting a story for Channel Nine’s Today Show in the early ’90s.
Elegance on ice … Peter FitzSimons displays his skillsCredit: Nine
Fitz: “Do you two happen to remember it?”
Torvill [uncertainly]: “No, I don’t remember it. Because we’ve had a number of occasions, Peter, where we’ve skated around with a presenter, a program or a journalist …”
Fitz [brightly]: “I was the one where you looked at me, Jane, with the expression of ‘How has it come to this, I am on the ice with a rhinoceros … ?’”
Sigh. I found her subsequent answer most disappointing, but congratulate them on such a great career, 50 years strong!
What They Said
Queensland Origin captain, Cameron Munster, who played a blinder: “We needed to turn up for our coach tonight and we f—ing did.”
More Munster: “We had that mentality like the ’95 ‘nobodies’ team and just kept working and turning up for each other. And we ended up getting the chocolates. But in game three, we need to be a lot better in certain positions. We can’t afford to give them piggybacks.”
Laurie Daley on the 8-0 penalty count against NSW: “I can’t tell you what I honestly think, so I won’t say anything.”
Paul Vautin on why he was glad not to be on the commentary team of Origin for the first time in over three decades: “After 33 years, I thought last year was the perfect time to finish up. I didn’t want to turn into the crusty old bloke on the panel who’s always talking about how it was better in the ’80s – and it was better in the ’80s.”
Journeyman come good JJ Spaun, after winning the US Golf Open: “It felt like, as bad as things were going, I just still tried to just commit to every shot. I tried to just continue to dig deep. I’ve been doing it my whole life.” His was a phenomenal performance. EVERYTHING was going against him, and he simply never wavered.
Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise on if he felt sorry for Auckland City after beating them 10-0 at the Club World Cup: “No.”
Kevin Pietersen stoking the Ashes flames: “I’ve not seen anything here that would worry me. Not seen it at all. I don’t know what has happened to Marnus the last couple of years. He just won’t hit the ball. It’s very strange to see.”
Herald reader, writing in the comments section on the only Herald expert who correctly predicted the winner of Origin II: “Kudos to the 11th expert, Roy Ward. Roy not only tipped the result, the margin and the Man of the Match correctly. He almost got the score when he picked 22-20. He was last on the list. Perhaps top billing is more appropriate next time.”
Wallaby Harry Potter on being recently made to watch all eight Harry Potter movies: “It’s a pretty funny name really, it’s amazing how people will make jokes. I think, ‘God, that joke’s been made about 30 times’, as I’m sure you hear with Snape jokes as well. I think Harry Potter is probably a better name than Ron Weasley.”
What’s in a name: Harry Potter in action for the Wallabies.Credit: Getty Images
Wayne Bennet when asked about some comments by Phil Gould ahead of the Souths-Bulldogs match: “If you’re buying anything that Phil says, you could finish up down any path.” My point, precisely.
Manly CEO Tony Mestrov on Manly coach Anthony Seibold, after a run of Sea-Eagles’ losses: “At the moment, Seibs is safe at this point. Seibs understands as well as I do, it’s all about winning games. Seibs is safe at this point.” Gone to Gowings, gone a million.
Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis on breaking the world record in his home town stadium: “I feel full to the brim right now. The first time I jumped in this stadium when I was 11 years old, it was rainy, cold and I jumped right under four metres. It was quite high for how young I was. They etch the names of world record holders here. It’ll be one of the greatest memories for me, I think, in my career.”
Team of the Week
Queensland. The Maroon Road Runner ran down NSW in Origin II and takes it to a decider in ol’ Sydney Town.
Maverick McNealy. Look, it’s not as good a name for a sports star as Bradman Best, or the rising Wallaby back-rower Nick Champion de Crespigny, but the 11th-ranked player in world golf has a killer moniker.
South Africa. World Test Cricket champions. At a time when many thought Test cricket was dead or dying in South Africa, they bloody well showed us.
JJ Spaun. First US Open winner to start his final round with three consecutive bogies.
Number of the Week
300. That’s how many Test wickets Australian captain and fast bowler Pat Cummins has taken in his carer, so far – the magic number coming up after he took six wickets in South Africa’s first innings of the World Test Championship final. He is the eighth Australian man to reach the milestone.
