Thought of the Day: Honesty in Sports-people? Meh

A consistent criticism of modern sports-people is that the media training that they receive has made them predictable and dull, witness how often you will hear "a good effort from the boys today", "we're taking it one game/week/minute/ at a time" and "always good to get a win / take the points".

While this makes a lot of sense in that most sports are rather binary in that their results can only be wins or losses, or in the case of cricket: ties and draws as well. This doesnt leave a lot of space for reflection or hypothesising on results and what could be done differently.

There are, however, games within games that do draw much commentary; perhaps often for the sake of it.

The recent 3 week suspension of Melbourne Football Club player, Jack Trengrove, for tackling an opposition player was one such 'game within a game' that drew considerable commentary from Trengroves team-mates on Twitter.

The majority of this commentary was hardly an insightful reflection on the state of the modern game & the inconsistencies of the bodies that govern it, James Frawleys comment about interchanging Football for Netball being a prime example, the commentary still raised the ire of the league for speaking out of line.

While the commentary was hardly controversial, I found it unusual that the league would act to censure the players for comments that condemned the players themselves more than image of the league.

Is this not setting a bad precedent? If players are restricted from developing the ability to develop coherent arguments or statements they could end up like Shane Warne, who referred to a century scored by one of his team-mates in a (losing) IPL game: "the best he has seen".

A dire future for sporting commentary, indeed.

image courtesy of news.com.au