From brilliant to boring and back again
“We’ve got to focus on what we can control. We couldn’t control Franklin today,” vanquished North Melbourne coach Brad Scott after his side was humiliated by Lance Franklin's 13-goal haul on Saturday.
In my head it was perfect. In reality, less so.
It could have gone like this:
SW: Lance, we’ve been told by your coach it was a team effort today, but even the AFL Record (hold’s copy up for LF to see) is calling it National Buddy Day. Can you pinpoint a moment when you realised things were going your way?LF: Yeah, mate, when I slammed the third one into the river outside the ground and then elbowed Scott Thompson in the throat as I toe-poked my seventh just after half-time I thought I was good to go. When I hit a patch like that I kind of know no-one’s got a hope of stopping me. Like Clarko said, the midfielders were good getting the ball in long, but I was the one presenting all day, taking grabs, feeding on loose ball, too. I’d never even kicked 10 before today and now I’ve kicked 13 in a match, so, to be honest with you, I’m feeling like it could be National Buddy Day every week from here until October
In actual fact, it went like this:
SW: Lance, we’ve been told by your coach it was a team effort today, but even the AFL Record (hold’s copy up for LF to see) is calling it National Buddy Day. Can you pinpoint a moment when you realised things were going your way?(LF looks closely at the advertisement for National Buddy Day held before him. Presumably, crickets chirp and carousel music strikes up inside the cavernous recesses of his skull as the big forward tries to figure out what he’s looking at. After several long seconds he smiles and seems ready to provide an answer. Still grinning, a second thought enters his head and really creates havoc. He wants to treat the question with good humour and provide the assembled media scrum of five dour hacks with something spicy with which to enliven their copy. But… he just can’t bring himself to do it and whether it’s nature or nurture that stops him is entirely debatable.)LF: Ummmm, nah, mate. I was just playing footy out there.
By the Power of Grayskull, Buddy, you’ve just played like He-Man and now you’re answering like Dolph Lundgren, too. What the hell is wrong with you?
Probably nothing given the tight leash athletes are kept on by media managers across the codes, but in an age where a reported 2000+ people are employed to provide coverage of the AFL in various formats across the country it sucks harder than North Melbourne’s efforts to curtail Franklin in Launceston on Saturday that practically no-one is giving anything ‘real’ to the press.
In all honesty, Franklin isn’t the perfect case study in this instance – he’s hardly known as an orator of note.
And on Saturday afternoon he was more-or-less warned off by the gruff responses of his coach, Alistair Clarkson, who seemed unwilling to celebrate the Hawks’ 115-point defeat of North Melbourne given their capitulation to Richmond the previous week was still an open sore of sorts.
From the off in the post-match press conference (held in a room the size of a broom closet at Aurora Stadium), Clarkson had set the tone.
“It’s not about Lance, it’s about our team,” he said, racking up his first footy cliché in a matter of moments.
He quickly added two more.
“We thought it was going to be an arm wrestle, particularly when the drizzle came down earlier today,” Clarkson said. “We thought it would be 10 goals each or along those lines. You just don’t predict those results.”
And another three.
“As a coaching staff and playing group we took stock throughout the course of the week and wanted to get to the basics of how we play our footy and that was tough and hard and irrespective of the final result for us it was more about our effort and attitude this week.”
That made it six well-worn and entirely boring clichés in approximately four sentences.
There would be no speculation as to the magnitude of Franklin’s performance in comparison to former Hawthorn greats like Dunstall or Hudson. No unnecessary fluffing.
And there could be little doubt that Franklin had been told to toe the line before being ushered in to the room.
Such was the utterly routine nature of Franklin’s performance for the press following his utterly astounding performance on the field the whole thing may be best summed up by this one grab.
“It was just good to get the win today. It was a great team effort. We knew they were going to be good today. We got the four points and we move on to Port Adelaide next week.”
That, folks, is text book.
But not text book like the leading and marking and kicking and dodging and tackling and general dominance that had underlined Franklin’s day out.
It was text book for an athlete unwilling – or unable – to come up with even a modicum of original thought, instead stringing together a succession of formulaic inanities that serve to tell the reader nothing.
NOTHING.
Is it any wonder people are sick and tired of seeing, hearing and reading the same old tripe and speculation from those in the media who dedicate their day’s work to the AFL?
As it happened, it was up to North Melbourne coach Brad Scott to talk up Franklin’s achievement – giving the press a few tasty lines to help dress up the day’s big story.
About Buddy time!
“Clearly we were on the wrong end of an absolute superstar at the top of his game,” Scott bleated, club powerbrokers James Brayshaw, Eugene Arocca and Donald McDonald watching on from the back of the room, perhaps ominously for Scott given that such appearances at a post-match press conference may be considered uncommon at best.
It was a ‘bitterly disappointing’ day for the Roos, an ‘aberration’ and one the coach says they’re committed to overcoming.
“We’ve got two weeks to sort it out because our season is not over,” he continued. “We’re up for the challenge.”
Notice anything here? Yep, we’ve all got a window seat on an express service to Clichéville. Please, mind the gap.
“You run out of superlatives… it was one of the best individual displays I’ve seen in my time in footy,” Scott said, going on to namedrop Dunstall, Lockett and Ablett in fully lauding Franklin’s day out. “He’s a unique player and he deserves all the plaudits that come his way.”
Lovely stuff, really lovely stuff, but only if you want to write a fluffy 500 words repeating what has already been said plenty of times on TV and radio.
If only it had run a little more like this:
“To be honest, we got our pants pulled down in front of the football world today. We got our pants pulled down and then we got dragged backwards through a cactus patch and as it happened the biggest prick out there really took it upon himself to shaft us.”“Franklin was quality, but when we’ve got two spare defenders back and he’s still finding space on the lead I kind of think maybe there’s a bigger problem than just Buddy having a day out.”“They really smashed us today, but that shouldn’t be a big surprise because Port Adelaide did the same thing a fortnight ago. Port freakin’ Adelaide. Now, there’s a form indicator if you need one.”“As you can see, the guys in the back in the black trench coats and club ties are big wigs on the committee and they’re here breathing down my neck because the 22 blokes I put out there today turned up their toes and were nowhere near the required standard. I have got an uppercut waiting for each and every one of them and will be taking great pleasure in delivering it during the week.”
Obviously too good to be true. Almost like Franklin's 13.
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