Footy fans might be surprised to learn of a parallel world: at the top of the ladder sits an imperious Port Adelaide; at its foot lie the hapless Dogs. Gold Coast make the eight, the superior of the newest expansion teams. West Coast creeps into the eight too, but aren’t fancied beyond the first round. There will be no finals for the Crows.
In this strange world, Port coach Ken Hinkley is spoken of as likely heir to Alastair Clarkson’s stature; his young team celebrated for a manic but well organised ferocity. At the other end, Robert Murphy surveys a dismal season and contemplates retirement.
This parallel universe is made from the predictions of experts. Lots of them. I went back and studied about 60 professional prognostications made before the season. Almost all were wildly wrong. Full disclosure: their inaccuracy mirrored my own.
I wondered: is footy inherently unpredictable? Or is there something seriously dysfunctional about our sport pundits?
In February, Geoff Lemon excoriated the chumminess of cricket commentary – at least that offered by its commercial home, Channel 9. Pundits exist in their own parallel world, in which ex-players abandon analysis in favour of banal anecdotes and circle-jerkery.
Mark Taylor and Shane Warne both possess formidable cricket minds, which are all too easily hijacked by a desire to simulate the locker rooms of yore. Warne especially seems gripped by a desire to please, and a need to reflect and reinforce an image of the lascivious lad – our brilliant bogan.
In December last year, Warne was in the commentary box for the Australia v India test at the Gabba. Mitchell Starc was suffering a lackadaisical spell, but it wasn’t just an errant line and length that Warne noticed. Starc’s shoulders were slumped, there were no cheeky or inspecting stares at his opposition. No outward sign Starc knew he could, or would, be better.
Warne was appalled. In his own career, regardless of what the ball was doing, Warne’s demeanour rarely suggested anything other than a conviction of his own brilliance. “He has to change his body language,” Warne said of Starc. “It needs to be stronger. He looks a bit soft … He needs a better presence.”
It was also a fascinating insight into Warne’s conception of the game as partial confidence trick. Few called Warne’s bluff in his day – his swagger, his belief in his own genius, was as beguiling as his wrong ‘un.
Australia’s coach, Darren Lehmann, wasn’t impressed. “Soft? He used those words?” Lehmann asked a reporter. “That’s very harsh … I will take it up with Shane myself.”
The conflict of interest was clear. To the Australian cricket team his comments were treachery; to the fan it was cherished insight. But fraternity – the prevailing logic of sports commentary – forced Warne’s censure.
Fraternity is an even stronger force in Aussie rules footy – unsurprising given the game is unique to Australia and concentrated within one state. There are no foreign commentators, no international touring sides. It is intensely insular. Perhaps only London can rival Melbourne’s compression of teams. Sydney, in the NRL, might be another contender.
For some time now, the ratio of journalists to former players has overwhelmingly favoured the latter on televised footy matches. There is no question about whether ex-players are appropriate commentators – of course, is the simple answer. Yet all season we watch grinning man-children congratulate their peers for “tough efforts” or commiserate with them for “disappointing efforts”. The distant fan is left watching a private high-school reunion.
If you’ve had the misfortune to read a Wayne Carey column you may also think upon missed opportunities. The public resurrection of a man with a history like Carey’s would, you might expect, be for his powers of perception. But he has none. The fan comes no closer to the game through The King. He reminds me of countless interviews I’ve done with musicians – often the worst people at articulating their talents or those of their peers.
If our commentators weren’t so obsessed with affecting authority – expensive suits, exaggerated nods of the head – they could spend a bit more time actually demonstrating it. You know, by sharing insight. Rather, it feels like the viewer is buying shares in the commentator’s sense of exceptionalism – we’re pathetically cheering their own special club while being locked outside.
If there wasn’t a closed circuit of received wisdom and fraternity, our commentators might better have seen the collapse of culture at Gold Coast, or articulated the special anxieties at Essendon. They might’ve seen the burgeoning talent of the Bulldogs, or explained to us how a second-year coach, Adam Simpson, has taken his side from ninth to a grand final in one season.
But the fog of interminable “analysis” creates structural amnesia. Our news sites are a never-ending blossom of the stuff. There is always another slew of commentary to cover yesterday’s errors. We are always reaching forward, hungry for content and indifferent to error. Experts can always revise, always write one more column, always make a self-deprecating comment about the frailty of predication in lieu of considering why they were wrong.
For television’s commentators, there is also the tension between respect and sycophancy; objectivity and privileged access. Warne found that out. These are difficult things to reconcile – impossible, sometimes – but our networks show scant interest in trying. The fans suffer for it.
