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Where to for quality Rugby journalism???

qwerty51

Stirling Mortlock (74)
GR:
Former Wallabies assistant coach and Test representative Jim Williams has joined the Greater Sydney Rams for this year's National Rugby Championship. Williams replaces Brian Melrose in the role and joins Waratah Jed Holloway as a new face around the clubhouse. Holloway joins NSW teammate Hugh Roach at the club, as well as Chris Alcock (Force), Guy Millar (Force), Jed Gillespie (Rebels) and Steve Mafi (Force). This could be a big year for the NRC, as it will be the only rugby played domestically during the World Cup. The new SANZAR broadcast deal has shored up the competition's future until at least 2020, and a concerted publicity campaign - and some good rugby - could be the third-tier competition's best chance of thriving.

Bit of a hint GR, Holloway was at the club last year and was the captain.
 

Lindommer

Simon Poidevin (60)
Staff member
Didja spot the piece earlier in the week from GeeRob where she had the Brumbies playing on Friday night giving the Tahs 24 hours' notice of what result's required? Check here: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/w...ash-with-queensland-reds-20150609-ghk16d.html That's simply sloppy journalism and/or incompetent fact-checking by the sub-editors. Spiro's starting to make a lot of similar minor mistakes in his dotage.

"third-tier competition", to be fair to GR that's a term we all use in the context of the rugby vernacular. "National Rugby Championship" was written earlier in the article, it's good writing not to use the same words more than once in the whole piece.
 

Quick Hands

David Wilson (68)
Didja spot the piece earlier in the week from GeeRob where she had the Brumbies playing on Friday night giving the Tahs 24 hours' notice of what result's required? Check here: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/w...ash-with-queensland-reds-20150609-ghk16d.html That's simply sloppy journalism and/or incompetent fact-checking by the sub-editors. Spiro's starting to make a lot of similar minor mistakes in his dotage.

"third-tier competition", to be fair to GR that's a term we all use in the context of the rugby vernacular. "National Rugby Championship" was written earlier in the article, it's good writing not to use the same words more than once in the whole piece.

But the SMH don't refer to any other level of any other sport as 1st, 2nd, 3rd tier - so why with rugby?
 

Hawko

Tony Shaw (54)
The title of the thread is "Where to for quality rugby journalism?" so some of you may think that this next note is not in the right place.

Steve Samuelson announced this week in The Breakdown SMH video show that this will be his last show. Don't know if GeeRob will replace him or what is happening. He was a nice enough bloke but his rugby depth was wafer thin and I didn't learn much from watching even after Grumbles was pitch-forked out.

The show itself is cringeworthy amateur so maybe SMH are just going to can it.
 
D

daz

Guest
Don't know if GeeRob will replace him or what is happening. He was a nice enough bloke but his rugby depth was wafer thin and I didn't learn much from watching even after Grumbles was pitch-forked out.

After seeing GeeRob on Rugby HQ, I suspect my rugby knowledge is greater than hers, and that is not saying much.

She is just a tabloid journo, and should stick to the human interest/mud-slinging-with-immunity stuff.

Having said that, she is still better than Grumbles.
 

BarneySF

Bob Loudon (25)
http://www.foxsports.com.au/rugby/b...s/news-story/8a13025635d002112ec1c9395a518e9d

Such bullshit - when Hansen says that the Wallabies are "kidding themselves", it's in response to the notion that they are not respecting them and expect nothing form them etc. This "War of Words" is hardly that.

It's just like when one of the Aussie players says something like, "Yeah we really are feeling good at training and our systems are coming together" which is then translated into, "Wallabies Confident in Destroying the All Blacks - Every Single Player Intends to Dance on the Grave of Their Opposite Number."

I know they have to sell papers/eyeballs and all that....
 

fatprop

George Gregan (70)
Staff member
After seeing GeeRob on Rugby HQ, I suspect my rugby knowledge is greater than hers, and that is not saying much.

She is just a tabloid journo, and should stick to the human interest/mud-slinging-with-immunity stuff.

Having said that, she is still better than Grumbles.


doesn't she look uncomfortable using the player's nicknames
 

amirite

Chilla Wilson (44)
doesn't she look uncomfortable using the player's nicknames

I feel like there is nothing wrong with GeeRob filling the need she does (super basic, paint-by-numbers rugby journalism). As long as there's two sides to the coin and someone writes insightful pieces.
 

Braveheart81

Will Genia (78)
Staff member
Aside from Paul Cully (whose role is clearly to write opinion pieces in most instances), most of the rugby journalists don't really try and write anything with particularly deep analysis or insight. It just isn't part of their remit.

I think GeeRob gets cited as being light on her rugby knowledge because she is a woman. I think she holds her own quite comfortably with the other mainstream media rugby journalists.
 

GTPIH

Ted Thorn (20)
Hidden behind the paywall. Can anyone copy and paste the article?

SPOTTED: Part-time Wallabies superstar Israel Folau in the birdcage at Flemington on Saturday afternoon with his fiancee Maria Tutaia. Both looking a million dollars while rubbing shoulders with celebrities and racing’s elite. They were all there — Jennifer Hawkins, Karl Stefanovic with his new missus, Usain Bolt, Ian Thorpe, Gary Ablett, Melissa George, Kate Waterhouse and TV stars. A lifetime of ‘Spotteds’. French champagne, cocktails, premium wine and boutique beer to wash down the free-range chicken, canapés, lobster, prawns, smoked salmon and Tasmanian cheeses. Meanwhile the Wallabies are in Japan on their way to Europe for the Spring tour. Yet Folau gets a leave pass despite the fact he’s far and away the highest paid player in the game. BUZZ II: Highlights and Lowlights Maria Tutaia and Israel Folau pose at The Park on AAMI Victoria Derby Day at Flemington Racecourse. It says a lot about Australian rugby and why the game is in such a poor state. Could you imagine Folau’s equivalent in Australian cricket, champion opening batsman Dave Warner, asking for three months off and giving up his baggy green for an overseas tour. Could you imagine Cameron Smith not wanting to wear the green and gold in one Test match, let alone half a dozen. Or having a three-month license to go and play UK Super League while the Kangaroos were involved in Test matches. This wouldn’t happen in any other sport. Even our tennis brats normally turn up to play Davis Cup for Australia. Most of the time anyway. The Wallabies are preparing for a World Cup next year. It’s less than two years away. Spring tours are all about building camaraderie, team work and hopefully a winning culture. It’s about respect for the jersey. Michael Hooper charges upfield during the rugby union international between Japan and Wallabies on Saturday. Yet Folau has the most flexible and most lucrative contract ever offered to an Australian player. He gets time off, not just to rest his body, but to play overseas and make hundreds of thousands of dollars more, if he wishes to. Meanwhile his team mates continue the hard slog of training, living out of a suitcase and playing Test matches. They, like most Australian workers, will get their six-week break over Christmas. The problem comes back to the diminishing value of rugby union internationals. These days the Wallabies play 15 Test matches a year. Outside of the Bledisloe Cup, they’ve become the equivalent value of cricket one-day internationals. Do we care Australia beat Japan 63-30 in Yokohama on Saturday? Will we care this time next year about the result against Scotland or Wales over the next few weeks? In the defence of Australian rugby, administrators had to come up with a salary and lifestyle package to keep Folau in the sport. A package that allowed him to earn more cash overseas at the completion of our domestic internationals. Or to take an extended holiday. Otherwise he’d have gone back to rugby league. Still, that’s not the point. This is about having different rules for different players in a team sport. He’s not a boxer, a tennis player or a golfer. He’s a Wallaby. And he should have been in Japan, not at Flemington
 

Aussie D

Desmond Connor (43)
how many rugby league players have taken time off over the past couple of years? the sabatical is a great way for players to get mentally refreshed Buzz. go back to reporting the hugely successful league world cup
 

Lindommer

Simon Poidevin (60)
Staff member
Buzz, in case you haven't noticed rugby starts in January every year with trials and finishes in November with the NRC finals and EoYT. Add to that the travel to and from South Africa and/or Argentina a coupla times a year plus numerous trips across the Tasman just to tire players out. Giving the senior players a sabbatical in their senior years, or after six or seven years of this punishing schedule, makes a lot of sense. How many first-choice Kangaroos have missed tours in the recent past? How many top players have withdrawn from representative league towards the end of their careers. Or is it one rule for the goose and another for the gander?
 

Dismal Pillock

Michael Lynagh (62)
just moving W.O's take on Gregor Paul (NZ Herald) over here
My issues with GP are:
1. He routinely makes basic errors of fact, such as berating the then-ARU for setting up the Force before giving the Rebels time to establish themselves. He's far from the only Hurld writer who does it, which tells you all you need to know about the quality & perhaps quantity of the sub-editing staff, but in the age of Google it's unforgivable.
2. His propensity to wildly extrapolate on actual facts, even when he contradicts himself in the same article. His piece on ticket sales for Yokohama is a classic example: sluggish sales potentially resulting in a crowd of ~40K in a 72K-seat stadium is portrayed as a big problem for NZR when in his own words JRFU are underwriting the match therefore it doesn't matter if the place is full or empty, NZR's exposure is nil.
3. His tendency to wait for other commentators to have their say then come out a day or two later & put forward a similar point of view as if he's the first to have thought of it.
I'll forgive him his Auck-love 'cos every one else is just as bad in that regard.
my taek on the other NZ nimrods:​
Marc Hinton: 3/10. completely odorless, colourless and fancy free. Could be replaced by an associated press automaton and you'd never even notice the fucking difference. Writes like a 3rd former who's just spent all afternoon sitting in the sun.
Richard Knowler: 1/10. see above but add in liberal lashings of Cantab cock gargling
Wynne Gray 0/10. Old Wynney gave up years ago. Lucky to get zero out of 10. Look up the expression "mailing it in" and oops, hello, there's Wynne. Good old Wynne.
"Yeah, this 3 sentence 20-word paragraph should fulfil my contractual obligation for an annual story, off it goes, oh yeah, ching ching motherfuckers."
Gregor Paul 8/10. quite like Paul, although clearly after reading W.O's piece I wasn't really paying close enough attention. At least he gets into it and gets wound up about shit, can put the boot in quite eloquently to the fuckhead Blues franchise too
Scott Stevenson 8/10. best. NZ media's sole saving grace. Although he scares me a bit to look at since his eyes look like a stoned Captain from Captain and Tennille.
Hamish Bidwell 2/10 has to be half trolling and/or an alcoholic. A national embarrassment.
Patrick McCendry 2/10 as boring as he is unremarkable as he is unexceptional as he is shit.
Mark Reason: 5/10. yeah a pom who's trolling NZ rugby hard, but, again, at least its fun to read at times
Chris Rattue 6/10 The hated. Although weirdly, when I really think about it, I don't mind him. He7s obviously having a troll half the time but at least he lays it all out there, no holds barred, unlike his industry-insider carob cohort.
Phil Gifford 6/10. still good value with his zillion anecdotes but the whole dumping Auckland rugby fanaticism in the dark of night and remerging the very next day as a diehard Cantab... sorry but that just half whips the rug out from under everything he writes
Liam Napier: 3/10. see: Marc Hinton. Interchangeable, amorphis, vapid, vapour, blank, blackout, vacant.
 
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