Episode 3 - The Glorification of Sport:
Heroes, Icons and Legends – Are they letting the team
down?
Mondays at 7.30pm on W.
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Intro :
Recently we could be forgiven for feeling
just a bit jaded about our sporting heroes. The Olympic cyclist
drug scandal, added to the domestic sports scandals, has taken
some of the shine off our golden sporting heritage.
We look at our “go for gold”
nation. We love our sport but where is it heading? Our heroes
have teetered on their pedestals of late and our fan behaviour
has also been questionable. Are we really the sporting nation
we think we are?
Our Panellists:
Rebecca Gibney, Dawn Fraser, Brett Lee,
Bill Harrigan and Prue MacSween
See panellist profiles
Our guests
Debbie Spillane:
 Debbie
was a schoolgirl footy fanatic who channeled that enthusiasm
into a career as an ABC sports reporter. She was once media
manager and then website manager for the Canterbury Bulldogs
rugby league team, and she now works on ABC News Radio.
Debbie says this issue is so big that sometimes
she feels the media is only touching the surface of it. She
says the binge drinking sessions of football teams leads to
all the other problems. She says the whole groupie culture,
and the way a lot of women make themselves available to the
teams, colours the players’ attitudes towards women.
Debbie says she is still amazed at how women throw themselves
at these men.
The salary cap has been one contributing
factor, according to Debbie. With the senior, more expensive,
players retiring earlier than they might have in the past,
the younger players are left without good examples of off-field
behaviour. She says the young players are very impressionable.
Debbie says that in her experience,
the players have a positive attitude towards women, but it
is the board and management that have the backward attitude
to women and the unnecessary “blokeyness”. Of
course the players deserve some of the blame when things go
wrong, Debbie says, but it is the management that tries to
keep them cocooned and safe from media scrutiny, and covers
up a lot of bad behaviour.
Another problem, says Debbie, is the
notion of “team spirit”. The Canterbury Bulldogs
case, she says, highlights the dark side of team spirit, where
the whole team was forced to carry the burden of shame. Covering
up for those who did the wrong thing is an abuse of team spirit,
Debbie says, because those who did nothing wrong are also
tainted. Debbie says a problem she has observed with team
sports is the herd mentality, where some players just cannot
seem to break themselves away from the ringleaders.
Ian Roberts:
Ian trained as
an electrician, worked in a deli, was a professional rugby
league player and is now an actor.
Ian began playing football at school, simply
because everybody else did, and by the time he left he had
a contract with South Sydney, where he played from 1985-89.
In 1989 he moved clubs to play for Manly. He sat 1996 out
due to the Superleague bans, and then in 1997 he signed with
the North Queensland Cowboys before retiring in 1999 with
a knee injury. Having also played representative football
for the NSW Blues and the Australian Kangaroos, Ian is one
of our great Rugby League champions.
In 1995, Ian told his team-mates he was
gay. He was the first professional Rugby League player to
make such a public statement, and it was quite a surprise
for fans of the man once voted one of the ten toughest men
in the game. For Ian, it opened up new doors, as he found
himself playing the role of gay icon and activist. In 2000,
Ian was accepted into NIDA and has since completed a three-year
acting course. With several stage, TV and film roles under
his belt, Ian is now pursuing a full time acting career.
For all the current controversies plaguing
Rugby League, Ian says they’ve always been there, and
in other sports too. The difference, he says, is like reality
TV – the public is finally onto it, and has figured
out how it all works.
One of the problems, he says, is the
vast sums of money in the game, for example 17 and 18 year
olds earning $100,000 a year. He says players need to be educated
on how to deal with the vast array of media that focuses on
the game.
Ian says players sign a contract to represent
a club, but their first responsibility is to themselves. In
the case of extreme behaviour, such as the recent allegations
against the Canterbury Bulldogs, Ian says it’s not so
much a matter of which sport is involved, but just simply
being a decent human being to know right from wrong.
Max Markson:
 Widely
known for his flamboyance and instinctive feel for publicity,
marketing guru Max Markson knows a good story when he hears
it. Since 1982 he has headed Markson Sparks, a company specializing
in celebrity management. Through this work, Max has developed
close relationships with scores of celebrities and sporting
personalities.
Max says any sort of sex scandal is
unacceptable in commercial life. Whether it is politics, sport
or business, and whether it is true or not, the mud will stick.
For the Canterbury Bulldogs, Max says time will heal their
damaged reputation, but they have a long road ahead of them.
He says Rugby League needs a mentoring program
to tie up young players with older, even retired, ones. Plus,
players should be forced to do a regular program of charity
work or community service.
As for the sponsorship effects, Max says
the bad behaviour of some sportspeople is likely to pull sponsors
away from the sport rather than the individuals. In the current
climate, he says, sponsors may go to safer and cleaner sports
like swimming rather than the AFL or Rugby League, which is
getting a bad reputation.
Exiting sponsors normally point to patterns
of behaviour to suggest that the club shares the blame, says
Max. Once may be unlucky, but twice looks like a cultural
problem. On the whole, Max says withdrawal of sponsorship
doesn’t have a great affect on players or organisations.
Those running the clubs or leagues will still be getting their
salary and even though they may not have as much money to
play with, their own salary is not directly affected. Similarly,
the individual sportspeople will not be directly affected
because they are still being paid plenty of money to play.
Max points out that the public has
a short memory when to comes to bad reputations. Australian
cricket captain Ricky Ponting was in trouble a few years ago
following a brawl at the Bourbon and Beefsteak Bar in Sydney’s
Kings Cross, but he was recently polled as number seven in
a list of sports people most favoured by the public. So too
with Shane Warne, predicts Max. Even though his popularity
fell after he was caught taking a banned drug, Max says that
as soon as he starts playing well again his popularity in
the public eye, and therefore with sponsors, will return.
Keeley Devery:
Having played over 50 test matches for Australia,
Keeley is one of our best ever netball players. She was a
member of the 1991 World Champion Australian netball team,
and is currently a presenter for Fox Sports.
Keeley blames money, fame and the star treatment
that professional sports players receive for our current problems.
They’re just spoilt!
Keeley says the current football scandal
is a “cringe” moment in sport in this country,
although she says she’s not surprised. The more professional
sports people get, says Keeley, the more unprofessional their
antics become. In the case of Rugby League, she says no-one
in management says no to the players, because the players
are their heroes.
Keeley says the higher the media profile
and the more money involved then the more problems. She cites
UK soccer and US basketball as examples of big money games
where scandals erupt. She says she’s interested to see
what happens in Rugby Union here, now that players are being
paid professionally.
Female sports are very different, says Keeley,
mainly because players need to work full time, and they don’t
get the media coverage or star treatment of male sports. As
for the “bonding” issue that’s been given
as a defence for some player actions, Keeley doesn’t
see why male sports players need copious amounts of alcohol
(and group sex) to bond. She says women bond differently,
and they certainly celebrate, but they do it differently.
Keeley says she’s always been fascinated
in how much Australia idolises its sports stars. She says
watching cricket captain Mark Taylor get Australian of the
Year in 1999, over the professor who invented the bionic ear
was particularly telling.
Double standards are rife in sport,
says Keeley. In the early 1990s her netball team hired a male
revue (shirtless only!) to come on as their cheer squad. The
male dancers were known as “Hot Shots”, but after
one game officials were so horrified the men weren’t
allowed back again.
Ian Warren:
A Lecturer in the
School of Law and Legal Studies at La Trobe University, Ian
has researched fan culture and policing at football venues
in England and Australia.
Ian concedes there have been some ugly fan
incidents recently in Australia. In Melbourne at an AFL match,
a supporter spat at the Richmond coach as he walked from the
ground, apparently in frustration at the team’s loss,
and in Sydney a mob of fans ripped out stadium seats to create
standing room and then used them as missiles.
Despite perceptions, however, Ian
says crowd violence is actually getting better not worse.
With the new types of seating football stadiums, both here
and in England, fan behaviour is getting better. There are
currently only about 100 arrests a year at the Melbourne Cricket
Ground, which, given the regular crowd numbers, is actually
a good statistic. Ian says that 20 or 30 years ago crowds
were much more vocal towards players, and would have given
the current crop of players a much harder time about the recent
rape allegations. The corporatisation of sport with sponsorship
and more expensive ticket prices is also a factor, he says,
in that a lot of the hooligan element can no longer afford
to attend games.
Ian says the media plays a double role in
reporting fan violence – the attention given to the
prominent incidents by the media raises our perception that
violence in sport is getting worse, and it also makes us reflect
on that behaviour. Ian says that, in general, where police
statistics are available, the rates of disorder do not match
with public perceptions of the problems of fan violence.
Ian says most problems arise where there
is alcohol consumption by fans, and where there are uncontrolled
groups of young men, often not even there for the game itself.
Having more police on site often just escalates the violence.
Ian says there is now so much publicity
about professional sports that fans have much higher expectations
that their team will win. The players are held up as heroes
and are expected to win, particularly at a national level
with the NRL, AFL and Olympics. Ian says both winning and
losing can trigger fan violence - in the US most riots follow
victories, whereas in the UK losing tends to trigger fan violence.
Ian says that if Australian sport is promoted
as a family outing, with a range of men, women and children
involved, violence is less likely to occur.
Ian says that when football started
in England there was an ethic of applauding good play no matter
whose side it was. With junior football umpires here leaving
the job because of risks to their personal safety from abusive
fans, Ian says the time has come to go back to those original
roots of football.
Ron Barassi:
 A
much-loved AFL legend, Ron played 250 games, coached 500 games,
played in or coached 17 grand final sides, and won 10 grand
finals. As coach of the Sydney Swans from 1993-95, Ron’s
name is synonymous with that team’s re-emergence as
an AFL force.
Ron says this sort of player behaviour has
been going on for a long time, and the media simply has a
lot to catch up on! Seriously though, he says sport is the
answer for our youth.
Ron says the AFL is working on plans
with the Melbourne University Law School to develop a program
that will improve general player behaviour and their attitude
to women in particular. It will involve all players. Ron says
that in the past the AFL has led the way in Australian sport
with its
rulings on racial vilification and on-field sledging, and
he says it will want to do so again here.
Ron says women are nowadays much more confident
than they were in his day, and are more likely to target a
player. He says players really do have female stalkers, and
TV, in glamorising the players, is part of the problem.
But Ron remains totally passionate about
the good that sport can do. He says sport is the best institution
in the world at attacking the three evils of the world –
colour, class and creed. Sport may not be perfect, he says,
but it has done better than the church, unions and governments
of the world in tackling these issues.
Ron praises team sport for teaching
discipline and the importance of working towards a goal. He
says the team aspect is particularly important in forcing
this very greedy generation of thinking of someone other than
themselves. Plus, Ron says the physical contact game is good
for kids. He says a little bit of push and shove, with no
malice, never hurt a soul.
Not all our sporting heroes, legends and icons are behaving
badly, and not all are letting the team down. Things are slowly
changing – high profile women are working with football
teams teaching players how to change their attitude and behaviour
towards women and sporting clubs are developing programs for
young up and coming players. Governing bodies are imposing
hefty fines and the public is voicing their displeasure at
player behaviour. There is plenty of good work happening to
ensure we can still be a nation proud of our sporting achievements.
Tune
in to Mars Venus, Mondays at 7.30pm on W.
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