Players who write controversial columns should not be gagged
Martin Gillingham
Sportsmen and women should be banned from writing newspaper columns. The reason is simple: the bad ones are turgid and boring and the good ones should never have been written.
Sadly, the works of the few sports star columnists in this country fall in the former category. Hamstrung by either confidentiality clauses in their day job contracts and a South African sporting culture that seems to actively discourage free thought and expression on the part of our sports people, the likes of Gary Kirsten and Corne Krige must wonder why they do it. Both are good men with a genuine love and caring for their sport. But it’s clear that even if they do hold strong or controversial opinions about their sport or team-mates, then neither would dare go to print with them.
Of course, there’s good reason to applaud the likes of Kirsten and Krige. It can be assumed that they must opt, almost on a weekly basis, to sit on what could prove to be explosive material for their newspaper columns in deference to personal loyalties and confidences. But it begs the question, if the columnist isn’t prepared to give us full disclosure then why take the editor’s money in the first place?
Even if they do offer a full account who’s to say it will be worth reading anyway. After all, in this writer’s experience the most gifted sports people tend to find it difficult to explain the method of their genius. Ask Lester Piggott to disclose the secret of his remarkable balance aboard a thoroughbred or Shane Warne to reveal the intricacies of his flipper and, believe me, you’ll be disappointed with what you get. It’s not that they can’t communicate it nor that they’re unwilling to. More often than not it’s because genius is hard to break down into words.
The other challenge in asking a sportsman or woman to record their experiences and innermost thoughts in print is an intellecutual one. Sportsmen and women are not all the most cerebral bunch. Victoria Beckham, rather than David, would probably be more capable of writing an insightful account of last Saturday’s 5-1 defeat of the Germans.
But even given these facts, the newspaper editors in Britain are falling over their chequebooks to sign up sports stars to beef up their circulation figures. And if it’s not weekly columns it’s serialisations of soon-to-be published autobiographies or memoirs. Kirsten and Krige probably see themselves as nothing more than dressing room chroniclers. In Britain, where the cheques offered to personalities are bigger and the demands from editors greater, the athlete-turned-scribe is a kiss ‘n tell merchant.
Take the recent Lions tour to Australia as an example where scrumhalf Matt Dawson declared during the Test series: “It’s official some of the boys have decided to leave the tour.”
That was written not in a tabloid but in the highly respectable Daily Telegraph. Then there’s Austin Healy who may not be every player’s favourite team-mate but is, without doubt, a damned good read. His thoughts on the tour, shared in a stolen 10 minutes once a week with the former Welsh captain turned The Observer writer Eddie Butler, led to a disciplinary hearing.
Healy was responsible for the infamous “plod”, “plank” and “ape” remarks directed at Justin Harrison on the eve of the deciding Test. Great copy for the reader but equally good locker-door fodder for the Wallaby lock should he have sought some motivational reading before taking to the field. No one can question Butler’s role in this saga whatever his past he would probably be the first to claim his paymaster comes first but Healy’s double role is open to scrutiny.
Had it not been for Dawson and Healy Butler admits to having turned a deaf ear when the two met just 10 days into the tour and Healy told him that discontent within the Lions camp had reached such a level that they were on the verge of “mutiny” then the British public would not have known just what an unhappy camp it was. On the other hand, it could be argued that the players’ airing of dirty linen served only to worsen the situation, inspire the opposition and, in turn, contribute to the series defeat.
Thankfully, this is not a debate the South African media has yet had cause to enter. In the aftermath of the Lions tour, however, the sports editor of The Observer was driven to pen his own thoughts in defence of those sports people who lead the double life. “Being boring, in a newspaper, is a crime: being outspoken isn’t.”
He added: “Some argue that players should be gagged, banned or punished for writing spiky, revealing columns. The gagging should be of columnists who offer nothing to stimulate the reader.”