Caroline Wilson's descent into gutter journalism

[skills32 229]

I would like to think that collectively we should consider legal action against her as supporters of the club.

This latest diatribe is beyond the pale. I have put up with her articles for long enough.

This is now war.

First up everyone should hit her twitter and let her know what an unknowledgeable pathetic excuse for a journo she is.

Don't be nasty just use her own words back at her.

And lets talk about libel action.

PS Did one of our boys give her a knock back sometime?

[Courtney_Fish 183]

I don't care about CW. But I actually feel sick thinking about what may happen to our club. We have been playing so awfully for so long and if we get hit with heavy sanctions, will we actually survive? The AFL must wonder too.

[PJ_12345 1,098]

I'm pretty much utterly speechless.

Never have I read such a malicious, inflammatory and aggressive article from such a 'regarded' football reporter.

I havent even seen 60 Minutes, let alone A Current Affair, publish something like that.

To be honest its just plain wrong. Wrong to mention Jim's legacy, wrong to describe us as "pathetic and disgusting" four times, and wrong to say that Carlton wasnt as bad (not even talk about Collingwood) yet call the us disgusting for the same concept. At no point did she offer any facts, at no point did she offer any form of journalism.

That was merely a shock jock move by CW and she has really, really dropped the ball on this one.

That brings the anti-MFC articles over the past five days to 7 and I'm sure she will apply those fantastic churnalism skills of hers and write another one later today.

[PJ_12345 1,098]

I would like to think that collectively we should consider legal action against her as supporters of the club.

This latest diatribe is beyond the pale. I have put up with her articles for long enough.

This is now war.

First up everyone should hit her twitter and let her know what an unknowledgeable pathetic excuse for a journo she is.

Don't be nasty just use her own words back at her.

And lets talk about libel action.

PS Did one of our boys give her a knock back sometime?

Remember - one defence to defamation is the truth.

If anything comes out of this AFL investigation that would ellude to the MFC tanking then her defence would be solid and we dont have a case.

[Whispering_Jack 28,019]

This is an opinion piece from Wilson and she's entitled to have opinions although many might ask, given that she holds these particular opinions, whether she is capable of reporting the facts on the issue of the Melbourne Football Club objectively.

Personally, I don't think she is but I won't hold my breath waiting for the newspaper's editor to do what's morally right and take her off this case.

On the other hand, I think it would be not only helpful, but fair if the Age gave space for someone to provide an opinion piece giving the opposite viewpoint.

Finally, while I give credit to her for her work from time to time as a journalist, she needs to brush up on her skills when writing op eds.

[monoccular 16,263]

She concludes with "what a sorry story" -which could actually refer to he spiteful, vindictive campaign against all things Melbourne, whilst all along ignoring completely those who clearly tanked, with their own assistant coach at the time, and one of their ex players stating publicly that they did!

Basically calling the great Jimmy Stynes a liar - and guess whar, Caro, he can't defend himself you coward!

To paraphrase Tony Abbott - what a piece of work she is. And that is being neither sexist nor mysoginistic...I would say exactly the same of a man who ran such a nasty, disgusting campaign, (and as Abbott would have said of an incompetent, scheming, deceitful male PM for that matter.)

Nasty, deceitful.........

[H_T 2,941]

I know it's not good form posting a whole article on our forum, but I think we can find an exception given the form of C.Wilson and the recent editing and/or revised articles in recent days by her posted on The Age website. I find the following attack astonishing to say the least, it almost smacks of desperation or a determination of sorts to see who she seeks penalised.

This is an "opinion piece" and a heated one at that.

She'd better be right, for her sake.

Demons: shock & awful

CAROLINE WILSON November 03, 2012O

Dark times for the Demons: Melbourne players training this week. Photo: Getty Images

MELBOURNE president Don McLardy smarted for much of his club's abysmal 2012 football season over a tabloid headline trumpeted early in the year describing the Demons as ''pathetic and disgusting''.

Privately shattered at the awful truth that Melbourne was being forced to rebuild its list from scratch - again, punch-drunk from the misfortune that seemed to be hitting the club at every turn and lamenting the dreadful lack of fight onfield; McLardy still believed those words ''pathetic and disgusting'' were unforgivable.

If only his football life and its associated problems were so simple now. Melbourne in 2012 played some dreadfully uncompetitive football and in those first weeks, which stretched to months, was generally thrashed week in and week out. Still ''pathetic and disgusting'' did seem slightly harsh at the time.

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Not any more. In the context of what has emerged in recent weeks in the form of evidence being put forward and corroborated by a number of witnesses, ''pathetic and disgusting'' sums it up pretty well.

McLardy issued a plea on his club's website on Friday for ''natural justice'' as the mounting weight of damning evidence that the club fixed matches continued to emerge in all its shocking detail. A picture is being painted for the AFL's investigative team of dark threats, amateurish tactics and blatant match manipulation. The indication is still that Melbourne will fight this, but it looks shocking for all concerned.

The AFL is praying that Jim Stynes - and McLardy and the board it strangely continues to extol - can be kept at a decent arm's length from the fall-out. But even if Stynes' legacy is spared because we might never truly know how much he knew, the game must cast aside concerns about legacies and images and football myths and concentrate on repairing the collateral damage.

Melbourne will be harshly punished. Cameron Schwab and Chris Connolly will be finished at the club. But football lives, young men who played no real active part in the treacherous football facade which took place at the club in 2009 were ruined or at the very least tarnished by their association with it.

It is nonsense to suggest the AFL must carry the can for Melbourne because it created a system which encouraged tanking. That is rot. The AFL was not complicit in this. At best it was naive and at worst the commission and its chief executive incompetent in failing to see what was being unveiled in front of them.

The AFL introduced the priority pick to help improve struggling clubs. Like the four-man interchange, it was well-intended but created issues it did not foresee. Finally it removed it because football boss Adrian Anderson and a team of academics demonstrated to the commission the advantage was generally too great for those teams that earned one, with some obvious exceptions: when clubs were too hopeless to pick the right players or develop them professionally or create an environment that retained them.

The commission agreed the day it scrapped the pick that it also created a bad perception that teams were tanking. This column's view is that the chairman, Mike Fitzpatrick, did not believe clubs plotted to lose. He seems to have been proven wrong. As we said, the AFL was probably incompetent but that should not save Melbourne.

Like Ross Oakley and his team when Nicky Winmar lifted his St Kilda jumper and two years later Michael Long spoke up about being racially taunted on Anzac Day, the current administration was far too slow to act on what it is now acting upon. But it never encouraged it and truly seems shocked at what it has learnt in recent times.

What the AFL, in fact, should feel sick about now is those players who aspired to its code, who walked into a football club believing in sportsmanship and playing to win and giving their all for victory. It is not surprising in hindsight that it has been a player who has lifted the lid on a secret Melbourne believed it could keep in the vault.

The Demons and their more rabid supporters keep banging on about the fact that everyone was doing it. No other club seems to have done it quite like this, though, and if Carlton is guilty then the current mood of the AFL indicates that club, too, will be forensically examined and punished.

Putting players in for surgery once a season is lost is not match-fixing because everyone associated with the game knows the playing field they are watching, backing or barracking upon. Even losing heart in one final game for an earlier pick seems more forgivable than systematic planning, career-ending threats and a plan which seems to have dragged on for weeks leading into months. To think that a player having on-field success was prevented from having more. No wonder Melbourne's misery continued to curse the club.

What Melbourne did in manipulating results was disgusting. The result of the fix was pathetic. To think that so many reputations could be destroyed and so many playing careers hurt all for one ambitious young footballer who began looking for a way out of the place after only one year.

If what some former players and coaches say is true, then the tanking was only the half of it. But to put in the fix for Tom Scully and not to create a training and development laboratory for all similarly-talented young men to improve and retain them is just so glaringly short-sighted. All those early draft picks gone. All those disillusioned once-proud Demons. What a sorry story.

[skills32 229]

I don't care about CW. But I actually feel sick thinking about what may happen to our club. We have been playing so awfully for so long and if we get hit with heavy sanctions, will we actually survive? The AFL must wonder too.

NO the club has taken steps to improve the culture.

But read her column again as I have just done.

She was [censored] when she wrote her piece. The rant is libellous. I have already sent her a couple of twitters and I would like every one else to as well.

The MFC reaction will be interesting.

She has even had a go at JImma.

She was [censored] and it should be her down fall.

And to think I used to like her.

Edited November 2, 2012 by Whispering_Jack
Even if you think she was drunk you can't say that!

[s-t-i-n-g-a 439]

To be honest...this was so contrived and bias that all I felt was apathy towards it...her impact is starting to wain on me already...she is a bit like Hazey you take notice at first but after a while you realise it's not someone putting forward something that is intelectual and considered. Unlike Dons statement today. There are plenty of nuff nuff this will speak to but she really is exposing herself in an undignified manner.

[McQueen 17,864]

For those movie buffs out there...

What Richard Gere says to Lisa Eilbacher in "An Officer and a Gentleman"

[skills32 229]

Remember - one defence to defamation is the truth.

If anything comes out of this AFL investigation that would ellude to the MFC tanking then her defence would be solid and we dont have a case.

Won't and can't happen.

She is trying to force Vlad's hand. He is not that stupid.

If the MFC go down we will bring the AFL down with us.

[What 18,810]

Give the bitter old hag a piece of your mind.

[email protected]

Our lawyers would be all over her latest article. She must be taught a lesson, and surely will.

Edited November 2, 2012 by hogans_heroes

[skills32 229]

Won't and can't happen.

She is trying to force Vlad's hand. He is not that stupid.

If the MFC go down we will bring the AFL down with us.

Copy of my tweets.

Tweets

27m david stephens ‏@skills32

@CarowhineWilson Or maybe some one is telling u to do this. Do you want to tell us who?

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28m david stephens ‏@skills32

@CarowhineWilson rationale we lose for 2 years & then clean up. Tanking? ur call but if you shoot then get them all not just MFC

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30m david stephens ‏@skills32

@CarowhineWilson GWS given concessions 4 experienced players so they can be competitive but used them 4 kids & picks

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32m david stephens ‏@skills32

@CarowhineWilson What is your problem with MFC?

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41m david stephens ‏@skills32

I think @Carowhinewilson is going through [censored]

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Edited November 2, 2012 by Whispering_Jack
You can't say that.

[bandicoot 1,395]

Interesting to hear Danny Frawley's comments at the 3:06 second mark of the video:

Edited November 2, 2012 by bandicoot

[Whispering_Jack 28,019]

OK people, let's not stoop down to her level.

Please keep it clean and above the belt.

[number 5 is alive 30]

That isn't her twitter account

[Glenn Molloy 494]

She's clearly got a vendetta, and I'm certain it's to do with Schwab. Always finds a way to mention him without ever really expressly going for the jugular. Has wanted him out for years and took great delight when it looked like he'd leave after 186. Seems she didn't get her man that time but is determined to do so this time.

[s-t-i-n-g-a 439]

That isn't her twitter account

LOL

[tonatopia 278]

Yes, change the title ne of this thread, something like "tanking discussion".

Who cates about caro.

[skills32 229]

That isn't her twitter account

Damn knew I shouldn't try to embrace new technology when I don't understand it.

[Deefiant 427]

Damn knew I shouldn't try to embrace new technology when I don't understand it.

CaroWhine Wilson?

Comeon really?

[Tatu 416]

What really hurts is....we'll get penalties for draft picks that GWS got for nothing.....

[Chook 14,602]

"What a sorry story."

Took the words right out of my mouth.

[wobbie 26]

I am so revolted by this woman and her campaign.

[Demon Disciple 11,056]

The HS going with a rep from an unnamed former sponsor claiming a club official made the comment that we "made sure" we got the priority pick.

Even with the assumption all of it is true, it could easily be the official's perception, or even revisionist history because they though it puts the club in a better light - i.e. we weren't really that bad; we meant to do that.

anyone think that sponsor may be De La Rue and Hankook? He didn't leave on the best of terms with CS did he.