Dr John Dee

This might not have an immediate bearing on the question of Hit and Miss Wilsons attacks on the MFC, but I think it provides an additional line of questioning about the extent to which she graces (or otherwise) the once noble art of the sports journalist. I, for one (and having a disabled athlete in the family), was shocked by the YouTube clip linked to a posting in the Wilson in the Gutter thread showing her dismissal of disabled sport as supposedly not sport at all. But I wasnt the only one, and there were a few postings registering dismay before the issue got overrun by responses to other Carolingual* dross that seemed to be flushing down the drain almost hourly for a while there. Its easy enough to say that the comments themselves reveal the absence of any basic sense of humanity or decency (let alone grasp of equity) that we ought to expect of any journalist. But The Age is unlikely to be at all moved by that, given who can pass as a journalist in other parts of most newspapers nowadays. Theres a different line of attack, though, one that calls into question her elementary capacity to function as a sports journalist. Her remarks about disable sport in fact show a complete misunderstanding not just of disabled sport but of sport itself. In a book called The Philosophy of Sport, the British academic Steven Connor argues that sport, all sport is based on two things: (i) physical exertion (he takes sport to be the strenuous use of the body, differentiating it from games, like chess, which might need bodily movement but not exertion: and (ii) constraints imposed on the use of the body in some way (the offside rule which means you cant occupy a certain part of the ground) or use some part of the body (hands in soccer) or use some part in a particular way (to throw the ball in real football except in the case of Geelong, obviously). So, Connor says, all sport involves bodies that are one way or another disabled. And then he adds, in a way that ought to shame Wilson not just for her understanding of the disabled but also for her understanding of sport itself. Stick with it, its a bit dense but worth the effort: The objects and instruments of playing sport are the means of both imposing and surpassing disability, of imposing disability in order for it to be possible partially to overcome it. It is for this reason that there is no real difference between able-bodied and disabled sports, since all sports are means towards the exertion of freedoms through the imposition of impediment. Disabled sports deserve our interest and support, not just in order to give us an opportunity to be condescendingly generous with our attention, or because they solicit our respect for the spirit of striving they exemplify, but because sport is not possible without the assumption of disability, which means that disabled sports are the only kind there are. I guess someone can say easily enough that the problem with expecting sports journalists to understand sport would be to open a can vault of worms that would see the likes of Robinson and Denham disposed of as well and that would only be the beginning. But theres something really, basically, fundamentally disturbing about Wilsons incomprehension of what shes supposed to be writing about that puts her beyond common or garden buffoons like that pair; and Im grateful for how Connor explains why. * my attempted coinage, not to be confused with Carolingus. Definitely. (see Online Urban Dictionary).

A man on a mission!

That, of course, would depend on when the laws were written; though Jnr's already cleared that one up.

Thanks Jnr, that helps clear up a bit of the territory for speculating.

Whoops, another case of mistaken identity. Edit: Speaking of which, it was Joh, of course, rather than Joe; but the quote sounds pretty much like him.

Not that I'm particularly in favour of any defamation action on the part of the club, but did that change occur in all jurisdictions? If not, all that would matter is where the Age is sold/circulated.

Do I detect a covert effort to extend this thread by discussing that thread here? Very clever. Who was TS, by the way? He doesn't seem to get many mentions on his thread nowadays.

Tank tops? Coming soon in a range of colours: black and yellow, black and white, brown and gold and the always popular navy blue (with a hint of white).

Good example. I can't remember how long the McLibel case in the UK took, but it was years.

An intriguing etymology. I didn't think the chorus got involved until the whole thing became a play ... when they're not usually allowed to carry knives to avoid exactly this sort of thing. Of course you don't have to go back this far. The complete Oxford gives them as alternative spellings, and includes this: In Eng., discrete was the prevalent spelling in all senses until late in the 16th c., when on the analogy of native or early-adopted words in ee from ME. close ē, as feet, sweet, beet), the spelling discreet (occasional from 1400) became established in the popular sense, leaving discrete for the scholastic and technical sense in which the kinship to L. discrētus is more obvious: see discrete. Shakespeare (1st Folio) has always discreet.] Sorry to come over all serious about it. The joke is excellent, Biff. Forgot to ask, Biff, whether your tale means the Greeks had anything to do with the invention of concrete?

And if Ralph is correct in the way he's reported it (which I somehow doubt), there's already been an abuse of process because the investigators could only be basing their questioning on an assumption that one version is true and any variation from that must be false.

Maybe he's grown in stature since joining the grand old club.

I should have added that the 'little bit pregnant' defence applies in the case of any club suspected of tanking, other than Melbourne. The MFC is clearly pregnant, not because she can see the bump but because she knows who the father is. She's looking at you, Cam.

Be good if it did. But Wallace's admission is exactly what Wilson's comment about losing heart in 'one final game' attempts to exculpate. It's her 'little bit pregnant' defence.

The piece might not just be one that’s been past the lawyers but written to placate them. Certainly there are still assertions being made without substantiation and qualification, but the qualifiers are scattered strategically throughout the piece: A picture is being painted but it looks shocking for all concerned He seems to have been proven wrong As we said, the AFL was probably incompetent No other club seems to have done it quite like this 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 (great writing, that!) If what some former players and coaches say There’s already plenty deposited on this thread about the comprehensive negativity and ugliness of this piece, and I’ll probably be repeating some of it. But I want to add a few points: (i) Wilson’s source or sources would seem to have dried up. She hasn't got much more to say, so she's rounding up all the stuff she's said as a kind of exercise in self-justification masquerading as the 'full case' against the MFC. Perhaps she’s served the AFL’s purposes. Perhaps there was nothing but a little bit of smoke from a few statements but subsequent evidence has given the investigation nothing, or has undone any conclusions it was hastening towards. Maybe she’ll get something else from them but for now it’s all dried up leaving Wilson to repeat herself, to repeat herself … (which she has in fact been doing with the same few scraps of ‘evidence’ all along); (ii) but she has managed one change in tack, or is signalling a change in tack with her humbug concern for the careers and reputations of all those young men we’ve destroyed (she really has a career in soap opera waiting, if only she’d notice) because this gives her another mallet to whack Melbourne with … poor development of young players and so on, a charge that would stick albeit that there are no AFL sanctions to be attached to it (not yet anyway except for good old ‘bringing the game into …’), but it can certainly be used to smear Melbourne a bit more and to help naturalise the ‘fact’ of tanking into the bargain; (iii) and that’s what I suspect the whole thing is really about. Dear Caro (dear only in the sense of what she’s costing us) is a moralist at heart, like all self-appointed crusading journalists. It’s all a story of good and evil for her (well, we do call ourselves Demons, what do we expect?) and that’s all she’s got left to tell … or maybe, like a true knight of the crossed-word, it’s the story she’s wanted to reveal all along. Unfortunately her version of it depends on a pretty ancient and discredited kind of associationism: the stuff of medieval theologians and phrenologists and physiognomists and nineteenth century racists, where the internal condition is always identifiable on or as the surface. An ugly face is the sign of an evil disposition, a bump here or there on the skull makes one a disputatious sort of fellow, black skin reveals a primitive brain, all that sort of nonsense. And so Melbourne’s moral turpitude (begotten in a vault somewhere) has of necessity been realised and is now on show for all to see in the shape of its failures on the field, even unto this year’s failures. We are thus the victims of not much more than Caro’s magical and mythical thinking. So I want to suggest (perhaps only a little facetiously) that we might even take some comfort in the fact that, perhaps unknowingly for the moment, she has crossed entirely her own personal Red Sea from journalism into the fictional domain. Why, she even ends with word story! (Yes, yes, I know it also means a journalistic – and so supposedly true – story, but also is the point …) Personally I’m almost interested in what the next chapter will be in this serialised fiction, foreshadowed as it is by her references to the false knight - or was he the once and future Giant? - who might have come to save us were we not so far cast down into a vault of our own desperate villainy. It will no doubt make gripping reading even if it will take us just a little further from anything like the truth. But the truth doesn’t matter to Caro, not now, and I doubt whether it ever did.

Um, the cavalry comes over the hill to the rescue. I presume Chris would know that. Caro, well ...

Agree wholeheartedly. When I hit the like button on Red's post there were 29 of us. Dunno what the record for likes is, but his post deserves it.

And thanks for the crocodile tears for Melbourne supporters, Jeff. Plonker.

Although if the AFL is reduced to a finding under its catch-all 'bringing the game into disrepute' provision how p%*s-weak are its anti-tanking procedures going to look? I suspect Demetriwho's reputation will need some thinking about before heading in that direction.

A point well worth bearing in mind. Of course, drafting in US sports has a much longer history, time enough for conventions to emerge, realities to be accepted. Here, not only is it more recent, the AFL has tried to set itself up as a sports administration beyond reproach, so any chink in that armour was going to set off some sort of crisis. Tanking was probably all well and good when the power clubs used it to restore the natural order. But when the bottom clubs might just start climbing back up the ladder with lots of advantageous draft picks, suddenly it becomes noticeable.

That's called 'balance'.

I’m not sure that it’s quite so simple. The AFL might be a company but it’s one that also functions in a quasi-judicial fashion (in, say, registering findings against and imposing fines on a club, player etc); a quasi-administrative (some would probably say pseudo-administrative) fashion since it administers ‘the game’; and even a quasi-governmental fashion (introducing the regulations which it then administers). The AFL mightn’t be compelled in a strict legal sense to apply principles of natural justice/procedural fairness, but I doubt they’d get away with arguing before a court that they’re not compelled to look to those principles for guidance and can do whatever they please. As for saying in your later post that the suggestion that ‘the club might come before an AFL commission’ mighn’t be anything more than ‘an agenda item on a board paper’, this isn’t much more than facetious avoidance of the point. The news item says the club. Even the AFL is presumably able to spot the consequences of making decisions about the MFC and supposed tanking without allowing the club a hearing (I’ll stop short of saying a fair hearing). Which would be all about providing, or at least being seen to provide, natural justice/procedural fairness.

I think that's 'the decision [to be made] will have far reaching ramifications'. Not that one's already been made. But who'd know?

Try this, for one: http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/150497/default.aspx They're already talking about MFC appearing before a commission. That's called natural justice. And as for the stupidity above about us not being the accused, I won't even bother.

accused of.