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It’s what the fans want. Or is it?
By Will 2 months ago, 6 Comments »
Thoughtful piece from The Guardian’s Andy Bull on the mundane, line-toeing crap which make up the majority of sportsmen’s quotes.
Quotations command space, but rarely interest. If it wasn’t enough to know that a player was injured, we now also have to know that the manager and a selection of former players think he is a “huge loss to the side”, and we will be told all of this in print, on the radio and 24 hours a day by Sky Sports News. These quotes come in three forms: the interesting, the mundane and the untrue. The volume of lineage and airtime spent relaying other peoples’ words means that the majority fall into the last two categories.
Is it what people want? On the whole, I think it is. In an ideal world, the quotation-supplying cricketer would have Ian Botham’s candour, Steve Waugh’s miserable honesty, Stephen Fleming’s wisdom and Matthew Hoggard’s wit and general affable madness. In reality, sportsmen are best left on the pitch to do what they know best. The rise of “media training” for sportsmen has created several monstrous, inhuman creatures. Normal and likeable on the pitch, in front of a microphone they are reduced to a list of five or six safe phrases which answer (or nearly answer) a multitude of questions. Monty Panesar and his “right areas”. Duncan Fletcher’s obsession with players “putting their hands up” and “coming to the party”. I suppose the frequency of press conferences has understandably dulled their enthusiasm, but is it too much to expect an honest answer? Talking of cliches, Lawrence Booth wrote a superb piece on just this.
I know David Gower’s not a fan of the post-match quote (he famously cut short a press conference in 1989 saying he was late for the theatre. What a legend), but the players are the product and the public want to hear from them. Even if it’s mundane bullshit.
Or do you?
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