Richard Boock's weak attempt at ridiculing John Mitchell (July 7, 2003)

Richard Boock's weak attempt at ridiculing John Mitchell
July 7, 2003

The NZ Herald writer Richard Boock achieved a kind of blundering notoriety when his carping, sneering articles pissed off Richard Hadlee so much that he was nearly banned from covering the NZ cricket team. Now he's
obviously decided that he'll employ his "wit" on another target: All Black coach John Mitchell.

Now, if anybody deserves to be the target of coruscating wit, it is
that absurd Homer Simpson doppelganger.  Mitchell talks in riddles,
except he has no idea of the answers to them and he makes them up as
he goes along.  In a tedious attempt at humour in Saturday's Herald,
Boock has submitted a piece called "CAN'T UNDERSTAND A WORD YOU'RE
SAYING, MITCH."

Let's have a close look how Boock goes about  his work. Of course,
I'm only selecting some bits of his article. If you want to read the
original in its entirety, click on this....
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sports/sportsstorydisplay.cfm?storyID=3511097&thesection=sport&thesubsection=rugby&thesecondsubsection=allblacks

FALSE STATEMENT....
First he claims that a long time ago  "it seemed rugby might remain
free of psychobabble." Of course, rugby, like all sports, has always
been full of mystical, nonsensical, crap language. Due, however, to
a century of pretending to be amateur, and closely collaborating with
South Africa's apartheid regime, rugby football is (perhaps more than
any other sport) burdened with a legacy of dishonesty, sanctimony and
hypocrisy.

Fans are accustomed to being lied to, misled, bamboozled by the Rugby
Union and by its uncritical mouthpieces in the media. Remember the
risible gullibility of a vehement minority of the New Zealand public
during the last World Cup, when the media constantly assured them that
a win over .... (wait for it) ....France was guaranteed? Boock's
esteemed Herald colleague Wynne ("Sensible") Gray wrote learnedly, the
day before that match, that a "huge" win to New Zealand was "the only
sensible prediction".  The All Blacks weren't playing Samoa or
Zimbabwe or Spain or Uruguay; they were playing FRANCE.

Has Boock never read anything*? Or listened to those old guys go on
and on and on?

ANOTHER FALSE STATEMENT....
"At a time when dyed-in-the-wool rugby enthusiasts were still trying
to get used to the Americanised 'DE-fence' - let alone the halfback
being 'sacked,'"....  When has ANYONE in rugby ever used that
expression?

Then Boock starts talking about "our straight-talking, no-nonsense
national game".   He is joking, surely.   Maybe he meant to say
"boorish" and "uncommunicative", like Kirky and A.J. Whetton are on
that Steinlager ad.

DISMAL ATTEMPTS AT BEING FUNNY....
".... a man who sounds not unlike a word salad..... He even has
cauliflower ears. "

MORE FALSE STATEMENTS...
"It must be all a shade bewildering for former All Black coaches such
as Fred Allen, Eric Watson and Laurie Mains, who preferred to use
short sentences to communicate with players, reporters and sheepdogs
alike."   Boock obviously hasn't noticed, but Mains in particular is
one of the very worst for purveying this crap about "the jersey" and
the "mystique" of being an All Black.  (Note also the drab sheepdog
quip.)

...<snip some sensible stuff about media manipulation and distortion
of coaches' and managers' words>....

Mitchell certainly deserves a skewering, but it will be done by
someone who knows what he is talking about.   Clearly that person is
not to be found in the Herald sports department.

*  For the epitome of this dull "mystical" writing, I recommend
readers try reading Ron Palenski's clumsily written, pretentious,
ridiculous book THE JERSEY: THE PRIDE & THE PASSION, THE GUTS & THE
GLORY: WHAT IT MEANS TO WEAR THE ALL BLACK JERSEY (Hodder moa Beckett,
2001)