Jerry Collins-balls. Just how bad can the commentary get?
The frenzy following the death of Jerry Collins hasn’t, on the whole, been as obscene or absurd as what we were subjected to for the visit of that coke-snorting, whore-pestering, peasant-smiting “playboy” beneficiary and scrounger a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, hapless “consumers” of the New Zealand media over the last three days have been exposed to some of the most bewildered, ignorant and unpleasant commentary to be found outside of an ACT Party policy or a Sensible Sentencing Trust klavern.
BEWILDERED….. “It’s a travesty for the rugby world,” intoned a commentator during the Hurricanes-Highlanders game on Friday night. He meant to say “tragedy”, of course, but he was doing a rugby broadcast, where ignorance reigns supreme, so no one picked him up on it.
IGNORANT….. On Saturday afternoon, Brendan Telfer interviewed Dominion Post rugby writer Toby Robson, who after a few gracious words about Jerry Collins, went on to spoil it by displaying a breathtaking level of sporting ignorance that hasn’t been heard on radio since the departure of Martin “Moron” Devlin….
BRENDAN TELFER: He was playing for a second division club. TOBY ROBSON: Yeah, he’s been playing for a club called Narbonne. I don’t know what standard it would be, whether it’s club level or what it is….
It’s club level in France, of course, which is provincial level in New Zealand. But Robson appears not to know this, or indeed to know anything about French rugby—“a club called Narbonne”—which begs the question: Why is he allowed to write about the game?
UNPLEASANT….. Anyone unwise or undiscriminating enough to be listening to RadioLIVE at 2:20 p.m. today (Monday June 8th) would have heard the host desperately making his case….
WILLIE JACKSON:[shouting passionately] Yeah he WAS! Jerry Collins was a ROLE MODEL!!
Now, when someone asserts something like that, with extreme truculence—other examples are: “Bruce Hutton had integrity beyond reproach” or “You KNOW me. I am a GOOD man” or “Never, ever would I ever knowingly sign a false electoral return” [1]—-he, or she (probably Michelle Boag) is almost always trying to cover up something unpleasant. The unpleasant truth about Jerry Collins is that, in spite of being a wonderful athlete and a genuinely nice guy, he did have another, more disturbing, side to him. While he neither brought death and disaster to anyone in Afghanistan nor launched into extended racist rants on radio, it is a fact that the last time he was in the news was when he was arrested in Japan for carrying knives. [2]Willie Jackson went on to express his extreme displeasure that Television One had dared to mention that unsavory incident on its Friday night coverage of the tragedy. “I sat there, getting angrier and angrier,” he raged to a caller.
Perhaps other Standardistas are able to furnish other examples of nonsense spoken about Jerry Collins.
[1]http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-09102014/#comment-907232 [2] Jackson once announced live on air that if his “missus” ever fooled around on him, he’d “put a knife through her heart”. Even his co-hosts, John “JT” Tamahere and Dean Lonergan, a gruesome twosome if ever there was a gruesome twosome, were appalled by that one.
tc17.1
Thanks morissey, definitely not missing much by not listening but appreciate your diligent summaries none the less.
Just how bad can the commentary get?
“It’s a travesty for the rugby world,” intoned a commentator during the Hurricanes-Highlanders game on Friday night. He meant to say “tragedy”, of course, but he was doing a rugby broadcast, where ignorance reigns supreme, so no one picked him up on it.
On Saturday afternoon, Brendan Telfer interviewed Dominion Post rugby writer Toby Robson, who after a few gracious words about Jerry Collins, went on to spoil it by displaying a breathtaking level of sporting ignorance that hasn’t been heard on radio since the departure of Martin “Moron” Devlin….
TOBY ROBSON: Yeah, he’s been playing for a club called Narbonne. I don’t know what standard it would be, whether it’s club level or what it is….
Anyone unwise or undiscriminating enough to be listening to RadioLIVE at 2:20 p.m. today (Monday June 8th) would have heard the host desperately making his case….
[2] Jackson once announced live on air that if his “missus” ever fooled around on him, he’d “put a knife through her heart”. Even his co-hosts, John “JT” Tamahere and Dean Lonergan, a gruesome twosome if ever there was a gruesome twosome, were appalled by that one.