C'mon, Brendon Gale, let's be more frankMike Sheahan | August 11, 2009
CALL it sour grapes, join the queue to tell me I'm precious, say it doesn't really matter, but ... The simmering hostility between the media on one side and players and officialdom on the other isn't always fuelled by those of us in the news business.
Here's an example of how frustrating it can be from our side.
I called AFL Players' Association chief executive Brendon Gale on Friday and, after the usual pleasantries, said: "Brendon, are you going back to Richmond as CEO?"
"Who told you that?" he asked.
I replied that the source was immaterial, adding his response was a dead giveaway about the validity of the question.
Then he said: "I don't know what you're talking about."
Really? I said: "I hear (chief executive) Stephen Wright is going and you're going to take his place."
Not the case, he said. Repeat, not happening.
He had to know what I was talking about because he was to say to me on the phone on Sunday night: "If you had have asked me the question in a different way, I would have had to say 'no comment'."
To me, Gale saying "I don't know what you're talking about" constituted a lie.
After so many years in this business and knowing how a word here or there, even the wrong tense, can provide an "out" for someone not wishing to confirm a breaking story, I pushed on, saying I had heard the powerful Richmond past players' group was pushing for the change.
He said: "Look, from time to time, people talk to you about jobs," adding what I understood to be a message that asked why the head of the powerful (and rich) players' association would want to go back to administration at club level?
I said to Gale I wouldn't be writing anything on the issue for the next day (last Saturday) because I trusted him and took him at his word, adding I would expect him to contact me if something material happened on that issue.
Sunday night, I received an sms from Gale saying: "I just want to reiterate that, when you asked me at midday on Friday whether I was considering an offer to join RFC as CEO, and I said 'no', I was being straight with you."
I replied: "What does that mean?"
He said: "Nothing, just
that there wasn't an offer to consider."
I called him and he said, "how are you?". I said that depended on the answer to the next question -- "Are you going back to Richmond as CEO?"
"No comment," he said.
Enough said.
The day after our Friday conversation, he had tendered his resignation to Joel Bowden, the AFLPA president and a former Richmond teammate.
Must have been some offer to have been offered and accepted inside 24 hours.
Three weeks ago, the AFLPA hosted a luncheon in the board room of a city legal firm to try to improve detente between the association and its members, and the media.
It was a function held in a spirit of co-operation and mutual interest.
Gale, who co-hosted the function, talked about respect and transparency and the upside of healthier relations. We parted warm and fuzzy.
I suspect most of you side with Gale on this one.
Let me ask, though, how can officials plead with us to ring them before we write stories, when they won't take calls or, worse, lie?
Sour grapes?
Maybe, but here's the closing address to the jury: our fundamental task role is to chase/break/report/analyse news.
Stories don't have to be gift-wrapped, but we are entitled to one concession, that we're not told lies.
Yes, I have made my share of mistakes. Those mistakes, though, have been based on considered views of the facts as I knew them, and what I saw as reasonable assumptions.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,25911345-19742,00.html
