Time to stick it to Malcolm conn for the diabolical state of cricket, considering he was bragging how much money they have etc. 

most of the staff have been stood down, nobody watching the game overseas and reports now channel seven is trying to tear up their contract. 

thats weird

Whenever I see him, I touch him awkwardly and he buckles, doesn't say a word. He is an awkward bloke, funny to see. 

He hangs around Martin Place a lot. 

People should get into that Conn scumbag for all eternity.   

442 article on Malcolm Conn battening down the hatches: https://www.fourfourtwo.com.au/news/fans-revenge-at-football-hating-cricket-commentator-487905

His last tweet just before the story broke was particularly delicious, gloating at WSW losing a sponsor, directly before cricket lost $20 million and counting thanks to his team's disgraceful act lol

Malcolm Conn, the guy that kept writing all of those anti football tweets, is also the Senior Communications Manager for Cricket Australia. I reckon he's done a terrible job with this current cricket shmozzle. The story has changed day after day, we haven't heard the truth, it's taken ages for dribs and drabs of information to come out, Warner hasn't fronted the press conference etc etc. 
In my view, Malcolm Conn has been really poor at his job.
Now, he used to work for Newscorp, and I haven't seen 1 mention of his name,  in any newscorp article. Mmmmm, I wonder why. Also, they seem to block anyone making negative comments about him in the comments section of articles.

Maybe the Fairfax papers will be a bit more open to someone making a comment on how poor the communications have been under good ol Malcolm's stewardship. Feel free to join me if you like.

My understanding is he was always a fan of the game; he just used to reckon we had a chip on our shoulder about football not being No.1 here. But as you said, he's seen the light for a while now.

^ used to be quite derogatory but has changed and is a very reasonable and sensible voice. In fact, he now regularly sticks up for the game calling out all the BS from other media. 

Something a little difference, anyone know if the author is pro-AFL, NRL or what?

Matthew Lodge's NRL return doesn't pass the smell test and overshadows the start of league season

  By Offsiders columnist Richard Hinds     Updated   about 10 hours ago


  

There are some who believe the NRL's contentious decision to allow Matthew Lodge to play with the Brisbane Broncos this season will somehow be good for rugby league.This assumption is not based on teammate Darius Boyd's hopeful prediction Lodge will one day be a State of Origin star or Wayne Bennett's yearning for (yet another) fairy tale premiership.It is due to the false premise that the NRL is the cockroach of national competitions and nothing, not matter how toxic, can kill it. That "rugby league thrives on scandal!"This misconception has led the most vituperative of the media hacks and crisis merchants to justify their salacious gossip, agenda-riddled headlines and associated bile with the self-serving mantra: "Rugby league thrives on scandal!"Of course the NRL does not thrive on scandal; it somehow survives despite it. Largely because the game is at an athletic peak and the baked-on fans are touchingly loyal, even while some of those supposed to administer, publicise, exalt or provide subjective analysis on the competition too often let them down.Lodge was cleared to play for the Broncos in early November — when the pending Ashes series was the main subject of media conversation. His despicable action in terrorising a woman and a New York family occurred in October 2015.These time lapses have been used both to justify Lodge's registration and to shoot those messengers now condemning the NRL's decision."It happened a long time ago and Matthew has changed" and "If it is such a bad decision, why didn't anyone object three months ago?" are the rather limp defences used by those more interested in having Lodge in a Broncos jersey than seeing him pay fair restitution to his traumatised victims.


 
Of course, it is what takes place during those time periods rather than the time itself that is telling. And Lodge's days were clearly not filled with the acts of contrition and, particularly, compensation that would guarantee the privilege of playing in the NRL.Lodge's powerful agent clearly presented a compelling case to NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg that his client was fully rehabilitated. So compelling Greenberg said he had looked into Lodge's eyes and been convinced he was fit to reclaim his place in the game.Unfortunately, Greenberg does not seem to have looked in the eyes of Lodge's traumatised victims, including the then nine year-old boy who still suffers night tremors because of the attack, and comprehended the lasting harm the player he is embracing has caused.

Victims had no say in Lodge decision

In criminal court cases often the most compelling moment is the victim impact statement.     Media player: "Space" to play, "M" to mute, "left" and "right" to seek. It is only in recent days — including in an interview with the ABC's 7.30 — that we have heard from the victims of Lodge's awful crime spree and gotten a deeper understanding of the depth of his wrongdoing and the long-term damage caused.So even if we didn't jump up and down three months ago when Lodge was reinstated, surely we are entitled to make a noise upon hearing this testimony.And if this is not enough to change the minds of those who believe Lodge deserves his golden ticket, or just happy the Broncos had picked up a cheap front-rower, it was reported in the Sunday Telegraph that the NRL was aware Lodge had pleaded guilty to assaulting a former girlfriend some time ago.This is at odds with the NRL's previous statements and, particularly, the league's stance that Lodge was being given a "second chance".Make that a third chance, and one that puts Greenberg in a particularly sticky situation.Greenberg was Canterbury Bulldogs chief executive when evidence of an alleged domestic assault involving champion fullback Ben Barba was not revealed to the NRL.That was something that could have could have cost Greenberg the chance to assume his now powerful position, even as he maintained he had acted in the best interests of everyone concerned.Safe to say if Greenberg has succumbed to the wishes of powerful agents and clubs in reinstating Lodge while not taking the very serious previous offence into consideration, he won't be the most popular man at White Ribbon Day or Women in League Round this season.

Testing times for league administration

 
At this point, you might normally suggest this is the first moment when new Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter Beattie could step in, flex a bit of muscle and restore confidence in the game's administration.But, rugby league being rugby league, you wonder if Queensland-based, Brisbane Broncos-supporting Beattie would choose this as the first boat to rock.As it is, Lodge's reinstatement has overshadowed what should be a joyous start to the season; one preceded by a warm tribute to the brilliant Jonathan Thurston and Cameron Smith and before which, quite cleverly, the NRL has promoted the hope created by stars such as Cooper Cronk who have defected to new clubs, not bemoaning the loss of the "one team player".Some will continue to claim any crisis, whether caused by questionable decisions like the Lodge case or confected by the worst of the game's media muckrakers, maintains interest in the NRL.Of course, instead, it merely creates a stench that causes many to ignore or actively avoid what is, in so many other ways, a fantastic competition.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-05/hinds-matthew-lodge-return-testing-nrls-scandal-threshold/9507650

that he was associated with ethics standards is a joke in the first place

No surprises to see that Bullshitting Brett Guerin the Vic Pol Assitant Commisioner that routinely came out speaking agaisnt football fans, saying games were not safe for families like at the AFL etc has been exposed as a unhinged and deceptive racist, using alias' to attack people on the internet. 

Edit: I take back what i said, should have paid more attention to the video. Yeah that is fucked

NSW Police?

https://mobile.twitter.com/9NewsSyd/status/962593323763421185/video/1

Wow. Drink some cement Princess(es)

Has Australian Open crowd behaviour crossed the line in 2018?
JANUARY 17, 20188:49pm




Chris Cavanagh Herald Sun


AUSTRALIAN John Millman has hit out at noisy fans who “crossed the line” during his hard fought four-set loss to Bosnian Damir Dzumhur.

Show Court 3 at Melbourne Park had an atmosphere more associated with a soccer game than a tennis match, supporters causing frustrations for both players who made their feelings clear with the chair umpire.


http://www.news.com.au/sport/tennis/has-australian-open-crowd-behaviour-crossed-the-line-in-2018/news-story/7fc01e795fe95b459460513ee6440543

I didn't think it was possible for someone to be a bigger douche than John Elliot. Well I was wrong, I didn't count on his son Tom. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree does it.

Elliott: Bring your culture, not your hatred

THE demonstration outside the State Library was stupid and ill-conceived. The fact that US President Donald Trump shifted the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem shouldn’t anger Melburnians.

These kind of protests have the potential to raise foreign tensions that have no place in Australia. And let’s face it, there’s nothing local demonstrators can achieve that will influence events in the Middle East. These placard-waving demonstrators need to grow a brain before they engage in such un-Australian behaviour.

It’s time we realised that imported ethnic rivalries have no place in this country.

PROTESTS OVER DONALD TRUMP’S RECOGNITION OF JERUSALEM

TRUMP’S ISRAEL SHIFT LESS ABOUT MIDDLE EAST, MORE TO APPEASE SUPPORTERS

For decades we’ve happily welcomed migrants from all corners of the globe — but we need to take a stand against public displays of historic friction based on religion, race and culture.


Pro Palestinian protesters march through Melbourne’s CBD. Picture: Jason Edwards

A pro Israeli group in support of Donald Trump outside the State Library. Picture: Jason Edwards
And that’s why Wednesday’s antagonism between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrators deserves condemnation. If those who took part in this protest are so keen to re-fight the wars of the Middle East, let’s deport them overseas where they can hate each other to their hearts’ content.

Conflict between Jews and Muslims goes back a long, long time. Members of those two rival religions have hated and killed each other on a regular basis since the 7th Century. Right now the well-organised Israelis appear to have the upper hand against Islamic rivals such as the Palestinians.

That may change in the future, indeed as it has on many occasions in the past.

GREG BARTON: WHAT ON EARTH WAS PRESIDENT TRUMP THINKING?

Australia has very little to do with such an ancient Middle Eastern conflict. We neither caused its many hatreds, nor can we prevent them from recurring.

So why do groups led by the pro-Palestinian Antifa (Anti-Fascist) and Avi Yemini (former Israeli soldier now aligned with the Australian Conservatives) feel the need to protest on our streets? Just what are they trying to prove?

Most Jewish refugees who made their way to Australia after the end of WWII came to Australia because this nation offered a peaceful haven from the horrors of Nazi-decimated Europe. Many Muslims arrived here for the same reason — to avoid the bloodshed in places such as Iraq and Syria.

Yet for reasons that are unfathomable to the rest of us, some members of both groups seem determined to continue their violent rivalries down under.

Of course, such ethnic anger isn’t limited to migrants from the Middle East.

For a long time in Australia, relations between Catholics and Protestants were tense as their relatives in the troubled British province of Northern Ireland bombed, shot and kneecapped each other.

MORE TOM ELLIOTT

A good friend of mine’s Protestant father regularly marched through Belfast’s Catholic neighbourhoods during the late 1960s and early 70s. After receiving death threats from Irish Republican Army-affiliated groups there, he migrated to Australia, only to find Northern Ireland’s tensions repeated here.

Until the late 1990s, for example, the now-defunct Normandy Hotel in Clifton Hill displayed a plaque proclaiming that the pub was “Proudly sponsored by the Sinn Fein Gaelic Athletic Association”. At the time, Sinn Fein was the political arm of the IRA — and “proudly” active in Melbourne’s inner-north, half a world away from troubled Belfast.

Other foreign rivalries also have made their presence felt here. At the 2007 Australian Open tennis, for example, groups of Croatian and Serbian supporters clashed in Garden Square.


Serbian and Croatian fans scuffle in Garden Square in 2007. Picture: Getty
Flags were waved, insults hurled, bottles smashed and punches thrown. “Die Croatians, die,” chanted Serbs at their opponents. All because dozens of young men, most of whom had been born and raised in Australia, thought it appropriate to reignite the vicious Yugoslav wars of the 1990s at a local tennis tournament. What idiots they were.

Australian soccer also has a chequered past of hate-filled ethnic antagonism. In the old National Soccer League (1977-2004), just about every Victorian club identified with one Southern European country or another. Fans of teams such as South Melbourne Hellas (Greek), Brunswick Juventus (Italian), Footscray JUST (Yugoslavian) and Preston Makedonia (no translation required) often required separation by police because of violence at games. Sometimes matches had to be played before empty grandstands to avoid nationalistic grandstanding.

There is no room in Australia for such imported hatred. A significant number of migrants come here because they’re fleeing racial tension in their homeland. The last thing any of them should want to be confronted by is the vicious rivalries of the Middle East, Northern Ireland, the Balkans — or anywhere else — being replayed on the streets of Melbourne.

The solution is simple. Masked protesters should be thrown in jail. Ditto for any demonstrator who assaults police. Extra costs associated with law enforcement at protests should be levied against those who cause the problems.

And for any troublemakers who aren’t Australian citizens? Deportation to their foreign conflict of choice. Sadly, there are plenty from which to choose.

@TomElliott3AW


http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/tom-elliott/tom-elliott-bring-your-culture-not-your-hatred/news-story/8d72343813964db7d6c305dab85fb103

WHINGECOGLOU Part 2. And shit I agree with him again. 

Ange’s biggest blunder rises from wounds of old wars

• The Australian
• 12:00AM November 18, 2017
• Save
• • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on email
  • Share more...

• PATRICK SMITH

  

  Senior sports commentator

  Melbourne

  @Smithersss

  

Our place among the 32 countries for the finals in Russia next year was concreted in with a laboured 3-1 win against Honduras on Wednesday night in front of nearly 80,000 fans. Yet coach Ange Postecoglou did what he always does: followed a win with an even better whinge. Whingecoglou. Apparently he doesn’t like the nickname and so he bleats about it.

Here is the problem. Postecoglou — who is obviously a very good coach — is somehow unaware that he is talking to two audiences.

There are people and officials from the past he does not have much time for. Fair enough, that is his prerogative. He was hurt when he lost the national youth job and he must have felt Craig Foster, a loud and consistent critic, spoke for the sport when they had their live TV argument in 2006. And, in fairness, replays and revision make it appear Postecoglou was ambushed. So if he thinks Foster’s interrogation of him was a premeditated humiliation then his back would still be a portable cutlery display. And it is hard to imagine the wounds ever mending when contemporaries Mark Bosnich and Robbie Slater continue to set the table.

To people who have been won over late by football and the glamour of the World Cup, then Postecoglou’s recent behaviour falls just short of bizarre.

For instance, after Wednesday night’s win which guaranteed Australia a fifth World Cup appearance, Postecoglou said: “Mate, if people still think I go round worrying about what people think and looking for some kind of vindication, they’ve missed the last 20 years,” he said.

“I won my first championship when I was 31 years old, and you know what, I could coach for another 20 years and I’ll always be an outsider in Australian football.

“I don’t have the glittering Socceroo career that you need, but that’s fine, I’ll wear it as a badge of honour. The more comes my way, the more I’ll go down my own path.”

What does that mean? To people who have only come late to soccer it appears code for something altogether sinister.

Postecoglou has run a campaign against sections of the media through the media and in doing so lost, or at the very least loosened, the loyalty of supporters. Both rusted on and clinging on.

What had drawn sporting fans to Postecoglou was his directness, honesty and refusal to fall into the simplistic and offensive teacher-talk of the modern coach. He treated players and public as peers and everybody was welcome aboard the Socceroos journey.

His decision late in the qualifying stages to change the team’s formation was not challenged by the public. Ange knows best. But when he fell to the level of the C grade coach, not commenting on his future in the World Cup after the qualifying rounds, he was taken to be just another coach still bleeding from previous wars. We saw the man considered by many — and rightly so — to be the best coach of any code playing the tricks of the infantile. The public had bought tickets to the World Cup and Ange was presumed to be driving all the way.

He failed to see that while going after those in the media who held serious concerns about a change in style he was confusing and, in fact, betraying those who saw him as an Australian taking on the world with panache and confidence.

He admitted as much 24 hours after this week’s game. “I’ve had support all the way along, I’ve just not conveyed that. I’ve always felt well supported by the general public. I’ve loved every minute of this job, the greatest,” he said.

The swing continued: “It makes no difference at the end of the day. For me, it’s making sure that I prepare the team well and that we perform like we did the other day (in Saturday’s first leg against Honduras). It’s nice to get the rewards and, most importantly, to give the 70-odd thousand people a memorable night. That’s why you’re involved in the game.

“It’s about, hopefully, creating moments that will outlast your representation in whatever capacity and that’s the opportunity that exists tomorrow night.

“More than anything else, it is to create a special moment for everyone involved for Australian football and everyone else in the country.”

Here is Postecoglou speaking to that large portion of sports fans who were so taken by him in the A-League and before he took over the national job. As he read the headlines he so despises he must have realised — or someone kind told him — that in going after his enemies in the media he was losing the bulk of his army.

Every coach is forced to withstand attacks — legitimate or just baseless passion. Ange felt he had right on his side and sought to show it. He didn’t do it very well and lost his late believers in the haranguing. Ange might not take Australia to Russia because he took the support of his countrymen and women for granted. And that has been Whingecoglou’s greatest and most inexplicable blunder.

Ange’s biggest blunder rises from wounds of old wars

"So Kevin Sheedy why is it that Aussie Rules is so much better than soccer? "
"Well, because it is just quite incredible"
... Well, pack 'er up boys. It's over. We can't compete with that! Fold the HAL. Scrap the NPL. Chuck all your round balls in the bin. Did you hear what he said?! Quite Incredible! 

Why'd he even feel the need to reference soccer at all the old gimp

Interesting the comments towards football are the same anti-migrant stuff that was prominent in the 1950s the tone never changed they just removed the racist undertones. Can't say wog anymore so replace it with 'soccer player' and they can keep their racist diatribe.

the biggest enemy to oz football is the var. 

was trying to work out the chart a couple of posts above but its a 2015 morgan poll ... I answered myself

Articulate? Any good examples of this?

So inspiring it just gets beaten out by retired players who take up surfing.

That may be so, but we are talking about someone who still believes his code can conquer all of Australia and eventually take off overseas:laugh:

The bloke's a senile piece of shit - the national gene-pool will be that much cleaner for his passing.

You have to admit, as brutally offensive as that quote is, the man is very articulate and fluent

Ol' mate Sheeds at it again in today's Herald Sun (where else?)...

Haha yep, i was reading it and wondering why it was in this thread and then he went and mentioned that.

Maybe Fitzsimons should go back to talking about his diet seems to make more sense then is football observations.