Let me just preface this by saying that I am under no illusion at all that I can do anything, at this point, to alter the parts of Australian culture that I found most obnoxious when I grew up there. However, it does do me good to put on paper some things that I think about the sorts of fuckwits I had to tolerate for years on the sports fields, and off them, even if the recipient is unlikely to read beyond the second line, and even more unlikely to respond, unless it's just to say "Fuck You, Arsehole."
So be it.
This is to Leigh Matthews, coach of the Brisbane Lions, runner-up in the 2004 Australian Football League (Australian Rules footy) after three straight premierships. His nickname ever since his playing days in the late 1960s and 1970s has been "Lethal" Leigh Matthews. After his team staged an all-out campaign of thuggery against their opponents in the grand final, but nevertheless lost badly, several of their players were considered likely to be called before the tribunal, including the repeat offender Jonathan Brown, a true-blue dickhead if ever there was one.
Sept. 27, 2004
Mr Matthews,
I'd like to help you to seek help to deal with Jonathan Brown's habit of knuckling whoever he can. Perhaps the assistance you could use is a mirror? I've followed your career for its duration, and am a little surprised that you can't see that he, like so many of your players, reflects your own behavior on the field, and your own coaching ethos. It's not a coincidence, surely, that your team has so many knucklers: the Akermanises, the Lynches, those nasty brothers in the backline... The Browns, the Vosses, the Charmans... And there are so many more. In fact, your team's approach to the game, as was exemplified in its disgraceful behavior on Saturday, is merely an execution of the "lethalism" of your peculiar nickname. Raising the level of thuggery, niggling, after-the-play shoving, scrapping, and jumperpunching has been an earmark of your team's style. You like to work the margins of legality, regardless of how unseemly the behaviors are that you encourage and presumably order your players to engage in.
So, it's amusing, I have to say, to hear your string of whines about how your poor old team has been undone by this and that decision of the powers-that-be. I suspect that that posturing, too, is an exercise in manoeuvering for advantage. It certainly lowers the tone, and makes you seem something like paranoid. Oh, so the league is out to "get" you, is it?
I suspect that it's time you took a bit of a step back, to take stock of how unhealthily obsessed with winning you are, and always have been, and how damaging that can be to character development, socialization, and even mental health. I'm talking about winning at whatever cost to your colleagues on other teams. At whatever cost to concepts like sportsmanship and fair play.
It's sad to see that the old-style Australian yobo male mentality can continue to thrive, and to be accommodated by the AFL.
Sincerely,
So be it.
This is to Leigh Matthews, coach of the Brisbane Lions, runner-up in the 2004 Australian Football League (Australian Rules footy) after three straight premierships. His nickname ever since his playing days in the late 1960s and 1970s has been "Lethal" Leigh Matthews. After his team staged an all-out campaign of thuggery against their opponents in the grand final, but nevertheless lost badly, several of their players were considered likely to be called before the tribunal, including the repeat offender Jonathan Brown, a true-blue dickhead if ever there was one.
Sept. 27, 2004
Mr Matthews,
I'd like to help you to seek help to deal with Jonathan Brown's habit of knuckling whoever he can. Perhaps the assistance you could use is a mirror? I've followed your career for its duration, and am a little surprised that you can't see that he, like so many of your players, reflects your own behavior on the field, and your own coaching ethos. It's not a coincidence, surely, that your team has so many knucklers: the Akermanises, the Lynches, those nasty brothers in the backline... The Browns, the Vosses, the Charmans... And there are so many more. In fact, your team's approach to the game, as was exemplified in its disgraceful behavior on Saturday, is merely an execution of the "lethalism" of your peculiar nickname. Raising the level of thuggery, niggling, after-the-play shoving, scrapping, and jumperpunching has been an earmark of your team's style. You like to work the margins of legality, regardless of how unseemly the behaviors are that you encourage and presumably order your players to engage in.
So, it's amusing, I have to say, to hear your string of whines about how your poor old team has been undone by this and that decision of the powers-that-be. I suspect that that posturing, too, is an exercise in manoeuvering for advantage. It certainly lowers the tone, and makes you seem something like paranoid. Oh, so the league is out to "get" you, is it?
I suspect that it's time you took a bit of a step back, to take stock of how unhealthily obsessed with winning you are, and always have been, and how damaging that can be to character development, socialization, and even mental health. I'm talking about winning at whatever cost to your colleagues on other teams. At whatever cost to concepts like sportsmanship and fair play.
It's sad to see that the old-style Australian yobo male mentality can continue to thrive, and to be accommodated by the AFL.
Sincerely,
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