Smith and Wilson are just mouthpieces for AFL propaganda - both as credible as a North Korean political spokesman.
Find it really odd/ interesting/ suspicious that the vast majority of articles in the Australian are behind a pay wall… thus difficult for Jo public to access… yet this article is free to all
So the afl has called on one of their dogs to comment eh? I guess.all the interviews with sheeds, bomba, Corcoran etc starting to paint them in a bad light so time to hit back. can’t have that. Protect the brand and so forth. So predictable
So the afl has called on one of their dogs to comment eh? I guess.all the interviews with sheeds, bomba, Corcoran etc starting to paint them in a bad light so time to hit back. can't have that. Protect the brand and so forth. So predictableDave Evans gets a convenient glossing over- "Effectively, Evans was pushed aside"
I’m led to believe that the following has been sent to Mr Smith this morning:
Sir
Re: “Hird has plotted his own tragedy”
The kindest things I can say about the above piece are that it is inaccurate, irresponsible and self-serving drivel.
More specifically though, the decision to waste more ink reheating the fancifully false narrative you’ve persisted with while Mr Hird recovers in hospital is more journalistically grotesque than anything I can remember your corporate stablemate M. Bolt getting up to, at least in recent times.
The oh-so-clever use of the “overdose” metaphor (paragraph 4) was a particularly ghastly highlight.
I should also say, given your castigation of Tim Watson and Graham Cornes, that recent medical research has indicated a failure to appreciate irony may be an early sign of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. You may want to have a check-up.
That is not to say your piece was a surprise. Your collected works on the Essendon drugs matter have been exquisitely timed in the past, so your latest factually incompetent missive arrived roughly when it was expected, much like a discharge from one of the rotten prostates amongst your paper’s remaining (albeit rapidly dwindling) readership.
But I do confess to a morsel of disappointment that the latest dreadful developments in the story didn’t give you even a brief moment of hesitation before penning yet another pile of sanctimonious nonsense and hypocritical invective.
In your defence, I appreciate your views and your columns must be constructed in a way (and to a schedule) that will satiate both click-hungry editors and “brand”-obsessed chairmen and chief executives. Perhaps therefore, I am not being too generous to assume there was a small part of you that briefly contemplated the unseemliness of this and all your previous piffle on the topic.
But even if you did, your works have all been published by your employer’s loss-making rag. Accordingly, I must say congratulations on being one of the few members of the media whose writings – by comparison – make David Leyonhjelm’s public statements suddenly seem like measured, accurate and sensitive pronouncements. He’d no doubt be a fan of The Australian given the number of your colleagues who share his detachment from reality, so I hope he sends a thank you card.
Please don’t feel the need to reply. If I want to know any more about your views I’ll just take my dog for a walk. When he passes last night’s dinner, the results should be pretty consistent with everything you’ve served up in the last 4 years.
I hope you enjoy the beautiful weather on the Peninsula today, and please give my regards to the Press Council when they get in touch.
Regards
[Name]
PS: If your sub-editors wish to print this in the letters section, they are most welcome to use following header:
“Self-righteous cretin can go ■■■■ himself sideways.”
What a wonderful reply. Fatprick is not worthy of further comment.
Dons23, you’re a champion. I was busy composing a letter of rage in my head to the creature when I needed some clean air, so I checked Blitz. You’ve said it all and more. Thank you for reminding us so eloquently that the Australian is a scurrilous rag for giving disgusting pieces like this a place. And thank you for reducing him to the place he belongs.
Dons23, you're a champion. I was busy composing a letter of rage in my head to the creature when I needed some clean air, so I checked Blitz. You've said it all and more. Thank you for reminding us so eloquently that the Australian is a scurrilous rag for giving disgusting pieces like this a place. And thank you for reducing him to the place he belongs.
I also called him a fat piece of sh#t on twitter. That’ll teach him
Great letter above.
I’ve submitted a complaint to the press council, the article is a clear breach of their 6th principle as it brings prejudice, can cause distress and further harm.
It’s definitely there at the bottom as one of the worst hate pieces we’ve endured tjis saga.
There is a false premise in the Smith article. This false premise renders all his anti Hird assertions complete bs. He says that the main / most important role of a coach is compliance. This is and always was complete bs. The main, most important role of a coach is to coach the team.
Well there were some questions asked as to why the AFL had not responded to Hirdy’s health crisis. Now we know they sent the memo direct to the Hunchback of Hate, who then had to get his article proofed word by word by Fitzpatrick to ensure he followed instructions. Hence there was a delay of a few days in publishing what is a piece distilled down to pure shizen.
Report his tweet which he posted the article.
Encourage you to as well, at very least it will get Twitter’s attention and he will be watched.
The Smith article an act of self condemnation.
To portray Demitrou’s unlawful disclousure and subsequent contrivances with Evans to impose a predetermined outcome upon Essendon and Hird, as anything else than a mistake, is absurd.
Vlad’s resignation and the AFL’S own admissions of shortcomings of how it handled the process, leaves him an isolated figure
His continued attack on Hird with these false and unsupported narratives announces himself as a flawed character.
Bruce Francis has replied to Smith:
Subject: Swimming at the bottom of the Yarra
Guys
I have previously honoured Patrick Smith’s request never to contact him, but out of common decency I have cc’d him today. I should think that it would be comforting for the Hird family if you all expressed your disgust at what Patrick wrote.
WHEN PATRICK SMITH LOOKS UP, HE SEES THE BELLIES OF SNAKES AND OTHER ASSORTED SLUGS.
Much to the despair of the self-congratulatory Melbourne football media, the 2017 award for the slimiest, smelliest and most sickening article – always a fiercely competitive event among the accredited and compliant on the banks of the Yarra - has already been awarded.
The Australian Football Media Association judges, a gathering of literary Einsteins if ever there were one (not), gathered in their dingy, underground watering-hole next to one of those cages that catches all the detritus collected from the Yarra and declared unanimously that no journalist, including the lady from Fairfax, could get any lower in the Melbourne Metropolitan Water Board Sewerage System than Patrick Smith has with his diatribe in today’s The Australian.
Though, if his sports editor, Wally Mason, was in the chair last night and allowed this to go to print, then he can share the demersal award with Smith.
In a society that cherishes freedom of speech, if Smith wants to reinforce the belief among many that he is the grubbiest journalist in Australia, then he is entitled to express his opinions.
However, and again in a society that cherishes freedom of speech, and this might be a surprise to Patrick given his careful avoidance of them in the past, his opinions MUST be based on facts. Otherwise they are worthless. Patrick’s comments in The Australian are rendered worthless from the outset.
By holding James Hird not just responsible for what happened at Essendon, but totally responsible, he proves that his avoidance of the facts is not just habitual, but now egregiously so.
It is obvious in his devotion to avoiding the facts, that he has never read the Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Act (2004), nor Hird’s job description, nor has he looked at the Essendon organisational chart that I sent him years ago. It is apparent now that by being continually getting down so low, in among the sewage and other slime, he can’t see beyond the underbelly of the slithering snakes above him.
Patrick Smith and Caroline Wilson decided in their own minds (my first oxymoron for the day) what they thought should be Hird’s job description and then attacked him for not meeting their unpublished job descriptions for Hird.
At the risk of big noting, I should like you to re-tell a story. Many years ago I was chatting to Marius Barnard in South Africa about his brother Christiaan’s wife Barbara. A friend, who was part of the heart transplant team, said Christiaan was the show pony and Marius was the real star of the first heart transplant. Marius said “I notice that my sister-in-law Barbara is pregnant in the Sunday Times again. Well Bruce, in the medical profession we say the only place to be pregnant is in the womb.” On that basis, I believe that if you want to know whether Hird was responsible for what happened at Essendon you must check his actions against his job description and the Victorian Occupational, Health and Safety Act (2004). There is no point reading The Age, The Australian, or the AFL web site.
As Patrick well knows, it is my practice to go through his articles and dissect them to line-by-line, slimy sentence by slimy sentence.
My comment today is to put him on notice that his article in The Australian, as inaccurate as it was insensitive, is going to get the special treatment.
Not a fact avoiding comma or full stop will be missed.
I am told by a few journalists that many of their peers pretend they do not read my articles, but quietly go off into small rooms and there enjoy them, often having a good old chuckle at the expense of the targets.
This forensic analysis of Patrick is not about giving the readers a chuckle. It is about something far more serious than that. It is about the welfare of a young man, a husband, a father, a nephew, a cousin, a friend who is suffering a serious mental illness.
Obviously another fact that Patrick has avoided is the one pushed by Beyond Blue and many other worthy organisations, that mental illness is a disease that requires professional help and most importantly understanding. And certainly not the irrational rantings of an uneducated and ill-informed fact denier like Patrick. The tragedy is it is impossible to imagine that anyone could be so vile at their own volition. The article has all the hallmarks of an orchestrated campaign from the Trojan Horse Sarah.
Patrick, you are formally on notice. The dissection that will ensure your name is written in journalism Hall of Infamy forever is coming to an email address near you.
Bruce Francis.
Care to elaborate on what you meant by your statement, Patrick ?
“…he is now in rehabilation. Drug overdose apparently.”
I bet that comment would not get posted.
Trojan Horse Sarah.
Gold.
Yesterday i had a cab driver try to tell me that Hirdy knew all along that the players were getting illegal injections. Well I was 6 pints in at that stage and I've got a feeling he won't do that again in a hurry. I hope the prick's ears are still ringing.Another great reason to switch to Uber
Unfortunately it was Uber. Enjoy your crap rating buddy.
Hope no one in smith’s family ever suffers from depression
To paraphrase The Wire, You would think a less enlightened man than myself, a cruder man than myself, a man less sensitized to the qualities and charms and value of Patrick Smith- a man like that, not me, but a man like that, he just might call for a bounty to be placed on his head.
Fire the frigging pus bag a mile high over North Korea with a US flag strapped to his ■■■■.
They’d see it.