James Hird Writes for Herald Sun

To be fair - the illiterate fuckwits can’t, actually, read …this forum…

Source?
Once upon a time the jounos union had it sewn up and any contributions had to be labelled " [ real author] as told to [ journo name][".
Ghost writing is different from editing for brevity and factual accuracy, for legal reasons among others.

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He did. It was Robbo.

It’s sad, but true. (Not a Metallica reference.)

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I dub thee unforgiven…

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Yeah, but was he really acting as a ghost writer?

This. The problem I have with the “Robbo ghost wrote for Hird previously” claim is that Robbo can barely form coherent sentences, let-alone paragraphs that flow into each other as effortlessly as Hird’s last two articles. Seriously, he writes the same way he speaks, in small, stilted sentences that often are just inflammatory questions to get a cheap reaction.

Even if you want to posit the theory that he uses Wilson-esque crud just to get viewers and is capable of much more, are we really to believe that he would never write anything insightful under his own name but instead save it all for when he ghost writes for others?

And this isn’t just Hird bias on my part. After he retired Hird did special comments for whomever (can’t remember that far back, damn you alcohol!) and was one of the few truly discerning special comments men, not only adding genuine analysis and knowledge but also understanding that you don’t have to prattle on continuously. He only jumped in when he had something to genuinely say about the game.

On the other hand Robbo continuously comes off as a babbling drunk in both spoken and written form, a sad indictment of the current state of football “journalism” currently.

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No I was referring to this sentence.

“Richmond’s scored an extraordinary 72 points from forward-half turnovers last week and this week has been dominated by talk about the Tigers new-found forward half pressure.”

I reckon that’s the subbies

Robbo again?

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The sentence is too long. I think Robbo would have lost concentration before he reached the end of the sentence.

Regardless, it’s proof of the death of journalism.

There is no inappropriate apostrophe use there.

“Richmond has…” = “Richmond’s…”

Check it yourself:

“AD_Don has alleged inappropriate apostrophe use.”

“AD_Don’s alleged inappropriate apostrophe use.”

In this case, for the reader there is the ambiguity between the possessive (not intended) vs the missing letter (intended). But in normal speech, there would be no problem for the listener to understand the meaning.

OTOH: If the apostrophe was not there, it would indicate multiple cases of Richmond, which not only does not make sense but would be intolerable,

There is a missing apostrophe on “Tigers” though.

So, you complained about an apostrophe that was correctly used but missed the incorrect elision.

Take home message: Jimmy is right, so don’t pick on him.

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But “last week” would require simple past tense not perfect tense, would it not?

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Either can be used. The perfect tense indicates recent past, with a connection to the present.

As a first point, I was being light-hearted in my responses on this topic so please read them in that light. I am a grammar nerd so I do find these discussions interesting, which some people would think is sad.

I agree that the intention is to use the apostrophe to indicate a contraction of “Richmond has”. However, the use of the present perfect tense is inconsistent with “last week” later in the sentence. In my opinion, the perfect tense should have been used instead and the contraction removed. I didn’t spot the missing apostrophe later in the sentence, which is right up there with using canned rather than fresh salmon for a dinner party salmon mousse.

I agree with @Darli that this is clearly the work of a sub-editor as James wouldn’t make any mistakes - something on which I am sure we all agree.

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Dat Hirdy dun rite good.

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Grammarblitz.com

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Far be it for me to buy into grammar politics, but by my reading of that sentence the most appropriate rendering of it would be to remove the 's from Richmond and add an apostrophe to Tigers:

“Richmond scored an extraordinary 72 points from forward-half turnovers last week and this week has been dominated by talk about the Tiger’s new-found forward half pressure.”

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Tigers’ :slight_smile:

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You misspelled ninthmond though.

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A[quote=“hambo, post:220, topic:9987, full:true”]
Tigers’ :slight_smile:
[/quote]

Hambo is correct and gets the elephant stamp.

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