robjoenz posted:
DaveO, you've tried to pick apart SGID's post implying he was defending the Australian journalists but I think his point was that the situation wasn't managed very well by the GB management.
If you read the first paragraph of his/her post they says:
"The reason the press over here have suggested it was due to gambling was because Long was spotted at Sydney Airport departing, they then rang GB Management and no comment was being made."
Everything in his argument stems from this which is exactly as Dave Wood says, adding 2+2 and getting 38.
He was spotted at the airport so he must have been gambling? Right......
I agree with him/her; if a statement had been made earlier then maybe the journalists wouldn't have came up with all sorts of stories.
To say he went home for gambling is not just bad reporting it is liablous. There is no justification for that including no comment from the GB management.
It's no defence for journalists who may be making stories up to sell papers but it's a fact of life, unfortunately, and something GB management should be aware of.
It is not a fact of life that when the journos don't know the facts that they can get away with liable and while the GB management ought to have known there would be speculation over the reaosn for Longs departure I can't see how their lack of response justifies the rubbish printed in the Aussie and UK press.
The way Woods has back tracked over the earlier reports and tried to justify them by outlining the sequence of events he did in his diary on the 14th is tacit acknowledgement he was wrong to have jumped on the bandwagon in the first place.
As I have already said the whole thing has been handled badly by GB but the press are far from blameless in this and hove no excuse for being so wide of the mark.
We now know Long came home because he was tired! No big issue with his wife's pregnancy so his personal issues are all self centred ones.
Absolutely pathetic in my opinion but even so it does not justify the Aussie media going off so far in the wrong direction.
Dave
Not impressed at all. St Helens are breeding a whinging closed camp cuilture IMO. Anderson does not support the international game. We have had Cunnigham acting like a primadonna and now Long. What is it with British sportsmen. When faced with a challenge they crumble. Trecothick in the cricket and Long here. Mentally fatigued my a... . Faced with a hard game, he ran home.
