Steve Price: Vanilla, nervous AFL industry needs more personalities like Kane Cornes

Our politically-correct and perpetually nervous AFL industry tries to paint Kane Cornes as some sort of over-the-top outrage merchant who needs to be silenced. But footy desperately needs more entertainers like him.

The AFL needs more colourful participants such as Kane Cornes, Steve Price writes.

On a recent Friday night listening to Triple M’s AFL pre-match coverage, the veteran caller Brian Taylor made the point that he missed the good old days of radio commentary teams hating each other.

BT was glancing along the line of media boxes at the MCG, manned still almost exclusively by men calling on 3AW, SEN and the ABC.

Brian splits his time between the FM station and his main employer Channel 7 and I am a fan of his game commentary and less so of his attempts to still sound young and “with it”. BT is 63 years-old and nearing pension age, still much younger than me at 70.

Taylor was reflecting on the faux outrage over commentary from a fellow Channel 7 AFL figure, Kane Cornes.

The latest apparent disgrace by Kane was him daring to say g’day to Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge on the ground while working for Seven. Cornes had the hide to say hello and stare at Beveridge with many in the media going into meltdown for some reason.

I’m no student of what the outspoken South Australian says on the various midweek shows he appears on, but having been around a long time, like BT, I don’t think Cornes would hold a candle to the feuds of the past.

Kane Cornes defected to Channel 7 last year. Picture: Morgan Hancock

Brian used his experience and sense of history to remember how back in 1997 Triple M, driven by Eddie McGuire, decided to take on the No. 1 football station in Melbourne, 3AW, by securing equal AFL rights to call matches. At the time I was content director at 3AW, and we were flying.

FM was for rock music and comedy teams at breakfast.

Footy fans were rusted onto AW and the ABC, with our main caller Rex Hunt calling the ABC Tobin Brothers (a funeral home) because their call, compared to our over-the-top circus act, was boring.

History shows how wrong I was dismissing FM footy. Driven by Ed, Triple M introduced sophisticated statistics, sideline reports on injuries from experts like Dr Peter Larkins and their radio signal was clearly superior.

In 1997, thousands of footy fans inside the ground would listen to their favourite radio station on basic headphones that predated smartphones, instant stats updates and vision, let alone betting options.

They were the golden days of football coverage on radio. A quick listen back this week on YouTube (give it a try) to the AW call of the 1997 Preliminary Final between the Western Bulldogs and Adelaide Crows had Sam Newman claiming pre-match that if the Crows beat the Bulldogs that day he would “resign from all forms of football media and give the game away forever”.

The Crows did and Sam didn’t.

In the AW box that day were the lead callers including the great Rex Hunt and his offsider Anthony Hudson, Sam Newman on special comments with the late Ronald Dale Barassi and the late legend Robert Walls.

Triple M would poach Sam a year later with a massive financial deal we couldn’t match, splitting up what I consider the best team of radio commentators ever, that also included across that time Peter Daicos and contributors like Garry Lyon and Tim Watson.

My reflection on that period nearly 30 years ago comes as our now politically-correct, woke and nervous AFL industry try and paint Cornes, the former Port Adelaide player, as some sort of over-the-top outrage merchant who needs to be silenced.

I don’t know Kane, but full marks on his ability to be a self-promoter, a talent he obviously inherited from his more famous father Graham Cornes.

Graham was hogging headlines in Adelaide before Kane was even born. A champion SANFL premiership player with Glenelg and a career coach including the first Crows coach in the AFL, Graham also hosted for decades a drivetime sports show on 5AA and is still a daily presence on that station.

Rex Hunt and Sam Newman.

As a fellow South Australian who in my 20s had to try harder to get noticed when moving to Victoria from Adelaide, I also understand why Kane goes so hard.

Kane was poached from the Nine network at the end of last year. Seven had finally woken up to the fact that even though, along with Fox Footy, they were the rights holders to AFL coverage, they were lazy when it came to non-game panel shows.

Cornes’ defection caused a ripple effect with people like Caroline Wilson and Craig Hutchison swapping sides as well.

Football needs people like Kane because as a sport it has become too vanilla, too quick to jump at shadows and too afraid to offer up honest opinions. From the top down the AFL is too keen to stamp out well argued opinions on the direction of the competition and some of the decisions made at head office.

Anyone hinting about the quality of play or size of crowd numbers at AFLW matches for example – as it enters its 10th season – is labelled a misogynist who can’t get their head around the benefits of equal billing for women. Daring to wonder why the quality of umpiring is so poor, or questioning too many rule changes to a game that doesn’t need them, is seen as blasphemy.

Just this week there have been threats of legal action against three high profile commentators – Cornes plus Luke Hodge and Dale Thomas – who dared question the actions of umpires during the Collingwood player Lachie Schultz’s concussion incident.

The AFL Umpires Association claimed the comments cast “aspersions” on their (the umpires) “integrity and professional competence”.

Another of Kane Cornes’ crimes apparently includes his sensible argument that AFL players pre-season weights be included in player profiles with the people in charge of the game saying that was an invasion of privacy.

It’s OK to include height but not weight and I am presuming this is to avoid an even louder outcry from the women’s competition, and no-one would care if that was in their case excluded.

The latest apparent disgrace by Cornes was him daring to say g’day to Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge.

Critics of Kane Cornes should realise that the game has always needed his type of personality and is poorer when political correctness and woke ideology drives characters like him off the air.

We lost Sam Newman and the hugely popular Channel 9 Footy Show because it was seen as too blokey and sexist and in need of a female host to balance it out.

AFL-VFL history is littered with Cornes-like characters, starting with the legends Lou Richards and Jack Dyer, Rex Hunt and Sam, Eddie McGuire and outspoken ex-players like Sam Kekovich, Brad Hardie and Jason Akermanis plus brilliant no-nonsense news breakers like Mike Sheahan and, more recently, Mark Robinson.

The game is poorer for their loss

Like Brian Taylor, I miss the days of aggressive radio station rivalry and the entertainment it generated.

The 3AW pre-match Saturday and Sunday is still a must listen but sadly much of the rest of the electronic coverage has become bland and predictable.

Call me a dinosaur if you like but footy should be entertainment and that needs entertainers and characters that push the limit.

Dislikes

— Treasurer Jaclyn Symes off to New York to lobby for Victoria to keep its credit rating with Treasury this week confessing they have done zero work on what happens if we are downgraded.

— A wind farm in western Victoria shut down after one turbine caught fire – more of that to come sadly.

— Estimates that $30m is spent by local councils picking up illegally dumped rubbish.

— Mornington Shire council – mine – sending out kindergarten flyers minus the Australian flag but including Indigenous and gay pride versions.

Likes

— Neale Daniher’s annual round of inspiration lining up for Big Freeze number 11 – what a star.

— Ukraine’s incredible drone attacks knocking our Russian long-range bombers and the bridge linking Russia and Crimea.

— Tesla sales slump 70 per cent in Australia this last month as the Chinese EV’s take over.

— Sensible outrage at plans to limit East Melbourne speed limits to 30 km/h – ridiculous.

Originally published as Steve Price: Vanilla, nervous AFL industry needs more personalities like Kane Cornes