Channel 9’s ageing commentary misses the mark

It is a formula that has been ageing the Channel 9 commentary, with a few exceptions, for years. But footy fans can’t be conned anymore. They know too much.

If it is at all possible, Channel 9’s commentary team continues to get older, even with the injection of supposed young blood like Sam Thaiday.

My colleague Gorden Tallis copped a backhander from Thaiday on the Sunday Footy Show when he attacked Tallis for his concerns over Josh Dugan’s ability to find an injury.

“Gorden Tallis gets paid good money to make some controversial comments sometimes and Josh Dugan is just on the hit-list this week,” Thaiday said, as if that was all Tallis was trying to achieve.

Peter Sterling, who looks more and more like Vladimir Putin’s grandpa as each year passes, labelled Tallis’s comments “harsh”.

Gorden Tallis’ came under fire for his criticism of Josh Dugan. Picture: Getty Images

Sterling and Thaiday subscribe to the Old School Playbook which states, among former players, that “if you don’t criticise me then I won’t criticise you”.

It is a formula that has been ageing the Nine commentary, with a few exceptions, for years.

It worked a treat until audiences got better educated than they ever were in the pre-internet days.

Footy fans can’t be conned anymore. They know too much. In recent weeks Sterling has been at pains to criticise me, while not actually mentioning me, for calling Brad Fittler the “heavyweight champion of luck”.

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Channel 9’s Peter Sterling.

“The one thing I will say, and I don’t want to say anymore, there was no luck involved,” Sterling told Triple M, among others.

“By saying he was lucky in any shape or form belies the weeks, months of planning and preparation that it takes.”

Fittler, who also works at Nine, showed class when asked about it after the Blues won the series.

“Someone wrote that I’ve had a bit of luck and, without a doubt,” he said.

Fittler acknowledges his luck while Sterling claims it is all in the planning.

He could be right. Sterling, for his part, was involved in one Origin series. He lost.