Susie O’Brien: Much-hyped Footy Show return of Eddie falls flat

WITHOUT the sexist, racist, homophobic jokes there’s nothing much left to The Footy Show, with the much-hyped return of Eddie McGuire falling flat, writes Susie O’Brien.

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WITHOUT the sexist, racist, homophobic jokes there’s nothing much left to The Footy Show.

Thursday night’s much-hyped return of Eddie McGuire fell flat.

It’s a format that hasn’t kept pace with the times, despite ongoing line-up changes. The show was heavy on football, light on humour.

The leaked Braveheart skit wasn’t as funny as it needed to be. Eddie McGuire was dressed as William Wallace and roared through the Channel Nine carpark on horseback, watched by a bemused Sam Newman and Rebecca Maddern.

The leaked Braveheart skit wasn’t as funny as it needed to be. Picture: Alex Coppel

“He’s not going to be like this every week, is he?” they ask.

Let’s hope not, is the obvious clear answer.

Newman, looking more and more like “cat woman” Jocelyn Wildenstein every day, was dull and fractious.

His only moment of potential strife came when he stirred up Essendon player Andy McGrath, telling him there was no gender in Canada, but no one picked it up and ran with it.

Thank goodness.

Then he told us his favourite pick-up line. “You. In car now” — or something equally awful.

We wanted to laugh. What we got was Joel Selwood’s foot.

We wanted some jokes. What we got was lots of live ads and sponsor plugs.

We wanted to be entertained. What we got was Damian Barrett and Eddie McGuire defending violent abuser Ben Cousins and lamenting the fact it was “unfortunate” he didn’t get early release from prison.

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We wanted some jokes. What we got was lots of live ads and sponsor plugs.

It shows that without Newman’s questionable humour the show has little left — just straight talk about football, which they do quite well.

But they seem unable to do it in a non-obnoxious humorous way, which is what the show needs to do.

Their opponents on Channel Seven’s The Front Bar do it better. Much better.

To be fair, fans should give the new line-up a few weeks to bed down, but the signs aren’t great.

McGuire, we’re reminded, is the straight man. He was great when he was surrounded by talent like Trevor Marmalade, but now seems out of place.

The only highlight was the Gogglebox rip-off “Footybox” segment, which hit the mark with many viewers who expressed their appreciation on Twitter.

Things spiced up slightly towards 10pm when Billy Brownless and Shane Crawford backed up the truck. But they didn’t have a role to play and the segment turned out to be just more pushing of sponsor brands.

Eddie McGuire was great when he was surrounded by talent like Trevor Marmalade, but now seems out of place.

Clearly, it was a waste of time for them to be there. The panel members were left doing all the cheering for the crowd in a slightly desperate way.

The only touch of the old show was Sam’s mailbag, but even that was not quite funny enough to make up for the rest of it.

By the end credits — which rolled in at 10.48pm — Rebecca Maddern told Newman: “Thanks for talking”.

He needn’t have bothered; he didn’t have anything worthwhile to add to the show.

The fun is back, the promos suggested.

They need to work on it.