Forget rugby league, Australia’s most talented niggler has always been Paul Keating. Arguably no figure in any sport has understood how to get under an opposition’s skin with quite the same persistent mordacity as the former prime minister in the ’90s. “How you going over there, Curly? Old darling?” he goaded Alexander Downer during question time in February 1995. When the Liberal Party leader reacted in exactly the way Keating had hoped (some shouting and some name-calling), he simply mimed reeling in the imaginary fish he’d just caught. “This is a salmon that actually jumps on the hook for you,” he said, high on his own supply, before eyeing Peter Costello and John Howard on the frontbench. “In fact, there are three or four of them there.”
Love him or not – and he is polarising – Keating commanding a room of adversaries was a rare act of theatre. One worthy of an actual theatre adaptation, and even a 65,000-member Facebook group called The Paul Keating Insult Appreciation Society. If he played cricket, he would probably be motor-mouthing at first slip. If he played rugby league, he might give Reed Mahoney a run for his money. And in 2024 that would be saying something, given Mahoney’s blossoming reputation as a peerless wind-up merchant.
Reed Mahoney clashes with the Rigers’ Alex Seyfarth.Credit: Getty
There’s a chirpiness about the Canterbury hooker that seems to qualify him as an automatic entrant to every little on-field flare-up and guarantee him as a recipient of headbutts (Alex Seyfarth) and tunnel dust-ups (Jack Hetherington). Those two incidents in consecutive games cost Mahoney $2800 in fines, but they cost Seyfarth and Hetherington more in mental fortitude (and the latter a one-match ban). All hot and bothered by a sharp tongue and a glint in the eye.
If niggling is an art, Mahoney is Monet. An impressionist with spontaneous execution, violating norms with unconstrained brushstrokes and pissing off the conventional types wedded to the spirit of the game. But does it actually work?
To fans of every NRL team bar the Bulldogs, Mahoney is an excuse-in-waiting. He is a name on the tips of tongues when a player from their own side is sanctioned – because “Reed Mahoney does this every single week and gets nothing for it”. To Bulldogs supporters “he may be a grub, but he’s our grub”. It is an important distinction, in that both allude to at least some value in the nuggety No.9’s extracurricular activities.
Canterbury have arguably needed a grub for some time (approximately the seven seasons spent outside the finals, including one wooden spoon and two second-last finishes), and appear to be reaping the benefits of the little man in their corner riling up some of the bigger men and then pitying the “big-man syndrome” he said fuelled their retaliations.
His coach Cameron Ciraldo praised his player for stopping rivals from “walking all over” the Bulldogs, who sit sixth on the ladder at the regular season’s halfway point. “Our team in the past has been stood over and there’s been nothing done about it,” Ciraldo said last month. “They’ve made a pact this year that they’re not going to let that happen any more, and Reed’s a leader who loves his mates. If something happens, he’s going to be the first one there. That’s the sort of team we want to be.”
Jack Hetherington and Reed Mahoney in the tunnel.Credit: FoxSports
Rivals, meanwhile, may become frustrated not only while actually playing against Mahoney, but also in the weeks leading up to playing him. The 26-year-old’s reputation for infamy now almost precedes him, and – as they say – anticipation can be worse than the experience itself. In theory, this could create anticipatory anxiety and overthinking which can detract from performance. Conversely, the knowledge you are about to play a known agitator may have the opposite effect, providing ammunition for an enhanced performance where there would have otherwise been none.
Most of the evidence for either side is only anecdotal. Anything beyond that would constitute a rigorous, perhaps impossible, undertaking for social scientists. Because how to do you measure the capacity of one individual – the sole owner of their unique set of genetics, learned behaviours, idiosyncrasies, and culture and socio-economic background – to irritate another individual possessing their own singular set of the above?
The variables are infinite. What annoys one person might endear another. What angers one might make another laugh, or have no effect at all. A particular word or even the tone of a voice could elicit vastly different feelings depending on the nature of the recipient’s experiences and insecurities.
Nevertheless, some academics have tried. A 2018 paper in the Journal of Sports Sciences, titled Effects of antisocial behaviour on opponent’s anger, attention, and performance, attempted to uncover whether sledging in sport actually works. The researchers paired up novice basketballers for a free-throw shooting exercise, with the aim of shooting more baskets than the other from 10 attempts each. As each was about to take their turn, the other was instructed to either verbally distract them (“Make sure your laces are done up”; “Look at that squirrel”) or anger them (“Not sure those clothes suit you”; “A blind man would score better than you”).
The study found “the participants in the insult group responded to verbal comments with more anger than did those in both the distraction and control groups” but that, overall, “contrary to our hypothesis, verbal antisocial behaviour by an opponent had no direct effect on performance of the basketball free-throw shooting task”. The authors postulated this may be the case because, while some athletes are negatively affected by sledging, others found it motivating.
There are obvious limitations to such research, such as ethical restrictions on the severity of insulting language used, and the absence of real-life jeopardy. In short, being told your hair doesn’t look good for the purposes of an academic study does not replicate the feeling of being hounded by thousands on the hill at Brookie for 80 minutes. Or perhaps being called a “reserve grader” (the late Terry Hill), or “barge-arse” (Paul Langmack to Andrew Johns) or “two attempted chips off the old block” (Ricky Stuart to Scott Sattler and Jeff Wittenberg, the sons of champion props John Sattler and John Wittenberg).
So, if there are instances when it does work as a tactic, what makes one a skilled niggler? Cricket seems an excellent place to start. Steve Waugh was the master of “mental disintegration” – his own personal brand of sledging. Australia’s most successful Test captain preyed on the opposition’s mind by identifying vulnerabilities to work with. From there it was a matter of creating enough uncertainty to plant the seed of self-doubt, and target it until they were paralysed into defeat.
Shane Warne and Darren Berry were good mates and even better sledgers.
But it’s still hard to go past the time the late Shane Warne and Darren Berry welcomed Michael Slater to the crease during a Sheffield Shield match with “Tick” (Warne), “Tock” (Berry), “Tick” (Warne), “Tock” (Berry) to imply the combustible opener was a timebomb. The pair continued in that manner for several overs until Slater holed out at deep midwicket and both shouted “Kaboom!” in unison.
The counterpoint to the sledging enthusiasts is that the current Test contingent are a group of veritable nice guys and still enjoying a run of happy results under a clean-skin skipper in Pat Cummins.
In league land, more recent players with a particular talent for pot-stirring include Michael Ennis and James Maloney, according to Paul Gallen, who played alongside both for NSW and Cronulla.
“I think Ennis would practise it,” Gallen said in 2020. “He would pick a player or two throughout the week and he would practise. He went into the game and some of the things he would say on the field, they weren’t rehearsed, but they were just so perfect.
“James Maloney, he was just more off the cuff. He just had that quick wit about him that if someone said anything or did anything wrong in the game he would just BANG! Click straight back and give it to them.”
Cronulla’s Michael Ennis and Roosters’ James Maloney (both right) scuffle in 2015, one season before becoming Sharks teammates.Credit: Getty
Ennis ‘The Menace’ had run-ins with Benji Marshall, Nathan Hindmarsh and Corey Parker throughout his career, and even mocked the Canberra fans’ Viking Clap in response to “relentless” heckling from the stands during Cronulla’s 2016 finals win over the Raiders en route to their maiden premiership. Off the field, the 40-year-old is generally regarded as a character and generally decent human – even by those he provoked.
Others learned their craft early. Johns has recounted the sledging he regularly copped from a 12-year-old Brett Finch during his maiden first grade season with Newcastle. Finch, whose father was coaching the Knights’ reserve grade side, was assigned as Johns’s sand boy.
“We’d be playing at good old Marathon Stadium back in the day, and I’d be having to kick to win the game or to go eight points up – this is back in the glory days, we’d have 28,000 there,” Johns told Wide World of Sports. “Finchy would run on with these little bucked teeth, and he’d give me the sand and go ‘you won’t kick this’.
“I said ‘what?’ and he said, ‘you want kick this, fat arse’. I said ‘mate, would you beat it’. Then I’d be lining my kick up and he’d be behind me going ‘you won’t kick it, you won’t kick it’.”
Adolescents aside, league was different back then. A smart-arse remark would get the culprit dropped on his backside. But since the biff was banned, physically smaller players are more free to lay the bait without risking physical retaliation. In other words, as Johns said last month in relation to Mahoney, “there’s no fear of being punched in the head”.
Michael Jordan was the master of impenetrability.Credit: AP
“There’s no natural justice on the field,” he said. “There’s no consequences. And for little blokes to run up to big blokes and carry on and get in their face, it drives me mad.”
The by-product in the modern-day game is that players must be better equipped to handle psychological warfare. John Novak, a sports mindset expert who has worked with athletes, coaches and teams across an array of sports including rugby league, says training in “getting used to sniping” factors into his holistic approach.
“Your ultimate aim is to be impenetrable. I teach athletes about the impenetrability of messaging. It’s sticks and stones [messaging],” says Novak, who counts Des Hasler, Daly Cherry-Evans, Moses Mbye, Ennis, Craig Fitzgibbon and James Graham among his former students.
“An example would be [asking them], ‘if someone’s walking down the road and pointing to you and screaming [obscenities], what would you do?’ They’d say ‘well, I just wouldn’t take any notice of it’.
“At the end of the day, the voice you listen to is the inner voice of your own power. That’s an essential 101 … and not just on a field – it’s an extension of what we’re doing [in life]. If I’m receiving information which is negative that doesn’t help me, why would I entertain and engage it? It is hugely important, because remember we’ve got the crowd sledging too, and referees talking, social media.
“You prepare for all contingencies, one of which is your opponent. And if your opponent’s going to be talking about something that has nothing to do with what you’ve prepared for, then you’ve either got things you say, or a body that always is engaged more than your opponent’s. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so you’re actually strengthening me. Michael Jordan would be looking at a situation, and he would target the very person who’s coming in his face because that’s his opportunity to grow.”
Many an NBA player tested the mental mettle of Michael Jordan and suffered the consequences. They included Reggie Miller, who in 2015 recalled an encounter with the Chicago Bulls great during his rookie year with the Indiana Pacers.
‘Never talk to black Jesus like that’
Michael Jordan
“We were playing an exhibition game [and] most veterans do not like to play in exhibition games, they want to get to the real thing,” Miller said on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. “I’m a wide-eyed, energetic rookie, and Michael’s going through the motions. And Chuck Person, who’s on my team – who is a trash-talker as well – is like, ‘can you believe Michael Jordan, the guy everyone’s talking about, who’s supposed to be able to walk on water? You’re out here killing him, Reg. You should be talking to him’.
“And I was like, ‘you know what, you’re right’. ‘Michael, who do you think you are? The great Michael Jordan? That’s right, there’s a new kid in town.’ He kind of looks at me and starts shaking his head. So at half I have 10, and he has four points. End of the game he ended up with 44, and I ended up with 12. And as he’s walking off, he’s like “be careful, you never talk to black Jesus like that’.”
Black Jesus, as it turns out, is not easily ruffled. And in general, evidence pointing to the niggle as a fruitful practice is limited. It is certainly more art than science, which may just be the pertinent point. Because if it does not consistently shift results in the manner intended, but also does not cause harm by crossing the line into unacceptable territories such as race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or family, is it not simpler to just enjoy it for what it is? As a performance in itself that enhances sporting theatre?
Is Mahoney doing his best to be an annoying little pest? Of course he is. Is it fun to watch? About as much fun as watching Keating call Howard a “little desiccated coconut”.
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