Can't stand Hutchy. Something slimy about his reporting.
I like Caro having a crack at getting all the footy gossip, but like Grant Thomas alluded to re: The current Malthouse furore, Caro sometimes just doesn't get football clubs, players and coaches.
Caro can only approach an Australian Rules team from a viewer's perspective. She thinks she's deep into football. In reality she'll always be an outsider.
Caro only can approach it from a moralistic, fly on the wall, when reporting.
Thomas was saying that most Coaches 'toe-the-line' or tell lies, like players do at tribunals. Whether you like it or not, these are still, in most clubs, part of the ethics that make up Australian Rules Football.
Sad but true....having never played the game DOES affect Caro's perspective. The unspoken knowledge of playing in clubs she'll never grasp. It is taught to you, or you are made aware of it when you first pull on your footy boots for your first Junior club. These are the way things are done. They have been like this for a long time. Clubs run like this. No amount of trying to moralize the way things are done at Football Clubs, will change them. Caro thinks she can.
Caro has as great an education as any person can in Australian Rules Football, thanks to her father.
But it will always be from an outsider's point of view.
Even a female playing in one of the women's teams in Melbourne would have a far better insight into the total game and clubs, than Caro thinks she has.
And in reference to Grant Thomas, I do love his disdain of umpires and the AFL. :clap Good for a laugh.