There is no doubt that only Warner can be blamed for his comments as he was the one it appears who wrote them and sent them into the twitter-sphere, but are top athletes really to blame?

This may seem a strange question to ask, but when Pat Howard the head of High Performance at Cricket Australia is quoted as saying “Twitter is part of the modern age and we encourage players and even staff at times to engage with fans in a positive way.” It raises a concerning point. For the record Howard went on to say “But with that comes responsibility and that’s obviously a very difficult and delicate balance. It’s part of the learning process. I’d expect our cricketers to be better than that and our standards are higher than that.”

More and more we are seeing sporting organisations that used to engage heavily with the public resort to relying in Twitter and Facebook as their major means of communication. That is always going to be fraught with danger. We have seen it backfire in football, basketball, rugby union and now cricket. The big question is do these errors of judgement by players, whose skills are not writing or communication, undo the reasonable attempts made to promote the game through these outlets? Many would say that they do.

To be honest these outbursts should not come as a surprise. The sporting media has become so sanitised in the past five years it is inevitable that every now and again a player is going to let off steam. Coaches and players are not allowed to say what they really think after a game, for fear of being fined for bringing the game into disrepute. In some instances the players have to be careful even talking to media representatives without the OK from the club they play for even in a social situation. The restrictions on players and talking to the press, and press access to players no longer being as open as it used to be has undoubtedly exacerbated the situation.

So bad are some of the ‘Social Media Policies’ at some of the lower levels of sport that semi professional and amateur clubs are being gagged as well. Here are two clauses that reflect that, ‘ Never comment on rumours, do not deny or confirm them or speculate about rumours in Social Media Channels,’ and ‘Always use social media to add value and promote (the said sport) in a positive way.’  On the surface these may look reasonable, but if a rumour is doing the rounds and is incorrect and potentially damaging to a club, who has the right to stop them putting the record straight? Similarly, most people engaged in a sport want to promote the game and see it thrive, but there are occasions where for the good of the game they must speak out and tell the truth if something is bad or wrong. Based on this rule, Pat Howard would be in trouble for criticising David Warner for his comments!

The world is not, never has been, and never will be all things sweet and nice as some of the dictator-like modern-day administrators want us to believe. Sport has always been about passion rivalries and differences of opinion. What has happened to freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, and open discussion on issues? Why are we trying to stop these?

There is no doubt that most sports administrators need to review their media policies. Post match honesty should be allowed and not punished. The currently cliche ridden interviews have no appeal to the average fan. There also should be less emphasis put on social media and more on real media relations. If players were allowed more freedom to say what they think and feel and are allowed to engage with the media more freely the belief is that they are less likely to engage in sudden frustration fuelled tweets that embarrass them and their game. Will things change? Will the iron fists of power ease their grip? Probably not in the foreseeable future.

Currently in Athletics there are 24o men and women banned from the sport from 52 countries. The latest facing a ban is Turkey’s Olympic 1500m Champion Asli Cakir Alptekin who was charged a fortnight ago and if found guilty faces a lifetime ban. She was previously banned in 2004 for failing a drugs test. Which has many asking the question, should athletes caught doping be allowed to compete again.

India currently leads the world in terms of the most athletes from one country being banned with 51 athletes on the current list. India is far from being a major nation when it comes to athletics, but their 4 x 400m relay team won gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, subsequently three of the winning four runners have failed drugs tests. More concerning is the fact that 11 athletes were caught for doping at the National Schools Championships.

As a developing nation the authorities have stated that they believe that the number is so high as athletes had unknowingly taken banned substances often at the behest of their coaches. The reason these athletes eat what the coaches tell them to eat is the fear of being replaced on the team or in the program should they refuse, and to be thrown out would bring dishonour to their families and community. If that is so then the coaches are the ones who should face lifetime bans.

In second place is Russia with 38 athletes being blacklisted. This figure is believed to be so high as there has been a real clampdown in Russia as they are the host nation of the World Athletics Championships later this year. 

The President of Russian Athletics, Valentin Balakhnichyov expects more suspensions to follow before the Championships. ‘Its simple arithmetic: the more you test, the more people are likely to get caught. Together with the Russian anti-doping agency, we do more drugs tests than any other country in the world. Last year we conducted 3,500 tests and this year we plan to do over 4,000 tests in and out of competition.’ He is quoted as saying.

Interestingly it is Kenya who come in third equal on the table of shame with 13 athletes banned, the same as the Ukraine and just one ahead of the USA. The issue here is there is no Kenyan anti doping agency and only one laboratory for testing in the whole of the African continent, and that is in South Africa, which has led John Fahey the President of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) to describe Kenya as ‘a location of choice for dopers.’  The Kenyan authorities disagree and state that 90 per cent of the tests in which their athletes have tested positive, it has been because they have been taking medication which has contained banned drugs.

It was in fact the US Anti Doping Agency (USADA) that collected some of these positive tests on the Kenyans after being asked to administer tests at the Olympic trials. 

The USA tested 488 athletes last year and they were tested 1,542 times. Where a few eyebrows have been raised is in relation to the athletes who have been caught up in the testing and in some cases found guilty. Sixty four year old Masters runner Roger Wenzel being one to be suspended for taking a prohibited stimulant. Then there is the relatively unknown long distance runner Dathan Ritzenhein who was tested by USADA 21 times in 2012. There have been some high profile athletes snared in their net of testing, and that includes sprinter Shawn Crawford. 

Despite athletes regularly being caught many question the uniformity of the testing and whether all nations are following the same guidelines. Will doping ever be stamped out completely that is unlikely, but hopefully progress is being made to limit it. One big positive from an Australian perspective is that there are currently no Australian athletes on the banned list for the sport of Athletics. 

It has long been said that money is the root of all evil, but is it just money. As many sports fans will state if someone is prepared to pay a player a certain amount of money for him to play for them, you can’t blame the player.

However what the club or sporting organisation can do is stipulate certain standards and expectations to be met in order for that money to be received.

It is a very sad state of affairs when you have professional clubs signing contracts with players where the player in question only has to do a very limited number of public appearances. Does that mean that once said player has played ‘x’ amount of games he has fulfilled his public appearance quota? There is another team playing in a national competition where all of the players collectively only have to make a predetermined number of media appearances and so many public appearances. This was part of their collective bargaining agreement. This beggars belief, and it is no surprise that the team’s profile is extremely low and many children would not even be able to name more than a handful of players.It would be interesting to know what the players sponsors felt about this agreement.

Being a professional athlete is a job of that there is no doubt, but it is also a privilege, and with it comes responsibilities, and many of those are to do with ensuring the future of the game and the team you play for.

We can take this a step further to sport at the semi professional level. Frequently in one particular sport players will tell you that they are good enough to take the step up to being a full time professional. On ability many of them are. On attitude many are not.

Those who listen t the show regularly will recall when we had Ian Thacker on as guest. Ian is the head of the Ace Cricket academy at the University of Western Australia, and has been running the academy for the past ten years. When asked what was the biggest change he had seen in that time, without pausing he said it was the level of fitness in the young players. The same is true in so many sports, the levels of fitness do not match the talent; few willing to put in extra sessions in their own time away from their club’s two sessions a week.

Just as there is a responsibility being a full time athlete so too are there expectations being a first team player in a semi-professional team. In Europe you would never find a player on a semi professional contract taking a holiday during the season. Once you sign that contract you have committed yourself to that club for the next six to eight months, to be at training on every possible occasion, and when not able to attend work in your own time. You have also made a commitment to be available for selection, barring injury, every week of the season.

If players no longer live up to these expectations, is it any wonder that those who pay to watch them bemoan the standards? Is it the players fault? Won’t a player always push to see what he can get away with? Why have clubs allowed the standards that served them so well for so many years to drop? Are the professional outfits the ones setting the guidelines and as they let their players get away with more so it filters down the chain?

The answers are not simple, but the issues need to be addressed. There is a feeling that the wheel of acceptance from fans is slowly beginning to turn. If that is indeed the case then it surely must benefit all involved in sport. Club performances will improve and players will in fact be more prepared to make that next step up to a higher level. In the end only time will tell if this is the case.

In his presentation on the NPL and the future of football in Australia National Technical Director Han Berger showed a slide that stated the following: “In youth development the interest of the player should come first, not the self interest of clubs; coaches; agents; private academies; (sports high) schools; etc.” We agree 100%, and would add that the enjoyment of the player is also a crucial factor. If they do not enjoy playing the game and the coaching, they will soon look elsewhere.

Berger then advised that the FFA had recently ‘rewritten and restructured’ all of its coaching courses; which to many cynics sounded like someone trying to justify their job, or in fact find something to do in head office. As Berger rightly states better coaches should mean better footballers and better football played.

The FFA have as part of this development stated that all semi professional clubs must have coaches with certain coaching badges to be a part of this new era. Again this makes sense, the better the standard of coaches the more likelihood the standard of football played will improve. Most people interested in coaching or improving the standards of football would willingly become a part of this, however this is where question marks suddenly start to pop up.

For the next two years coaches of juniors can coach with a junior, youth or senior  licence. To obtain this qualification at its most basic level will cost $85. Each level will cost a further $85. By 2016 all of these junior coaches are expected to have achieved a C-Licence in order to coach under 12′s up to under 20′s. The cost of this qualification, apart from the time, is at the moment $1320 per person. If you have ambitions to be a first team coach or the unnecessary expense of a Technical Director at an NPL club you will be required to have a B Licence which will currently set you back a further $3190, at the present time.

What surprises many is the fact the FFA have on occasion stated that they will not acknowledge a European equivalent coaching licence. This seems totally bizarre as the standards of football and coaching in Europe one would think would be higher than in Australia, as the game is a way of life there. Another concern is the pressure being applied to have those in coaching achieve these standards in these time frames.

However the big question that has to be asked is why are most of these courses not free or at least heavily subsidised for the next two years? If the FFA is serious about improving the coaching standards across Australia, have those qualified to train coaches moving around the country doing just that. To some the current costs are highly prohibitive especially in these tough economic times and with no security in any coaching position the cost will prove hard to justify to their partners at home.

If the FFA is serious about improving coaching at all levels these courses need to be more readily affordable. At the current time from the outside looking in it appears that it is simply another form of revenue raising, and once again the financial burden is being put on the clubs to find the money to up-skill their coaching staff if they wish to keep them working at the club. Surely there are grants to cover such training if it is keeping people healthy. Surely there is a sponsor out there who would love access to such demographics?

The game cannot go on in this way with the game’s governing body continually putting out its hand for money, eventually something has to give. It would be a shame to see one generation of young footballers suffer simply because of money, it is after all supposed to be a game for all

The lawsuit  has charged the Tour with violating its duty of care and good faith in failing to determine that Singh had in fact not violated the Tour’s anti doping policy. He had used deer antler spray which he acknowledged using.

The spray contained the hormone IGF-1 a substance that was listed on the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and the PGA Tour’s list of prohibited substances. The PGA Tour had in fact warned against using such substances in 2011.

In his lawsuit Singh is claiming that hormone was inactive and could not have affected his performance. He also argues that the Tour should have ascertained that before proceeding with a ban against the three time major winning Champion. In court documents it has been found that other players who admitted using the spray were not sanctioned.

On April 30 WADA advised the tour that they no longer viewed the use of deer antler spray as prohibited  unless it resulted in a positive drugs test. Vijay Singh never tested positive under such a test.

Singh’s reputation suffered great harm during this period and according to the lawsuit he suffered ‘humiliation and ridicule.’

This is another example of WADA appearing to jump before gathering all of the relevant information. It is rare for the Police to arrest and charge someone unless they are in possession of hard and fast evidence that the accused is in fact guilty. WADA needs to adopt a similar policy. By all means announce that an athlete is under investigation, without naming them, but do not charge them with such an accusation unless you have all the evidence.

This has brought embarrassment to Vijay Singh and tarnished his reputation, as some mud will aways stick. It has also put the US PGA Tour in an embarrassing situation and one in which they find themselves being sued. It would be interesting to see whether in the litigious USA they consider passing the blame down the line and sue WADA.

One thing is for sure WADA’s policies need to be seriously reviewed.

There is no doubt that AFL coach Kevin Sheedy has opened a hornet’s nest with his comments over the weekend after Greater Western Sydney Giants could only attract  5,830 people to its home match against Adelaide Crows, an all time low crowd not seen in AFL since 1996.

For those who missed his poor attempt at an explanation for such a poor crowd he said that his club lacked ‘the recruiting officer called the immigration department recruiting fans for the West Sydney Wanderers’.

His comments apart from being highly offensive to the inhabitants of Western Sydney will have in fact done his future crowd projections even more harm, but they also say so much more.

Three sports went head to head in Western Sydney, Rugby League, Football and AFL. All three codes invested heavily in this market and it became like a race to the North pole, the code that could boast success first it was felt would hold the keys to being the number one sport in Australia in the next 5-10  years. Of the three codes Football and the AFL are believed to have invested the most, although neither code is willing to reveal exactly how much their push for ascendancy has cost.

One thing is for sure AFL never expected Western Sydney Wanderers to take off the way it did, and Sheedy’s comments reflect that. He would have been led to believe that his club and his code would be the number one sport in that region. It won’t be, it will most likely never rise higher than third in the pecking order between these three codes. Football’s success lies purely and simply in the fact that it is a world game, and no matter what country you come from this one or overseas you can relate to it; and are more likely to have played it at some stage in your life. Rugby League is second to none when it comes to involving the community and that is why they build loyalty. They will not splash the money the way AFL and Football have but rest assured with time they will grow a loyal supporter base.

For years AFL’s monitoring of its participation rates have been skewed, a result of not only counting regular registered participants in their participation numbers, as per Football and Rugby League. If all codes were forced to monitor participation figures the same way Sheedy’s angst may be better explained. One thing is for sure his comments show that in Western Sydney the battle of the codes is well and truly being lost, and we would hazard a guess outside of Victoria although not as apparent, at junior levels the same would be true.

You only have to stand outside of Subiaco oval on a match day to see the age of the supporters filing in and how large a percentage are female to know that the youth of Australia are focussed on other sports. The times are definitely changing and that realisation has finally hit Mr Sheedy, which may explain his ill advised comments.

The event is to be held on Monday 20th of May at the Perth Soccer Club.

The choice of venue will not please many and shows a naivety on the part of those organising the event. Despite Perth having the best facilities this event should have been held at a neutral venue as it opens up Perth to the possibility of unfair criticism and accusations of favouritism.

On the panel will be CEO of the FFA David Gallop, Head of Hyundai A-League Damien de Bohun, Chairman of Perth Glory, Coach of Perth Glory Alistair Edwards and CEO of Football West Peter Hugg. It has not been revealed who will chair the meeting.

According to the FFA press release on the agenda are the following topics the Qantas Socceroos, Westfield Matildas, National Premier Leagues, FFA Cup, grassroots football and the Hyundai A-League, Westfield W-League and National Youth League competitions.

Not The Footy Show can’t help but question the timing of this Forum. First of all the announcement a week ago by Football West that they will push ahead with the National Premier League despite most clubs having grave concerns over the structure and who is going to finance it. Maybe this meeting has been timed to coincide with this move and therefore expect a great deal of ‘spin’ to support this decision. One question that may be worth tabling is what would happen if no clubs in Western Australia submitted for the NPL? Which when one considers how little information has been given on this radical new league would be a sensible development, yet sadly clubs currently feel they are being pressured to sign up in order to survive. Some we have been advised even being encouraged to submit an application!

As well as coming to support the NPL, don’t be surprised if with David Gallop in town an announcement is not made on Football being granted money by the Government for a new home. Something that the game has been crying out for ever since all segments united and they moved out of the old Perry Lakes offices, something that cost the game greatly; as had we stayed like basketball and Rugby we may well have already had a new home.

Quite what the Head of the Hyundai A League will have to share with those who attend is questionable, apart from crowds being up and viewing on Fox being up. Maybe he can explain why the W-League side which no longer receives any funding from the A league side should still have to operate under the same name?

It could be an interesting evening if similar events in other states are anything to go by. It will also be interesting to see what the main topics of conversation prove to be. One can’t help feeling that the NPL and youth development will in fact take priority over some of those topics listed.

Another that probably needs to be raised is where will funding come from should the Socceroos fail to qualify for the World Cup next year?

If you want to air your views on the game and the direction it is heading make sure you attend this meeting. Football needs your voice.

One can go on about his achievements of which there are so many but there are some which appear to have slipped under the radar.

When Ferguson took over at Manchester United in 1986 the club was simply an under performing football club with a massive supporter base. In 1991 when shares in the club were listed on the London Stock Exchange there was an added pressure to being the boss of Manchester United. Ironically along with that added pressure came added cash from the floatation of the club. Money that helped bring in key players that lead Manchester United to its first Premier League title in 1993. Success as they say bred success and that in turn kept the shareholders happy.

Ferguson managed to negotiate the turbulent waters in the boardroom, so much so that when shares in the club were listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012 the prospectus stated that the projections were ‘highly dependent’ on certain individuals. It went on to say ‘any successor to our current manager may not be as successful as our current manager. When he announced his retirement last week these shares dropped five per cent.

In addition to having to deal with stock market fluctuations, as well as player form, Ferguson lead the club to new frontiers. He and key staff realised the number of supporters the club had in Asia who were never likely to be able to visit the ‘Theatre of Dreams,’ Old Trafford, so made the decision to take the club to them. It was a shrewd move when one considers that last year market research done by Kantar estimated that there were 659 million fans of Manchester United with 325 million in Asia.

Ferguson embraced such a move and has been credited with thinking more about the supporters in Asia than the club’s commercial backers. In Malaysia he asked the fans to be at the airport to meet the team arriving and arranged for them to mix with the players.

Amazingly Ferguson has also won praise for his signing of Asian players, unlike other clubs the feeling  amongst the Asian fans is that he has never signed these players purely to attract Asian supporters or sponsors. Maybe the success of the players signed has helped in that regard. South Korea’s Park Ji Sung becoming the first Asian player to win Europe’s Champions League as well as the first to wear Manchester United’s Captain’s armband. More recently Japan’s Shinji Kagawa became the first Asian to score a Premier League hat-trick. For example who can remember the signing of China’s Dong Fangzhou?

He will definitely be a hard act to follow and hopefully David Moyes will be grateful to have him in the background lending advice, and that the shadow of the great man will not be too much for the new manager to handle.

One thing is for sure Sir Alex Ferguson has probably done more for Manchester United on and off the park than any one man in a very long time. His legacy is  phenomenal.

There is no doubt that some of the suggestions in the criteria to be a part of the NPL are exceptionally good for the game and should have been in place years ago. Most State League grounds in Perth could have done with a facelift, and the NPL is forcing clubs to spend that money. Which is slightly amusing as in the Football West constitution it states under ‘Objects of company’ 1.1 subsection ‘i’ “The objects for which the company is established are: to provide and maintain grounds, playing fields, materials, equipment and other facilities for Football in the State.”

In the presentation given by National Technical Director, Haan Berger he had the wording “As part of the National Competitions Review NYL teams must play in the NPL” (NYL is National Youth League).

There are again merits in such a move, but first and foremost the FFA cannot make such a stipulation, that is why we have constitutions, that is why the Crawford Report insisted that those involved in the game had a voice, precisely so that the game did not suffer dictatorial changes that suited the administration but which may not meet the best requirements of the clubs and players. These are rules as to how the game should be run and the input required before making longstanding changes. Sadly the same does not apply to the rules of competition which seem to change at will.

Part of the NPL is the criteria on which the participants will be judged and accepted. Many of these based on coaching structures and club facilities. Perth Glory Youth currently does not have a technical director – an essential part of the NPL – they do not have a ground with any facilities. Neither are they currently subject to the salary cap imposed on State Premier League clubs. Will they be?

The model proposed is that the NTC participants currently in the Premier League will all drop down one level, so the Glory Youth can step into their place. So suddenly we have a privately run professional club, participating in a semi-professional league with the League’s administrators supplying the coaches and the players for the teams below that team. You wouldn’t read about it anywhere else in the world.

This is written with tongue planted firmly in cheek, for a start the Youth League players are not on full professional contracts, and the NTC is an obvious feeder for the Glory. However it does make a mockery of the criteria.

One has to ask why would all of the state league clubs, many with a rich history, vote for one of their own to lose a place in the top league in the state for such a team? This argument will gain even more weight if the NPL is reduced to an eight team league. Surely it would be more beneficial for these players to be allocated clubs and learn their game around men? After all Perth Glory coach Alistair Edwards stated only this week when announcing that Steve McGarry had re-signed for the club as well as younger recruits Cameron Edwards and Jack Duncan, “The recent additions are in-line with generating the appropriate balance between our excellent experienced players and the up-and-coming youth.” Obviously he sees the benefit in young players playing alongside experienced older players.

At the moment not enough questions are being asked as to why this is being pushed through with such urgency? What is the rush? If it is to be done properly surely it is better that time is taken and everything is worked out properly before committing to such a major change. Remember the AFC requirement.

There is also talk that the Government will be pulling funding to the various Institutes of Sport around the country, and in particular the football programs. The reason for this is twofold, the Government has given the FFA a massive amount of funding and feels that they should run their own development programs with that money. The second is that few of these programs, that have supposedly been working with the cream of Australia’s young footballing talent, have managed to develop a steady stream of players to play in the highest leagues in Europe.

Why is this the case? There is no definite answer, but maybe the Dutch system is not the best suited to Australia. They came in and changed all of the existing structures and sadly the effect has not been as positive as many had hoped at this present time.

Caution is to be advised, once this is pushed through it will be very hard to do a u-turn. The NPL will not result in a superb league with better quality football overnight, it will take a number of years before it reaches that stage. Which begs the question can the state league/NPL  afford such a move at a point in time when crowds and support are low and media coverage limited? What is the marketing plan to back this NPL up? What is going to be done to drive interest in this new brand around the country? What is the budget for promotion? What is the marketing strategy?

So many questions, but so few answers, and next to no funding. Caveat Emptor, those who buy into this beware!

Current FIFA President, Sepp Blatter was cleared of any misconduct during his period as General Secretary of FIFA, however the Judge did criticise his handling of one very large payment which made its way into FIFA’s bank account rather than the then President, and Blatter’s then boss, Havelange’s.

For those who were unaware, ISL was Fifa’s media and marketing partner at the end of the 1990s. They were given the task of  handling all TV rights negotiations for the World Cup. A very lucrative business one would expect, but ISL went broke in 2001, owing millions of pounds to creditors. During an investigation into the company’s collapse investigators found evidence that ‘commissions’ – or for want of a better word, bribes – had been paid to senior FIFA officials. They in turn helped secure lucrative TV deals, most notably in South America.

The judge’s findings stunned many who thought this would result in FIFA finally cleaning up its act, but he ruled that senior directors of FIFA were not guilty of taking bribes from the sports marketing company ISL. This is where the law has saved these senior directors, as they were found not guilty not because they hadn’t received money from ISL but because at the time the time that they were, such payments weren’t illegal under Swiss law. Unbelievable, but that was the law. It is not now.

All of this has been like a cold that would not go away for FIFA, ever since investigative journalist Andrew Jennings uncovered the link between ISL and FIFA. Only as recently as 2004 did FIFA set up its Ethics committee, long after the money had gone and ISL had ceased to exist. The outcome has not satisfied many outside of FIFA but the truth is the ‘investigative panel’ and the ‘decisions panel’ the latter headed by Judge Eckert has been unable to reveal more than most people already knew. The reason being FIFA’s own ethics committee can only enforce the rules set out in its own code of ethics.

The overall situation is laughable, but is probably best summed up by Kevin Roberts the Editorial Director of the Sport Business Group who wrote in an article on his take of the whole affair “ISL was born out of the growing but fairly recent realisation that there was big money to be made out of sport. Everything was new. Rules were being made up on the hoof because there were simply no precedent for much of what was happening and according to some of the people doing deals at the time, the entrepreneurs of the day were dealing with people who were at the same time self-interested, naïve and slightly astonished by the power they had unexpectedly acquired as the value of the rights they controlled soared.”

This comment could well sum up football in Australia of late, but maybe we are being a little cynical. Then again maybe we are not!