old Gus article aimed at Rothfield/Wilson/Hadley

[crikey chris]

Can't tell write from wrong
By Phil Gould
October 9, 2005
The Sun-Herald


Now the football is over, I'll respond to the rubbish reported about me lately.

Columnists such as Phil Rothfield, Rebecca Wilson and radio's Ray Hadley seem to have an obsession with discrediting me.

Their obsession is boring the pants off everybody.

I think Rothfield and Wilson place agendas and personal grievances above readers' needs for informative, accurate and unbiased reporting.

Rothfield has sledged me for more than a decade. His bitterness towards me has overtaken common sense and accuracy where my name is concerned. He is constantly wrong about me but that doesn't stop him backing up for another go. He has never contacted me to verify a story. He once sent me an abusive email. My email response must have hit the mark because he's never written to me again. These days he's just spitting into the wind. Every time he opens his mouth about me it blows right back in his face.

As for Rebecca Wilson?

Ha, ha, ha. Sorry. I can't even say her name without laughing. She must be trying to emulate Rothfield because her gossip column bears a striking resemblance to his style.

Despite constantly writing about me over the years, she has never had the courage to contact me to verify a story. Her stories about me have been inaccurate, exaggerated, embellished and misrepresentative. As far as I am concerned, it has been a vindictive, deliberate and sustained campaign.

It's all become so boring and her credibility has suffered so much that she must be close to giving it away and allowing someone else to write that gossip column.

And Ray Hadley? He often delivers vindictive attacks on individuals, sometimes targeting their very livelihood. Don't take my word for it. Ask people such as Brian Smith, Paul Vautin, Peter Sterling, John Gibbs and Andrew Voss. He, too, has never had the courage to phone me to verify a story before shooting off his mouth. I wonder why?

Like Rothfield, Hadley is extremely thin-skinned. They dish it out but can't take it.

Recently this troika has targeted my role at the Roosters. They are up in arms that I didn't attend a couple of club functions. So what? What's it got to do with them anyway? By saying I didn't turn up they are suggesting I was expected to attend these occasions but didn't show. That's totally incorrect.

For the record: I've attended less than a handful of club functions in the past six years. I also don't attend Dally M awards, season launches, grand final breakfasts, book launches and cocktail parties. I gave up going to these dos when I retired from coaching six years ago.

They also thought they had a big story when they heard I was invited to talk to Dragons players at a dinner before their final against Wests Tigers. So bloody what? I'm invited to talk to many sporting bodies, teams, clubs, junior leagues, business seminars, individuals and charities. I do as many as I can.

Newcastle's Paul Harragon spoke to the Tigers. Gorden Tallis and Mark Geyer spoke to the Cowboys.

Footballers like to help each other. Rugby league is not like the media where people like Rothfield, Wilson and Hadley attack those who work for rival media organisations just for the sake of it. How childish is that?

For the record: I declined the Dragons dinner invitation. I have never addressed the Dragons coaches. I did agree to deliver a short talk to the players. It had nothing to do with coaching, tactics, game plans or Wests Tigers. I asked Nathan Brown what message he wanted emphasised and that was the message I delivered. He was spot on, too. I spoke for 10 minutes and left. End of story. Anyone suggesting different is a liar.

Their other scintillating story is that I've supposedly had a stink with Roosters coach Ricky Stuart. They say the Roosters are in crisis. Yeah right! This is a total misrepresentation. Our club and the Roosters fans do not deserve this rubbish.

For the record: I've never had a stink with anyone at the Roosters, let alone Ricky Stuart. Ricky and I are mates. He's a great coach. We argue and bag one another every day about football matters and have done since we met 13 years ago; but we enjoy it. It's healthy to have a difference of opinion.

Over the past two years I have backed right away from dealing with the players on a day-to-day basis because Ricky and the other coaches do such a great job. Ricky does not need anyone looking over his shoulder to coach a football team. He earned his autonomy years ago. These days I'm just a sounding-board for his ideas or anything else he wants to discuss.

The decision by Roosters chairman Nick Politis to introduce a new coaching system at the club four years ago has delivered great results.

For the record; Ricky Stuart and Nick Politis are the reason for our club's unprecedented recent success.

The Roosters have played in three grand finals. We won a first-grade premiership, World Club Challenge and three lower-grade premierships. Last year we played in all three games on grand final day, winning two and coming within three points of winning the third. Last year's premier league coach Ivan Cleary has been appointed Warriors head coach. Assistant coach John Cartwright is to be head coach of the Gold Coast Titans. Our premier league coach, Shane Flanagan, is ready to coach first grade.

The Roosters coaching staff also assisted me in a three-year undefeated tenure as NSW State of Origin coach. Ricky Stuart is now the successful NSW coach and will be the next coach of Australia. I'd call that pretty successful.

For the record: I love the Roosters. Even if I leave them, and that day hasn't come yet, Nick Politis knows I will never work for another football club. I guaranteed him that a long time ago. I am committed to him for life. Nick, Ricky and I are great friends. The media will never come between us. Rothfield, Wilson and Hadley can choke on that!



An oldie but a goodie, As Rothfield has achieved nothing in the game, his views have boarded on defamatry at times.

Thus, with him hating the roosters and Gus, has always been writing crap about Brian Smith in the Telecrap, as Gus and Smith are mates. When was the last time he wrote something negative about his Sharkies?


Crikey.

[Rooster_6]

So much for the media not coming between Gus and Sticky...

[supermario]

Cue automatic newslimited defence from TOK !

[Guest]

how close is gould still with the roosters

[Rooster_6]

how close is gould still with the roosters

Heavily in 08, I think he distanced himself in 09 to let Freddy become his own man but so much for that. He still comes down to training every so often apparently.

[Guest]

Heavily in 08, I think he distanced himself in 09 to let Freddy become his own man but so much for that. He still comes down to training every so often apparently.

Gus was at our training last Saturday and was invited by BS to give the boys a speach...

[Guest]

Gus was at our training last Saturday and was invited by BS to give the boys a speach...

The bloke loves the chooks. The best was the serve he just gave Bennent on the footy show. On fire Gus.

[Guest]

I like the bloke because he makes sense when he's trying to get his point across and i just get the feeling he doesnt tell pork pies.(unlike Germ Rothfield and Bourbon Becky).
If something needs to be said, he doesnt beat around the bush about it (like the Bennett spray)and i admire that.

[Headless Chook]

I had the good fortune to attend a Roosters training session way back....might have been the start of 2004.

Anyway, it happened to be one of the days where Gus came in and ran a fair chunk of it. He had the playmakers of the team, Finch, Fittler and another half back (his name escapes me, he was a Kiwi kid..Willie somebody, we signed him from the Warriors at a 7's tournament) and he was concentrating on trying to single out a defender close to the line and go at him with numbers. The man is just a great communicator, he broke nearly every step of the drill down and explained it in very easy language. I just looked at the guy I was with after about 4 or 5 mins and we both just went 'Wow!' Every single thing he said was simple, but he broke it down so well. I would have loved to have been coached by somebody like him back when I was playing, your football couldn't help but improve.

[Guest]

Here is another good article from 2003 where Gus talks about the myth that we continued to poach quality players and has a great swipe at Bourbon Bekky for her relentless agenda against Nick Politis and I assume he takes a swipe at Rothfield aswell.

Roosters' salary cap fight brings out worst in NRL

By Phil Gould
December 28, 2003
The Sun-Herald


The NRL's handling of the Roosters salary cap issue this week was a disgrace.

Last week, after almost a year of fruitless approaches to the NRL over the restrictive nature of our salary cap, the Roosters informed the NRL in a confidential document that it was prepared to consider alternative action if the NRL refused to introduce increases or concessions.

We can only speculate on how this sensitive document ended up with the media organisation that owns the game.

Maybe it was all too difficult for the NRL so it decided to let the owners of the game deal with the matter in their usual aggressive manner.

It has now given this section of the media an opportunity to again slam the Roosters and the people involved with the club. They sweat on such opportunities.

The reporting bordered on hysterical, with one particular journalist showing either a lack of knowledge of the facts or scant regard for the truth. If this particular writer did do any research before he so wrongly criticised the Roosters, then it was not evident in his work.

Some of his assertions were preposterous and were designed only to fit the story he was creating.

I could spend this whole column punching holes in his story but the bottom line is that the Roosters are in the right. Time will prove this to be the case and there will be salary cap increases in the near future.

Mind you, it is not the first time this journalist has goosed himself. I know from personal experience how this self-professed know-it-all grabs a small piece of a puzzle then paints a picture to suit his own personal grievance or to support one of his favourites. I don't rate him at all and neither do a lot of people in the game.

Journalists with the gall to personally attack the credibility of a man of the stature of Nick Politis are nothing more than bomb throwers looking to please their employer.

They are way off the mark.

As part of the attack on the Roosters and Nick Politis, gossip columnist Rebecca Wilson described Politis as a gibberer. Let's just examine this statement. Here is a woman who has bounced around from job to job over the years. She currently makes her living as a talking head and muckraker with a News Ltd paper. She was recently exposed as a repeat offender on driving charges, including drink driving and driving without a licence. Yet in her typical attention-seeking manner she has accused Politis, a self-made multi-millionaire and one of the most respected business people in Australia, of being a gibberer and questions his credibility.

Rebecca, you stick to bagging me if you want to get your cheap kicks. Nick Politis is way out of your league.

He has done more things for this game than anyone I know. His generosity to people from all walks of life is staggering and he has changed many people's lives for the better as a result.

You know nothing of this man and you are way out of line.

In August I wrote a column slamming the NRL over lack of action regarding much needed changes to the salary cap.

Here is a slice from that column: "The salary cap in its current form punishes success. It provides no incentive for development of junior talent. It does not reward those clubs with the ability to develop representative-class players. It gives no compensation to clubs with representative players who have to do without them during the rep season or even if they lose them to injuries sustained in rep games.

"Representative players earn a small fraction of rep football's overall income. The game earns more money from broadcasting rights when ratings reach a certain level but the players are not given any such bonuses.

"The salary cap has been at the same level for five years without even so much as a cost of living increase for the players.

"The NRL ignores the plight of many players who are not earning enough to justify being full-time league players.

"The stars in our game have their entire earnings deducted from the wage pool, and this means players at the other end of the scale are struggling. Our salary-cap structure means that a rise in prominence of one player virtually guarantees a teammate having to be removed from the club to pay the emerging player his market value."

The Roosters are not asking for anything unreasonable or anything that will advantage them over other clubs. All clubs will enjoy this modest salary cap increase.

I bet all the journalists and CEOs out there criticising a rise in the player wage pool are themselves on a lot more money today than they were in 1998. Double standards, if you ask me.

As for the accusations that the Roosters are showing disloyalty, well, one of the Roosters' great supporters, Alan Katzmann, an executive with a leading Australian company, said this in an email to me this week: "When the game was torn apart in the mid '90s, the loyalty that the Roosters displayed in remaining with the then establishment and not joining the rebels was instrumental in ensuring that neither competition was strong enough to stand on its own, and a compromise [the NRL] was created. This club, having won more games than any other team in history, played for more seasons and produced more internationals than any other club, is steeped in the deepest history and traditions of the game.

"Many other clubs who have joined the throng attacking the Roosters were the first to grab the money and run when the chequebooks were opened in the mid '90s. Whose interests were they thinking about then?"

In reference to claims by journalists that the Roosters just buy quality players from other clubs, Katzmann had this to say: "Stop living in the past - you are only embarrassing yourself. The Roosters, since the appointment of Phil Gould in late 1994, have put in place development programs which are now the envy of many of its rivals. Amongst its 2003 squad, internationals Anthony Minichiello, Shannon Hegarty, Michael Crocker, Luke Ricketson and Andrew Lomu have never played for any other club and have risen to international level through these development programs, as have State Of Origin player and future international Chris Flannery, and senior players Peter Cusack and Ryan Cross.

"Jason Cayless has gone on to play Test football after being unwanted at Parramatta. Craig Fitzgibbon has risen to international status after being no more than a bench player at the Dragons, and Justin Hodges has achieved State of Origin status from the same base as Fitzgibbon (bench player at the Broncos). Skipper Brad Fittler is entering his ninth season as a Rooster, while Craig Wing is now an international with over 100 first grade games for the Roosters behind him after joining the club when his previous club was cut from the league.

"Does this sound like a transit lounge taking the cream of talent from other clubs?"

Well said, Alan. Actually, I think you could have stopped after the first line when you said certain journalists should stop embarrassing themselves.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...?from=storyrhs

[Chook Norris]

As for Rebecca Wilson?

Ha, ha, ha. Sorry. I can't even say her name without laughing. She must be trying to emulate Rothfield because her gossip column bears a striking resemblance to his style.

ha ha ha

Whilst the bloke is arrogant.. he speaks the truth, for most of the part.

[theGman]

Bourbon beckky

[QUOTE=R710éry;45906]Here is another good article from 2003 where Gus talks about the myth that we continued to poach quality players and has a great swipe at Bourbon Bekky for her relentless agenda against Nick Politis and I assume he takes a swipe at Rothfield aswell.



As part of the attack on the Roosters and Nick Politis, gossip columnist Rebecca Wilson described Politis as a gibberer. Let's just examine this statement. Here is a woman who has bounced around from job to job over the years. She currently makes her living as a talking head and muckraker with a News Ltd paper. She was recently exposed as a repeat offender on driving charges, including drink driving and driving without a licence. Yet in her typical attention-seeking manner she has accused Politis, a self-made multi-millionaire and one of the most respected business people in Australia, of being a gibberer and questions his credibility.

Pure GOLD Gus! Couldn't have described her holier-than-thou character if i tried. There's more skeletons in her wardrobe.
Well Beckky, what can you say about that! or is that germ Rothfield going to come to your rescue. "People in glass houses...................."