According to The Whistleblower at Fox Sports, Ernie Merrick rang Fox commentator Simon Hill after last Friday’s win against the Queensland Roar. Supposedly, the Melbourne Victory coach had a go at Hill for dubbing Melbourne’s first win of the season as “unconvincing”.
It’s hard to come to any conclusions about what exactly was said by Merrick and Hill - though the blogger casts the impression of an angry Merrick out to attack Hill. But the Whistleblower provides little evidence to back up what s/he’s saying. He dimly references an opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph, which simply attacks “some coaches” for trying to mask their team’s “deficiencies”.
But is that what Merrick was trying to do? To silence the critics? If so, that’s a futile road to travel for our Scottish coach.
Personally, I doubt whether this was Merrick’s intention. He has challenged his own team’s performances often enough. Maybe he doesn’t do it as much as some other coaches, but I don’t think he’s trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.
Instead, it seems more likely that Merrick merely made a point of sticking up for his team - perhaps a tad defensively (we don’t know). Is that so bad?
The Whistleblower sure does. S/he asks: “Should we let Ernie escape punishment?”
Punishment for what? For suggesting that Hill’s comments may have been incorrect? Surely a coach is allowed to defend his team’s performance! If anything, Merrick’s insistence on defending his team shows a strong belief in the squad - hardly an attribute one would want to castigate.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Peter // Oct 3, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Interesting. I’m surprised that Merrick would bother. And you’re totally right, why should he be punished?
The Whistleblower says that it is unfair, because Simon Hill doesn’t/can’t ring up Merrick to tell him off for bad decisions. But he neglects the rather obvious fact that Simon Hill can chastise Merrick publicly for a full 90 minutes every week.
If the worst Merrick has done to Simon Hill is give him a call, then really.. that’s nothing in comparison.
2 David // Oct 3, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Absolutely! you can’t punish someone for having an opinion, *everything* is just opinion, Simon Hill may be paid to provide us with his, but it doesn’t actually make his opinion ‘right’. The only indisputable ‘facts’ are recorded in the match stats, the rest is all subjective, it makes my blood boil the way the media pontificate and assume the role of arbiters of truth and reality. I often listen to Hill and get annoyed with his droning, always attempting sardonic humour. I’ve thought how there should be separate crowd and commentator audio levels available, I don’t need someone to tell me what I’m looking at, just the crowd noise for some atmosphere, unless it’s a reasonably partisan commentary like the club’s website text updates or SEN =) The whistleblower?.. pfffhaa! ego-ridden nonsense. Of course Ernie should speak up for his team.
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