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Martin Devlin: Outrage over Australia's Ashes celebration a media beat-up

Author
Martin Devlin,
Publish Date
Wed, 11 Sep 2019, 12:46PM

Martin Devlin: Outrage over Australia's Ashes celebration a media beat-up

Author
Martin Devlin,
Publish Date
Wed, 11 Sep 2019, 12:46PM

Faux outrage. We live in a world of faux outrage where someone somewhere always wants someone else to be outraged over  something that barely deserves being mentioned.

The latest, greatest example of this being the (so-called) outrageous celebrations of the Australian cricket team following their Ashes winning effort at Old Trafford Monday morning.

From what I've read & heard across varying media outlets the Ozzies drank beer, became intoxicated as a result, (although to what level is being disputed and defended by team management as you'd expect), yelled somewhat raucously as they ventured towards the pitch, then loudly sang their team song  while hugging and high-fiving each other with gay abandon.

So what is the problem here again? Apart from nothing? Apart from absolute zero? 

The problem is that people not belonging to the team were allowed to witness and report upon these shenanigans and attach their own interpretations to the players behaviour - add in a provocative headline or two plus a quote from some past player with an axe still to grind and Hey Presto, you've got yourself a potential back page scandal! 

Honestly it really is that easy. I sincerely hope people are savvy enough to see through these sorts of stories, question the motives behind why they are written, but I fear many just blindly believe what they read without ever bothering to question.

Of course the Ozzies don't help themselves with coach and manager vehemently denying that Steve Smith's re-enactment of Jack Leach polishing his glasses was anything to do with the tailenders efforts at Headingley but, that aside, this is cricket's equivalent of Shakespeare's "Much ado about nothing".

Players are allowed to celebrate aren't they? And get a little loose even? What harm does it do? And whose business apart from no-one's is it anyway? What kind of world do we live in where we no longer want to see adults going goofy, largeing it up, acting the goat when they've achieved something they've strived so hard to attain. Isn't that part of a sport person's reward?

Ask yourself. Are those Ozzie celebrations wrong? Or is what's more wrong that it becomes a media beat-up presented in such a way it almost incites or invites people to get all outraged about it? I would hope we all think the latter. 

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