Also it's not a good idea to do an interview when you do share those views.
His bias towards her was very obvious throughout.
It was typical that a bunch of mediaheads thought she should do media to explain herself.
I don’t work in PR but I would say with a decent degree of certainty the PR advice she got would have been the absolute opposite advice.
Very much so. Very evident in his effort to throw out complete conjecture for why she might think the things she does (poorer economic background), while at the same time not actually thinking those things (she has immigrant friends).
The lads and OTB have been extremely good to Kellie Harrington over the years. I think it is fair for them to question her when she has questionable beliefs that change the way we view her.
I would have seen her as a great role model until all this stuff.
I think he's talking nonsense, and similar to the last few comments here re: Harrington, Molloy and OTB are trying to insert themselves into the centre of the story and do trial by media.
That attitude of build them up and then knock them down is classic lazy media though. It suited them to push how great she is because it got them listeners/readers. Just because the were her supporters doesn't mean she owes them anything now.
Some people are talented sports people without ever being particularly good at anything else, including expressing their views. The list of bad decisions speaks for itself.
She made the ignorant post.
She didn't properly correct the mistake directly afterwards.
She didn't prepare properly for the interview months later.
She wasn't able to explain herself during the interview.
She hasn't been able to correct the record since.
Getting her on to either fail at another interview or force out a prepared message serves little purpose for her I genuinely think that if she does another challenging interview it won't be good for her personally or possibly her sporting career.
Lets stop assuming all sports stars are heroes or role models in every aspect of life. Harrington made a mistake talking about a social political issue, made a poor attempt at moving on and now seems to be trying to stay out of it. If the content hungry media really wanted to chat about immigration they could probably do a far better job at putting together their own show on it.
Just to be clear i do not agree with anything Harrington said. It just bothers me when the media use people like this to fill their own content. When Diarmuid Connolly was out of the Dublin squad OTB never shut up about it declaring 'We need answers!' he's an amateur who wanted private time. They didn't respect that.
That's exactly the problem right there. You call her personal beliefs 'questionable' and that the media have the right to question her on them. Just because you believe her beliefs are questionable, it doesn't automatically make it so. People can have differing opinions about all topics without the fear of being cancelled.
The point about her having immigrant friends really jumped out at me. Its like the old characture of the someone caught in a possible homophobe/racist act "sure some of my best friends are gay/black etc" cant believe they said it TBH.
They were definitely on her side and made up a number of excuses for her. I also agree she should definitely not do an interview on it think she'd dig herself into a bigger hole under any sort of questioning.
The Vera Pauw and Kelly Harrington stories nicely sums up why there's no "characters" in the game and why players do media training and give bland as fúck interviews. Both stories are non issues really and are mountains made out of molehills by the media
I would have to agree, the media constantly decry their lack of access but cosying up to the media is a double edged sword…to say the least
i am probably in the minority here but if Katie Harrington is an opponent of unregulated immigration then I don’t really care, I don’t see why anyone should give two hoots. You can say it’s relevant because she was shilling on behalf of spar who were doing some sort of cross community promotion. Fair enough but on the issue in itself I simply have no interest in her views and judging her character tells me that she isn’t likely to have sophisticated views on wider issues.
maybe it’s just me but I’d like to hear her opinions about the level of state support she gets, how she feels about having to fight in European championships that Ireland have made no effort to host despite becoming an elite amateur boxing hotbed, does she feel like she’s rolled out for Olympics and the rest of the time the wider public doesn’t really care. How much money or what guarantees would it take her to consider going pro.
in summary I’d like her to hear about things she knows about, not personal opinions but immigration
OTB have too much time to fill and hence end up pursuing non-stories in order to have something to talk about. And while Harrington’s tweets were absolutely a legitimate issue to question her on, I thought the tone and approach of the OTB interview was unnecessarily abrasive.
I prefer the shorter, sharper SC podcasts to the long-winded tedious OTB stuff (not to mention the presenters are better on SC, although Joe Malloy can be good)
Second captains taking their time getting the bazunu interview out. Presume there’s a story to go along with this delay considering it should’ve been in the can yesterday.
Harrington's tweet wasn't anti immigration. It was just plain racist.
no real wiggle room anymore between anti immigration sentiment and racist sentiment in the modern Twitter sphere. Pretty much one is the same as the other. If she tweeted #irelandisfull, it’s anti immigration but not racist, maybe that would have been fine but probably not.
I can see why Kelly Harrington hasn't done any further interviews as its fairly obvious she'll struggle to articulate herself and she'll be concerned she'll have a repeat of the OTB interview.
There's any number of Irish sport stars who have done questionable things but they've never gone public, Kelly made the mistake of going public.
It's a pity Eoin wasn't around for the Gavin Casey chat, you'd assume he'd have questioned Gavin on some of his points
Imagine the excitement of qualifying for a World Cup and the only thing journalists can ask you about is this tedious bullsh1t.
If as a public figure you use your public platform to publicly state something, then you pretty much have to expect to get asked about that thing publicly.
Particularly when it's just a rehash of the same conversation that took place 6 months ago.
Seems The Athletic, like OTB has too much space/time to fill for the content available.
The "pigs head" incase anyone was wondering:
That's commitment.
I love the Murph Ken dynamic.
Thought the discussion between Ken and the historian was excellent.
A Tim Vickery day is a good day
I enjoyed the Katie McCabe interview, she's very likeable.
Ken saying Kyra Carusa was like Tony Robbins made me laugh.
I enjoyed Ken biting his lip while she said she likes let it flow
I had that in Prague some years ago.
The aircraft gained 5 knots on the way home due to my farting.
Really wish they would start putting time stamps on the descriptions. Especially with the WWC coming up.
In Poland it’s called Golonka
