AUSTRALIAN RUGBY GREAT David Campese was slammed by current and former players after a tweet questioning whether women journalists should be writing about rugby.
Campese, Australia’s record try scorer famed for his goose-stepping runs on the wing, posted on Wednesday morning about Sydney Morning Herald journalist Georgina Robinson, who is covering Australia’s current tour of Europe.
“Why does the SMH get a girl to write about rugby. Growden who was a great journo and now we have someone who has no idea about the game!” he tweeted.
The Growden mentioned is the newspaper’s long-time rugby writer Greg Growden who recently took redundancy.
Captain Dave to the rescue
Campese, who played 101 Tests, scoring a then-record 64 tries, has since deleted the tweet, but not before an online backlash, including from Wallaby flanker David Pocock, currently in Wales ahead of this weekend’s Test.
“Really sad to see journos attacked based on their gender. Or a grown woman referred to as a ‘girl’,” Pocock said on Twitter.
Former league and union player Wendell Sailor also criticised the comment.
“Well good morning to u Campo & I have to say u are on ur own with this comment, it’s 2012 champ,” he tweeted.
Campese later responded: “Sometimes it is good to see some people react to (a) thing you say. Please relax and see the light side of life. All press are the same.”
“Aussie male is chauvinist” shocka!!!!!!
he makes a point tho, im all for gender equality but a woman is unlikely to be a better sports writer than a man.. women can report on sports like beach volleyball, iv no issue with that
Why exactly? Because they’ve never played the game to the highest level? There are plenty of women who play rugby now. How many journos can say they played at a serious level approaching the one the game is now played at? Because she never played at all perhaps? You don’t have to be a criminal to write great crime novels, you don’t have to be a player to understand , write about and love a game.
Wow. No sexism from the posters here at all. Women apparently can’t be passionate about sport, would actually want to be paid to do it (outrageous!) and are just generally unlikely to be good sports writers. Oh yeah. You boys sure are ALL for gender equality…
Excuse me. I have to go and cry my pretty girl eyes out into my barbie hankie.
Oh B Collins….please don’t let it upset you too much petal!
Men are passionate about rugby.. would probably do the job for free. The woman is only interested in the job and getting paid
sky sports have a woman reporter on their soccer saturday programme and she’s awful, i reckon she’s just a token.. same with the premier league with a female lineswoman, ended it disaster! women should stick to their own games on not report on mens sport
The only disaster that came with that female lines woman was the unmitigated train wreck the Andy Grey et al on Sky made of their careers by spouting the same bilge as this about her and her decision making ability. The icing on the cake being her calls were revealed to be spot on.
Everybody knows he’s an eejit and to be fair “whisper” he wasn’t even a great player…