Barracuda woman bites league stars! Babe bombshells the Fatman! What a time its been for sports fans north of the Murray, although you dont need to live in NSW or Queensland or even follow their premier footy code to savour the stoush, a deliciously all-Australian tale of television, tribalism and blonde ambition. In the challengers corner: Rebecca Wilson, motor-mouth sports commentator and gossip columnist. A woman with an opinion on everything (even if I only know a half a bit about it) and a taste for trouble. In defence: former rugby league players turned TV stars Paul Vautin and Peter Sterling, aka Fatty and Sterlo. Hosts of Channel Nines Footy Show, a program which has run long and hard but is now perhaps a little tired and definitely losing audience. Which Wilson happened to mention, in typical bloody-shovel style, in her Sunday Telegraph column. Which riled the boys. Which reached a crescendo last week after the shows new boss did the utterly unexpected and recruited Wilson as a regular panellist.
Dismissed by many as a publicity stunt to boost the ratings which it clearly was, at one level, and effectively did the general consensus was that the encounter itself, last Thursday night, was something of a damp squib. The two hosts entered the arena having declared they would introduce Wilson but not actually talk to her, for which they received a caning from Wilsons fellow columnists at News Limited. Precious prats was one description. But if they were less than welcoming, there was no blazing confrontation: she was the clawless cat set among docile, if frosty, pigeons.
Still, its not over yet. Wilson is as unpredictable as she is outspoken and, as she made clear on the day of her debut, she wont be shutting up any time soon. Not about herself, nor about some of the more intriguing issues about the treatment of women in sport.
As a female journalist coming through that world, you have a chair beaten over your head every second day, Wilson says. That, she claims, is the nub of her problem with the boys at The Footy Show. Most of it. Id say 90% of it. Because they are still from the old-fashioned school of sport, where theres no place for a woman in sport. Its still said to me all the time, You didnt play, you didnt play the game. And you go, Mate, move on. Most of these gibbering journos wouldnt even know the shape of a rugby league football; they didnt play, either. Its a male thing, like a rite of passage, and only men know about what goes on in rugby league.
Her enemies and she has a legion of them, she knows will say its a personal matter, nothing to do with gender at all. If anything, shes blokier than most blokes and its what she writes and says that gets peoples backs up. Shes been called a ball-breaker, and worse. But she describes herself as warm and soft-hearted, with a great capacity for friendship. So why the abuse, the death threats, the ugly I-hate-Rebecca Wilson internet site?
Because its sport and because Im a woman and because ... I tell you what, I said to someone on radio the other day who was working with me, Dont take me on and put my back to the wall because Ill fight you and Ill win. Dont do it. Do her friends ever advise her to pull back, to be more cautious about what she says? Yeah, they do, theyre always asking, Do you have to push everything? Do you have to be so bloody opinionated? Well, yes. You cant let the bastards beat you.
It started when she was 23, moving from the Brisbane Courier-Mail (where girls werent allowed to cover sport) to Channel 10, where she was assigned to cover the 1982 Commonwealth Games in the Queensland capital To do the archery because I was the girl. So I trotted off to do the rugby league reporting and this is the Wally Lewis, Mal Meninga, Fatty Vautin era
Ive known Fatty for so long, I cant tell you.
They used to play practical jokes on me and think they were really smart, pulling their dicks out during interviews, you know, that was what they used to do. That whole thing. Youd try to do an interview and theyd try to kick a football into the back of their heads during it
He was always around then and he was always a nark, Fatty. He was always the one causing the trouble. Hes a bloody pest, hes a red-haired pest.
Its not so tactful, given they are now colleagues. Nor is her assessment of The Footy Show as having lost its edge, alienated younger sports fans and generally disappeared up its own arse. Theres also the fact Wilson was an executive with Super League during its knockdown, drag-out, 1995-1997 fight with the Australian Rugby League over the future of the code: Those hatreds still run very deep
Peter Sterling and Paul Vautin were paid a lot of money to stay at the ARL and they have never lost sight of that loyalty and they havent ever really got over the war.
All or any of which might help explain the reluctance of the hosts to welcome Wilson to their panel. But the deals done now, shes there for the season. Her presence may make them uncomfortable but she doesnt believe it will prompt a walkout. Because look, those guys have had it pretty easy. Theyve gone straight from high school, where they were elite footballers, straight into a professional footballer role, into professional media roles. Theres been no struggle street for any of them. The moment they feel a little bit of hot air on their necks, theyre going Aaaagh and having hissy fits. Its ridiculous.
Those guys have got to realise that if they want to keep educating their kids, paying their mortgages, and calling the footy, theyre going to have to fall into line a little bit, like other normal employees have to do.
Isnt she a little nervous, though, at the prospect of walking in there week after week? Yeah, Im a bloody wreck. I just went and broke my personal best on the rowing machine. Tall and trim on six sessions a week, shes also broken out in eczema, a sure sign of stress. But shes not backing down. Not her style or her history.
Journalism is the family trade. Her father Bruce is a foreign correspondent, her brother Jim is a sports reporter, her sister Lizzie (to whom she doesnt speak) works in PR. Rebecca was seven when she decided to join the club. She grew up in a house full of women and drama: Opinions were always actively encouraged in our house. Mum and dad split up when I was really young, and my grandfather was a newsagent and we lived with my grandfather, my grandmother, my two great-aunts, mums three sisters, and my brother and sister. All in one big house at the back of a newsagent in the middle of Surfers Paradise
my grandfather used to seek solace in the Rotary Club.
When she moved into television, they tried to groom her, to take away that unmistakable Brisbane accent, but failed dismally. They tried to make me posh; dad calls it the Qantas hostie accent, which is about right
youre not going to take the girl out of Queensland just like that.
Wilson had a hit working with Tony Squires on ABCs The Fat and a miss when the show switched time-slots and went variety. As a sports fiend from way back, it drove her cuckoo: I dont want to sit there and talk to some bloody half-witted actor. Im sort of going, Youre gorgeous but youre hopeless. Truth is, shes a News Limited girl at heart, likes the culture and is close to chief executive John Hartigan, whom she describes as a very, very dear friend. There has been gossip and she knows people say he protects and promotes her but Wilson insists its not so. I fight all my own fights, hes unaware of most of the fights I have because hes at such a different frigging level from anything I do. Professionally, she reckons its a bad rather than good association due to peoples assumptions.
The thing Hartigan has taught her, she says, is to never, ever give a f**k about what anyone thinks. Of all the people I know, hes the person who cares least about what people think of him and thats been a very good lesson to learn. Because he believes that, as far as the worlds concerned, only a few people matter. Thats your kids, your parents and your loved ones, and thats all that matters. She has two sons she adores from a marriage which foundered a couple of years back, an experience she claims (though some may laugh) makes her more sensitive about what she puts in her well-read sports gossip column. Its fertile ground for enmities. People like looking for a reason to find an enemy in you if they dont like you anyway. Put one foot wrong in your column and theyll say, I hate her, shes banned. I get sin-binned by quite a few people.
Most recently by Bulldogs CEO Malcolm Noad, who banned Wilson based on the numerous errors and unsubstantiated stories that she has written about the Bulldogs over the past 12 months. She laughs it off but is less amused by his allegation that she had a personal issue with him dating back to the Sydney Olympics, when Noad was her boss at News Limited. His statement alleged that she [Wilson] was suspended by News Limited for the period of the Games at the request of Lachlan Murdoch for several indiscretions. The response is vintage Wilson.
First of all, I dont have a personal problem with Malcolm Noad, I have a professional problem with him. Second, I have never been suspended. As for indiscretions, what might they be? Makes out Ive been rooting in the foyer, or stealing money, that sort of thing
what happened was, I told them to stick their job up their arse. Reckons the senior exec she said that to is still recovering from the experience.
But it was no fun. She spent six months in a foetal position. At the same time, shes someone who loves a drama, loves a stoush, loves getting on the telephone and having a good gossip. You can see why her friends suggest she put her brain into gear before offering an opinion, and why she might refuse. As long as theres a grenade to be thrown, Im happy with a grenade.
Driven? Yeah, totally. Is there a risk shes being used, in this latest fuss over The Footy Show? Absolutely. All TV is that, all TV is using someone to get a better rating, thats what TV is. And thats what we do. Tough, though Wilson claims she loves frocks and make-up and ranks nine on a one-to-ten scale of femininity. Her greatest fears are, in order: something happening to her children, death, and not having a job.
She dreams of winning Lotto, paying out her mortgage and stopping work. In real life, she picks up her mobile each week and dials from A to Z, hustling for column items. Its a hard business, gossip, and those who dish it often find themselves dished. It happened to Wilson again just this weekend, and she was last seen heading north to absorb the fall-out, girding herself for another wild week. Unlike sport, too much drama is sometimes more than enough.
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As a commentator Wilson offered nothing and to make matters worse she is a woman...a very blokey woman but a woman none the less. She had no role. Three time TV failure and media lightweight.
"he was always a nark, Fatty. He was always the one causing the trouble. Hes a bloody pest, hes a red-haired pest"
Didnt she call him "my mate Fatty Vautin" in her tacky little spunk spotting, pro-AFL gossip column in the Sunday Telegraph last week?
Uncomfortable ... Wilson on The Footy Show panel last week.
