Spanner in the works
First Grade
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Get facts straight first. The poster said it was a Melbourne based show. When in fact it is filmed in Sydney. Are you stupid?
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Nope. Just seems bizarre for some to call it anti-NRL when everyone is free game on that show.
I agree with your point about them being part of the upper social class. I don't think they need to discuss the codes image problems - people are employed to do that and it has being discussed at length. Still a few who won't listen - whether that's right or wrong I don't know. Comparing the codes would be good. Although whichever side comes off worse then the paranoia will come out.... Don't have a problem with the ABC most times. It's brutally honest, sometimes to its own detriment, it sticks to the facts for the most part, and is far less sensationalised than commercial television.
Filling Tigers hot seat just another odd job for Bailey
Adrian Proszenko
September 18, 2011
Want to own a peice of your team? From just $1,000.
Top Tiger ... Mike Bailey, the Wests Tigers chairman. Photo: Jon Reid
THE chairmanship of Wests Tigers is not the most unusual position Mike Bailey has held.
Long before he began presenting the weather or entered politics, the veteran journalist - according to his Wikipedia profile - held a job as ''Bargain Sam'' spruiking, among other things, ladies' underwear outside a Sydney department store.
This is only partly true. ''Actually, they got that wrong. It was 'Savings Sam','' Bailey chuckled. ''They were looking for someone who had done some microphone work. Being precocious and wanting a media career, I said 'yeah, I can do that'. They gave me a striped coat - much more striped than the suit I'm wearing today - with grey and blue stripes going down and a boater straw hat with 'Savings Sam' around it. I tell you what, despite my love of journalism and everything else I've done, it was a great way to earn a living.''
For the generation which grew up with Bailey - best remembered as a weather presenter on the ABC - the chairmanship of the Tigers may also appear an incongruous fit. But this is not so. The former Ashfield De La Salle College student is a Wests Tigers man to the core. He grew up three doors down from the great Western Suburbs Magpies and Australian halfback Keith Holman, his father was a Magpies player (albeit the Bellingen variety) and he grew up watching his beloved black and whites at Pratten Park. He drank with the players at the old Dancer's Club when the team moved to Lidcombe Oval. As the years went on, he struck up a friendship with teacher-cum-coach Roy Masters.
''I even took a couple of classes for him once or twice because, in those days, they didn't have home video equipment,'' Bailey said. ''Maybe I shouldn't say this but he'd occasionally look at videos during school hours and I'd go out and talk about weather or something else half relevant [to the class] while he did that.''
There has been a more formal relationship with Wests Tigers in recent times, as the chairman of the Wests Ashfield Leagues Club. The chairmanship of Wests Tigers is shared between the Wests and Balmain branches of the joint venture for a year each - with Bailey slipping into the role just as their winning streak began. Given he ran for Parliament in 2007 - the swing of 4.7 per cent to Labor in North Sydney was not enough to dislodge Joe Hockey - it would seem the perfect grounding for his present role.
''I don't know if it helps at the Wests Tigers, but I enjoyed it,'' he said. ''My wife said that I became a new man as a result of that campaign.'' Bailey's wife of 25 years is ''Miss Helena'' of Romper Room fame - another successful joint venture. Rugby league can now welcome one of its more unlikely power couples.
''I met her at Channel Seven when she got the job,'' Bailey said. ''I started at Seven in 1972 and Miss Patricia was doing Romper Room at that time. I got along very well with Miss Patricia but it was Miss Helena who made the difference The violins started playing. We got together and it's been a very happy partnership in the years since.''
Other projects, including fund-raising for the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, working through issues affecting the club industry and acting as a consultant to the NSW government regarding its emergency management strategies for climate change, have kept him busy.
