Rebecca Wilson Bites Back

Here is today's column in the Daily Telegraph, in which she refers to (almost) universally-respected commentator and pundit Simon Hill as a 'feral soccer fan', and questions his abilities as a journalist. I'm not quite sure why she singles out Hill, though, because her column has been pretty much derided from most corners of the sports media.

To be fair to Wilson, she has copped a huge amount of abuse over the past week in responses posted on mainstream news sites and football fan forums, ranging from people taking a dig at her journalistic credentials to inexcusably misogynistic and degrading comments about her gender and physical appearance. Even SBS's own Godfather of Football, Les Murray, wrote a scathing blog on The World Game site in which he made reference to Wilson's 'leathery skin' and 'ironed-on hair'. The offending paragraph now has been amended, but it was stupid and juvenile for Uncle Laszlo (who, to be quite honest, has been slipping for a while now) to stoop to such a personal level. I don't want to know the sort of personal hate mail that Wilson's email inbox would have been flooded with.

Rebecca Wilson stands by her original article. Which is fair enough: she meant what she wrote. Although, funnily enough, she makes absolutely no effort to back up her wild claims in light of all the eminently sensible counter arguments that have been flung her way. All I can say is that rumours of Australian football's death have been greatly exaggerated - of course, we'll have to wait and see whether her confident predictions of the ignoble demise of football in this country actually comes to pass. Somehow, I doubt it.

EDIT:
Here is a fantastic response to Wilson's article, by Kevin Airs on the FourFourTwo site: http://au.fourfourtwo.com/blogs.aspx?CIaBID=21