Terrible news: Lad banter in sports is back and worse than ever. Staff writer Lyric Waiwiri-Smith unpacks a ‘magic handjob’ remark.
During the All Blacks’ winning match against England on Saturday, one of the players from the English side took a bit of a tumble. As is standard for games where a bunch of knocks are taken to the body, a medic, who happened to be female, was there to tend to the player’s injuries. Nothing to write home about, unless, that is, you are a middle-aged wash-up.
Those tuned into the game and, for some reason, Radio Hauraki at the same time (so, all 12 of you), were treated to the comedic stylings of The Alternative Commentary Collective (ACC) with Mike Lane and James McOnie during Saturday night’s game. Keeping up the channel’s culture of classic lads banter, the ACC took an image of the female medic treating the England player and shared it to their social media channels, with a quote from the show: “Forget the magic water how about the magic handjob!”
It wasn’t an 11-year-old newly-introduced to edgelord YouTube content who made that sexual insinuation about a woman doing her job, it was a qualified sports commentator, whose remark was then packaged for social media and glued together with a badly-angled image, all in the name of a bit of lively and definitely-not-sexist-just-funny sports banter. For the medic involved, a simple “thank you” probably would have sufficed.
Between handjob jokes from middle-aged boofheads, the return of SportsCafe with Leigh Hart who may or may not be down a far-right rabbithole, and Matthew Ridge fronting a new podcast where he drops a few slurs because “my mum’s gay”, it’s safe to say the Boys Club era of lads sports chat is back, and more vengeful than ever. And given England’s loss in the Euros final on Monday morning, it can only get worse, and we should all be afraid.
The ACC’s post was removed from social media following backlash which was shared on Beneath The Glass Ceiling, an anonymous Instagram which mainly raises awareness for victims of sexual abuse in the music industry. Despite calls from sports journalist Zoe George and WOMENZSPORTS co-founder Dani Marshall for the ACC, Radio Hauraki and Sky Sport to say sorry for the comments, there has been no apology from any party. Instead, the ACC’s social media presence has been filled with sports memes.
Over on the new SportsCafe, now called Sportscafe-ish, with Marc Ellis, Leigh Hart and Ric Salizzo, it’s business as usual. On their latest episode, released on Wednesday, Ellis takes a walk down memory lane to his scarfie days, and recalls pretending to be in a volunteer fire brigade so he and mates could storm into the flats of girls they liked for “fire inspections,” find their school timetables, and show up outside their classrooms.
Revamped by NZME, the Sportscafe-ish launch was paired with a complimentary Media Insider column in the New Zealand Herald, in which editor-at-large Shayne Currie described Salizzo’s “youth-adjacent personality,” and how this would make old men talking about sports cool to young people again. “At 61 and first glance, he might not seem the sort of character to lead the revival of a brand synonymous with slightly younger blokes and – perhaps in Sports Cafe vernacular – ‘bloke-esses,’” Currie wrote. Ignoring the “bloke-esses” part, whatever that means, this is all code for: lads banter has returned.
This is probably much needed, as the lads have had to deal with a rise of bloke-esses intruding on their world already by daring to commentate and report on sports. Few have been as vocal about this issue as former Bristol Rovers head coach Joey Barton, who in 2023 said “women shouldn’t be talking with any kind of authority in the men’s game”. Even in the women’s games, men prove themselves as better observers, never as clear as Channel 7’s David Basheer praising Matilda’s midfielder Katrina Gorry for not letting “motherhood … [blunt] her competitive instincts”.
Meanwhile, Ridgey, living in the apocalyptic background of Monaco, is having a breakdown on his The Brink podcast with David Ring. After facing backlash for using the f-slur and calling his co-host a “raving fucking pink”, the former All Black is using his airtime to punch back on the media. Maybe Ridgey has actually made a good decision in returning to his public platform at a time like this – the man clearly misses the days where being a part of the NZ’s sporting elite made you immune to criticism, and society finally appears to be regressing.
Sports chat, for all its faults, can sometimes have moments of reckoning and progress, and New Zealand is often a pioneer in this arena. Aotearoa hired the world’s first-ever female rugby commentator, former Black Fern Melodie Robinson, in 2002. Our nation’s coverage of women’s sports is world leading (though still much room for improvement), and our locally-hosted Women’s Rugby World Cup and the Fifa Women’s World Cup have provided more opportunities for real-time, real-life representations of women in sport.
But at times, some things feel like they’ll never change – like when Australian cricketer Maitlan Brown was referred to as a “little Barbie” by a former Love Island contestant the BBC fronted as a reporter. Or during that same Fifa WWC tournament that was supposed to inspire a new generation of female footballers, when Spain’s victory was tainted by a kiss on the lips from coach Luis Rubiales to player Jenni Hermoso, an act which later forced him to resign from FIFA.
The people who are trusted to deliver our sports news don’t always feel like they represent our interests. Such as Tony Veitch, who despite pleading guilty in 2009 to an assault which broke the back of his ex-partner Kristin Dunne-Powell in four places and left her temporarily needing a wheelchair, was rehired by Radio Sport a year later and then withdrew from a Sky TV sports presenting role following backlash. Or Martin Devlin, known hater of women’s advocacy in sports who now broadcasts for The Platform after being accused of punching a young journalist in a Newstalk ZB newsroom.
Is it the entitlement of being in a sport where mucho masculinity is seen as being God-like? Is it all the hits they take to the head on the sports field? This ad nauseam Barstool Sports style of reporting isn’t just insanely cringe, it also reinforces the idea that women are unwelcome in sporting circles, or else aren’t free to exist within these spaces without having to be on guard for their own protection, or be their own advocates.
If you too are concerned with the rise of middle-aged men who love sports having access to microphones and a big platform (again), the best way to counter the revolution is to simply not tune in at all. You could also defeat the evil by reverse-brainwashing the males in your life who are at risk of lad propaganda by giving them a book to read, or by answering “who?” whenever the names Marc Ellis, Leigh Hart and Matthew Ridge are mentioned.
And if you hear someone saying something a little demeaning about women during a sports match, don’t be shy in asking them to explain what’s so funny. Because the only “magic handjob” the blokes at the ACC should be familiar with is the stroke they give themselves after laughing at their own jokes.