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Josh Jerga
October 26, 2009
LOTE Tuqiri has done it 869 times and Cadel Evans has got 23,525 people watching him do it. Andrew Bogut can't do it enough, Brad Fittler stopped doing it since he was sacked and Phil Hughes got into strife over it.
It is twittering, a rapidly growing practice among athletes across all sports that is causing anxiety among sports administrators.
Some of the biggest names in Australian sport are being lured to Twitter, partly as a means of bypassing traditional media to get their opinions, comments and musings across direct to the public.
Sacked Wallaby Tuqiri has been one of Australian sport's most prominent tweeters. With a lot of spare time on his hands, he has kept his tweeps (followers) informed about everything from the ''bloody nail in my front tyre'' to his theories around Phil Waugh's omission from the Australian squad.
When the Australian Rugby Union terminated his contract in July, Tuqiri took to Twitter, immediately writing ''abit (sic) shocked and surprised at the moment.''
Tuqiri has been free to tweet without controversy or backlash as he's yet to sign on with a new sporting employer.
Others have not had the luxury. Precocious Test opener Hughes was slammed for leaking team information through Twitter before the third Ashes Test. Hughes tweeted ''Disappointed not to be on the field with the lads today'' three hours before the start of play and before the news that he had been dropped had been officially released.
Captain Ricky Ponting was fuming, coach Tim Nielsen was struggling to understand how Twitter worked and Hughes' manager owned up to sending the tweet, blaming time differences for breaking the news early.
Philip Pope of Cricket Australia said in its view, comment on Twitter came under its public comment policy that formed part of every player's contract.
''The commonsense approach is that you don't hand a competitive advantage to your competitors in advance of any game by giving information out regarding selection, injury or tactics that isn't already part of the published discussion emanating from the team,'' he said.
''Clearly it is not advisable to be announcing team news on a social network site before it has been announced by the team itself.''
Pope said public comment through Twitter now formed part of Cricket Australia's annual discussion with its 25 contracted players.
Only two days ago, English Premier League club Hull's American striker Jozy Altidore revealed the reason for his omission from the team, apologising on Twitter for turning up late on game day.
The 19-year-old wrote: ''Apologise to the all of you. I showed up late. Made a big mistake I'm very very sorry.''
The update was removed.
Hull manager Phil Brown said he disciplined Altidore after the youngster made his error public. ''That for me is information that stays in-house,'' Brown said.
Sport and online media expert, Professor David Rowe, said there was growing anxiety among sports clubs about their players making comment outside of the formal media mechanisms established for them.
''There is a bit of concern there about whether they give away any trade secrets about tactics,'' he said. ''There is some concern that information may be given that might be useful to people who are involved with betting scams.
''There is also the possibility they may break the party line.''
Patrick Keane of the AFL said clubs educated their players on their public responsibilities and there were cases of players being requested to be ''a bit more temperate with their comments''.
''AFL players, when they log on to any such sites as Twitter, they're primarily responsible for how they present themselves and beyond that their club and the competition.''
http://www.watoday.com.au/news/sport...e#contentSwap1
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