The Courier Mail has sunk the spikes into retiring Australian cricket captain, Michael Clarke.
Editor, Chris Dore (pictured in our mock-up, above), has labelled Australian cricket captain a loner and loser. This follows last year's headline obscenity over a deceased transgender woman – both of which ignited social media backlash. The 2014 'Bride And Seek' headline resulted in a petition attracting in excess of 20,000 people demanding an apology.
Seemingly out of step with the sentiment of his countrymen, and possibly in retaliation for Clarke's request that "Australian media be kinder to the next generation of Australian cricketers", Dore has seen fit to allow another headline which underpins his position as another of the Murdoch press' global network of gutter 'spin' specialists.
ABOVE: The Courier Mail front page, 10th August, 2015
Comments on the ABC Breakfast's Facebook Page concerning today's Courier Mail front page included, "And we wonder why there is so much bullying in schools when it happens so openly like this in the media all the time. What confusing and mixed messages we are sending to children. The Courier should be ashamed of itself."
In 2013, The Courier Mail ran a series of articles denigrating the England cricket players during their Australia tour which resulted in a 5-0 Ashes whitewash loss. There were rolling front pages and editorial insults which went well beyond any vestiges of reportage and opinion — one example being the newspaper's abject, and self-celebrated, refusal to even mention England bowler Stuart Broad by name.
Today's Coleman article revolves around tensions, known and rumoured, in the Australian dressing room. Well I'll be out for a first ball duck — there are tensions in the dressing rooms of winning sporting teams all around the world: when Sir Alex Ferguson was winning EPL trophies as head of Manchester United, when England was hitting it out of the park with Kevin Pietersen, and if this cobbled together bollocks of a story is to be believed, also when Australia whitewashed England just 18 months ago and again as recently as July when they beat the poms by an innings.
Coleman's piece and Dore's headline should both be dismissed as the last vestiges of a wagging tail on a losing team.
ABOVE: What we reckon the front page should be.
