Picture credit: Michael Di Lonardo
Last Saturday night we were all shocked when Dylan Napa attempted to make a powerful hit on Andrew McCullough and ended up pulling off a move that looked like a botched attack in an early edition of Mortal Kombat. He squared up, set himself and then launched upwards with the intention of driving his shoulder into McCullough.
However, he timed the whole thing wrong and instead of driving his shoulder into the middle of McCullough’s chest, Napa’s head delivered a sickening uppercut to the bronco’s chin, knocking him out immediately and leaving him to be taken off on a Medicab, blood coming from his mouth.
Thankfully for McCullough, all he suffered was a severe concussion and a cut inside his mouth. I say thankfully because that could have ended up vastly worse.
Subsequently, Napa will be suspended.
Gould takes to Twitter
In steps our man, Phil Gould. He stated, “Social media shouldn’t be running this game.”
He then took to social media to continue his view and defend his comments. He then went on about the evils of social media, via his social media account at Twitter.
Gould’s antics all year, being sarcastic and very critical about on-field officials on air and on social media have, whether directly or indirectly, seen the high penalty counts from the start of the year reduce dramatically at the midpoint of the season.
Gould is happy to use the evil social agenda to push his message to try and effect change that he believes in, but when others attempt to do it and get an outcome he opposes, all of a sudden social media is a problem.
Earlier this year, again on Twitter, a fan made a critical tweet to Gus about Lewis Brown. Gould replied with:
“Lewis Brown – 199 NRL matches – 15 Test matches for his Country NZ. Looks like quite the career to me. You on the other hand, well, why waste my breath…”
An inconsistent message
While he may have a point, it was lost in his year-long tirade against match officials, which your author here reminded him about, stating:
“How many First Grade NSWRL/ARL/NRL games have you refereed? You can’t discredit people who criticise players, on the grounds that they haven’t performed at the same level, while at the same time you’re doing exactly that in regards to refs.”
He blocked me after that. Fair enough, doesn’t worry me. But as we’ve seen here, he’s been contradicting himself a few times, and that’s before we look at his statements around the Penrith coaching situation.
Is Phil Gould right to question social media use and the consistency of the NRL or is off on a wild tangent? Let us know in the comments below.