AFTER the furore over Ma’a Nonu saying phark seven times on the wireless, I was surprised that while he was blamed for being vocabularily-challenged, no-one asked why the idiot holding the microphone or the bigger idiot in the production studio didn’t hit the kill switch.
Anyway, other than giving the mainstream media the chance to use the cool word du jour ‘F-bomb’ (F-buffet, more like) over and over again, not to mention all those ageing talkbackers recalling Peter Jones’ “I’m absolutely buggered” after the 1956 Springbok series, what was there to this?
You can’t even say the F word on talkback yourself, no matter how hard you try.  Nor can you say it on live radio interviews, as I discovered once in an interview with Larry Williams when I spilt coffee on my nether regions and suffered the old ‘action-reaction’ reflex, only to hear him ask a question and then say “we’ll come back to that right after the break.”
So why was the Nonu interview allowed to continue?  One rude word normally means the whole thing gets shitcanned (apologies - I have a foul mouth).  I suspect it’s because radio stations these days need anything controversial to make themselves relevant.  How else can you explain the Rock carrying off all the gongs at the NZ Radio Awards?
The far K debacle aside, most outraged commentators missed the last bit, which made me laugh.
Daniel McHardy (Idiot #1 holding the microphone and not trying to turn it off) said: “Mate, you should be a commentator. I think we’ve figured out your career”, to which the M-bomb replied with this:  “I think one thing about commentators mate, is all those legends that have played, they’ve all become commentators. Me I play for the people and for the kids. I’ll just spend some time at the TAB really”.
Putting horse racing to one side, the interview shows why the NZRFU has such a stranglehold over media access to players.  While most other sports would do anything to get media coverage, including bending over backwards and giving media outlets lots of freebies, the NZRFU and their subsidiary organizations lock down media access tighter than an Aussie Rules players’ shorts.
But the occasional Tourettes sufferer clearly gets out.  The other geniuses in this whole overblown freaking thing are our dear friends at Rugby HQ.  To punish Mr Nonu Nonu Shazbot, manager of professional rugby Neil Sorenson said, “Ma’a has been reprimanded and will be required to undertake a community project including a school visit to talk about the responsibilities of being a professional rugby player.”
Distant waterway!*  What sheer brilliance.  You can just hear the kids’ questions now, and see the queue outside the principal’s office afterward.  No school with any sense would touch this with a fricking bargepole.
We might suggest while all this scratch-the-surface, touchy-feely response may appease some, what the NZRFU should be doing is banning Radio Sport from the sideline at the Cake Tin.
But then that would be playing into their hands, wouldn’t it?  Perhaps radio presenter Mark Richardson had uncorked a real conspiracy last week when he said of the incident: “clearly someone has had to put him up to that.”
I think he probably is thinking too hard.  Nonu shouldn’t have said it, but after one (OK maybe two) of the naughty words, that should have been the end.  Kill switch.  From my viewpoint rugby and radio can both va te faire foutre, as the French say.  It’s another story that need not have happened – but not because of Ma’a Nonu.
*Far canal.