It's the nature of modern football media that there's an apparent need for every situation the game throws up to be either black or white, to produce a winner and a loser, and for a default setting of "conflict".
Nuance is the enemy of the social media grabs churned out by the production line of post-AFL round TV shows now consuming more time and energy than the actual games which precede them.
The producers of this "content" hate it when there might be some shades of grey which compromise the "grabbiness" of what they can give the audience. But some of us grizzly old media folk hate more the misrepresentation of what we see with our own eyes. It's just not always that simple.
And what I saw in the aftermath of another, let's say "quirky" Ross Lyon press conference following St Kilda's one-point loss in Adelaide, was a whole lot of hammering of square pegs into round holes.
Of course, there were the usual clearly defined "Ross is a quirky, lovable eccentric and entertaining genius" and "Ross is an arrogant smarta--- who treats media and by extension fans with disrespect" camps.
This time, though, I didn't think either was entirely applicable. And I think some of the reactions on either side of the argument have been over the top.
But sadly, that has meant, not for the first time, the only "loser" has been the concept of an AFL post-game press conference being potentially a really useful vehicle for club supporters to get a decent immediate insight into how and why their team delivered the performance and result it did.
The question which preceded the latest "wacky Ross press conference" tale -- "Do you have a sense of where you're at in the context of the season or is it still too early to know?" -- was entirely reasonable, given St Kilda's 2-4 record probably understates how well they've played.
So St Kilda president Andrew Bassat's subsequent comments on ABC radio about the Lyon press conference performance, that "I think Ross is much better with good questions than he is with bad questions ... ask stupid questions, win stupid prizes, is his view", was I think unfair and out of line.
That said, the suggestions that Lyon's response was rude are also a bit much. He didn't answer the question with overt rudeness. What he did do, though, was that passive aggressive thing he's prone to (a behavioural analyst's delight), as he catalogued their list of games, asking rhetorically "did Adelaide play finals?", as if he momentarily himself couldn't remember.
What's that stuff about? The amateur Freud in me thinks it's some sort of mind game powerplay, like "I know my detail, don't trip up on yours".
Lyon does that frequently, like in this same press conference referring to a jargon term like "CSB (centre square bounce)". That's not an acronym I've heard used in a public discussion before (Matthew Lloyd hadn't heard it, either), and while it doesn't take too long to work it out, the subconscious intent is to disarm the inquisitor ("we're on my turf now").
That's annoying, because it reinforces this creeping tendency for AFL media and its burgeoning numbers of former elite level players to resemble a "boy's club" to which the rest of us mere mortals are supposed to feel privileged to have any access at all.
So here's a couple of reminders, guys. One, you were at one stage highly skilled at handling a leather ball. That's it. You haven't cured cancer, and you're not brokering world peace, so get some perspective on the status that entitles you to and just how important (or not) this stuff is.
The other is that when you make all this stuff as inaccessible and somehow mysterious and secretive as possible, you're actually punishing supporters of the clubs for whom you work. Or in the case of media types, excluding, not including your own audiences.
There's various reasons post-game pressers aren't what they were, like lack of media resources, greater focus on specific talking points out of games (which aren't so reliant upon a coach's view) than the results of the games, and the lust for exclusive content (where by nature a press conference is shared access).
Personally, I've always enjoyed the post-game forum with coaches as a good chance to clarify my own thoughts about why things have happened, or to check on a level of detail to which most of us can't necessarily be across.
Most importantly, though, it's an opportunity to help fans of the clubs we've watched play get a sense of why their team won and lost, why this player or that performed well/poorly, why they were moved/not moved, anything which can help contextualise the two hours of often frantic football action we've just witnessed.
And seriously, it's not like we're talking about a pitched battle in a war zone here. There's a desk, some chairs, and far more often than not a reasonable degree of goodwill on both sides.
If Andrew Bassat wants a sense of genuine high pressure press conference environments, I'm happy to fill him in on what it was like at Victoria Park following St Kilda's famous win over Collingwood in the "Nicky Winmar game" of 1993.
That involved a group of us standing out in the cyclone wire covered race, firing questions at Saints coach Ken Sheldon while hordes of aggrieved Magpie fans gobbed (literally) at us from above. That was genuine angst. What Lyon and his interlocutors deal with now, by comparison, is a relative picnic.
Nearly all the questions asked are good faith attempts to elicit some information, not some dastardly attempt at a "gotcha". And the vast bulk of answers given in response are honest attempts to provide the answers sought.
No-one needs to "win" or "lose" a post-game presser. And if you have a genuine interest in how and why games are won and lost, you might even actually end up enlightened, whether or not that's "sexy" TikTok or Insta material. So maybe let's all cool the conspiracy theories for a bit and accept them for the value they do provide.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at Footyology.
