• Home
  • SOCRATES’ THINKING
    • News and comment
    • Editorial
  • About
  • US
    • Sportsocratic team
    • Contributors
  • Reviews
    • Adventures
    • Books
    • Places
  • Contributions
  • Advertise
  • Contact

Sportsocratic

Thoughts, ideas, opinions and postulations on sport and adventuring

  • Sport & society
    • Ethics & Values
    • History
    • Favourite photos
    • Cultural and social issues
    • Politics
    • Big questions
    • Sport fashion
      • Sartorialism and style
  • Wild sports
  • Silly stuff
  • Sports science
    • Research
    • Coaching
    • Innovation
    • HEALTH
  • The things that made me
  • Stories
    • General sporting stories
    • Waves of Pain
      • No Respect!
      • Death Wish at Fairy Bower
      • Fried nuts
      • The ocean is a trickster… especially Hawaii’s North Shore – Gas chambers bites the unwary!
      • Titus Kinimaka’s nightmare Christmas
      • Dix dumped – the trials of a self-confessed elite body surfer
      • The little surf that nearly ruined a promising career…
      • Rabbit killer – a master takes a caning at pipeline!
      • Death Wish at Fairy Bower
      • Easternmost memory – surfing in the wild at the end of the continent
      • Nothing ruins a good surf like a couple of blokes with automatic assault rifles…
      • Agony for Miki Dora
      • Smashed at Gas Chambers
      • Who was Europe’s first surfing woman? Introducing the wonderful Witch of Newbury.
      • A bad day at Palmy – surfies and clubbies at war!
      • When being a proven waterman is not enough!
      • The highs and lows of surfing Sunset Beach while competing at the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational
      • An American midnight surf – that goes very wrong!
  • What does it mean?
    • What is a snake?
    • What does “shag” mean?
    • What does “Freddy Jones” mean?
    • What does “hook and ladder” mean?
    • What does back walk-over mean?
  • Philosophers Sport Bar
    • Socrates and Aristotle debate football defence
    • Michel de Montaigne on coaching sports
    • Ancient philosophers discuss what makes the beautiful game beautiful! Laozi and Socrates get technical.

A football career… without peer!

May 29, 2019 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment Filed Under: Cultural and social issues

Want a career in sport? One bloke thought that he could fulfil his dream of creating a sporting career through belting a tennis ball against a wall for hour after hour at his parents Hunter Valley farm with a cricket bat. His three younger sisters no doubt thought that their brother was nuts (as he sweated and swung his bat at the small yellow object time and time again), but this kid saw a glorious future for himself that included many thousands of test match runs and leading his team to Ashes glory with the bat! It never happened. Who’s to say what did happen was any less glorious. Aaron Kearney has gone on to carve a long career in sports journalism that not only enabled him to report on some of the finest moments in Australian sporting history but also enabled him to build programs to assist in the development of communities and dramatically change the lives of individuals. Very few career athletes can make such a claim!

Kearney at the controls

Sport was everywhere as Kearney grew up. His high school not only produced champion football (soccer) teams but it also produced some of the nations finest ever Rugby League footballers (Andrew and Matty Johns, no less). Kearney established himself as one of the regions best cricketers (he went on to pay local first grade for several decades) and in his spare time established himself as a state championship tennis contender, as well. Kearney warns against anyone mistaking him for a gifted athlete, however. He believes that any sporting success that came his way was “hard won.” Despite his self-proclaimed lack of natural ability preventing him from forging a career in the professional sporting ranks, he discovered that writing about sport and talking about sport enabled him stay close to the sporting world that he loved.

“I was no good at it…”

It is a strange quirk of fate that the one sport that Kearney avoided like the plague as a youngster became the sport that he not only grew to love passionately but also became the sport he was able to build a wonderful career around. Why did he avoid soccer as a kid?

Because “I was no good at it… and it’s hard enough devoting time to sports that I could make a fist of than to one that I couldn’t”, says Kearney.

Much later in his life he did take up competitive soccer and he wasn’t half bad at it considering he didn’t kick his first ball in anger until he was well into his thirties but he is pretty sure that he had been reporting on and commentating soccer matches for some time before he finally took the game up himself.

Kearney’s soccer (reporting) career commenced around eighteen years ago when he approached a local radio station in the hope of getting a gig doing some Rugby League commentary work. Only weeks after starting at the station, management were approached by Con Constantine, owner of the Newcastle United National League soccer team, in the hope of getting his team’s games broadcasted to a local audience. As the station’s soccer “expert” the finger was pointed straight at Kearney to make local live broadcasting happen in the Newcastle area. Kearney was fine with being offered the new challenging role but, given that no-one in Australia was doing any live soccer radio broadcasting at the time, he didn’t have a single model to base his own presentation on.

“I had to have a friend in Ireland press record and play on a cassette player when the BBC was calling a football match and then send the cassette tape out to me,” says Kearney now.

One of Kearney’s favourite places?

Kearney used his BBC tapes to teach himself how to commentate radio soccer and he has now been serving the Newcastle region’s soccer fans with their team’s home and away games… around seven-hundred games in total… for over eighteen years.

“I have sat on barbeque plates at Melbourne United, drilled holes into walls of grandstands, crawled underneath seating to plug into fax machines… all to enable me to bring Newcastle games to the local punters. It’s funny that of all the sports I have been obsessed with, this is the one that has delivered my working life.”

In recent years Kearney’s soccer reporting and commentary has taken an interesting turn. Instead of merely commentating and giving expert reports on the game here in Australia, much of his career is now centred around teaching people from far flung communities about television broadcasting and how they can take sports to their local communities. For him, sports broadcasting has turned to teaching sports broadcasting for community development.

The poverty and violence he saw along the way had a huge impact

Kearney’s interest in community work was stimulated over twenty years ago when he worked with a documentary team that travelled off-road for the full length of Africa. The poverty and violence that he saw along the way had a huge impact on him and made him determined to, at some stage, apply his skills toward assisting communities. Back in Australia he set about growing his sports journalism career but a brief stint in Papua-New Guinea, in 2008, working with a documentary team on the Kokoda Track, reminded Kearney of his desire to not just report but to assist communities.

Kearney on the Newcastle waterfront

His chance came on Christmas Eve, in 2012, when his ABC employers advertised a job for an Australian sports journalist to assist the sport department of the Papua-New Guinea Broadcasting Commission with broadcast training. Kearney was thrilled to get the job but, on the completion of the posting, despite the effusive praise that was showered on him by his PNGBC hosts and the joy he found in working there, he regretted taking on the role with such limited knowledge and skills in relation to how adults learn, how skills and knowledge can be passed on across cultures and of Pacific cultures in general. Kearney’s feelings of inadequacy led to a ground-breaking research Masters degree that focused on how broadcasting can be effectively used as a tool for community development. Post university studies, Kearney applied his Masters findings to the real world firstly, when he co-executive produced the Papua-New Guinea national coverage of the 2015 Pacific Games, and secondly, when he was offered a full-time appointment within the ABC International Development unit working on Pacific sports partnerships.

“Commentating for good”

The greatest spin-off from Kearney’s thinking about the importance of sport as a social activator and from his university studies was his “Commentating for Good” concept that has now manifested itself over several international community development programs. Central to “Commentating for Good” is the training program developed by Kearney to empower people to produce a professional standard broadcast of a sporting event. “Women in News and Sport,” a program run jointly by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and the ABC International Development unit, jumped at the chance to apply Kearney’s concept and training program to their work and this culminated in him leading a team of gifted women from Papua-New Guinea, Ni Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands to successfully provide coverage of the soccer World Cup qualifying tournament in Lautoka, Fiji, to the Pacific Region.

Kearney explains that sports commentary is something that many people think is easy to do but very few people are genuinely good at it. His job became enabling people to achieve professional proficiency at this complex and difficult skill. This aspect of his work gives Kearney enormous satisfaction in that it not only provides life-changing skills to deserving people but gives the broadcasters the opportunity to impart critical community information while their punters are enjoying an exciting sporting experience.

“If everyone is going to be tuning into a netball final you are broadcasting, you can advertise details about the upcoming vaccination clinic as part of that, is a good example of a possible sustainable community development strategy that might come with the goal of developing commentary skills!” says Kearney.

World Cup qualifying commentary team

The wonderful work achieved in the Pacific through the “Women in News and Sport” program has now been given an even larger and more exciting task.

“FIFA (soccer’s international governing body) heard about this aspect of the WINS program and they approached me at the beginning of the year and said how about we take some women to the World Cup and we broadcast games in hybrid English and indigenous languages back to the women’s countries in the Pacific,” Kearney explains!

As a result, Kearney will be coach, advisor, mentor, supporter, facilitator and chief dog’s body to three women… two from Vanuatu and one from Fiji… and they will travel to France to commentate all the New Zealand football team’s world cup matches back to the Pacific.

Nine simulcast deals with nine countries!

“Our coverage will broadcast back to the Oceania Football Federation web site, but we also have nine simulcast deals with nine countries throughout the Pacific as well! It’s going to be women from the Pacific broadcasting back to the Pacific. Its kind of awesome when you say it out load. It’s huge. I keep on saying ‘wow’ to myself!”

Exciting as the opportunity is for Kearney and his team, he admits that he is terrified. Kearney is the first to admit that while philosophizing about community development goals is right up his street and that he can do a bang-up job at commentating and teaching commentary the technical stuff is not exactly his strong point.

Broadcasting crew

“Here is what is absolutely certain,” he says. “Three women from developing nations in the Pacific who are highly talented will be given the opportunity to perform on the biggest stage in the world and they are going to do a superb job – and they are going to be the pride of their nation – and they are going to believe that anything is possible – and they are going to show the people around them (their daughters, their brothers, their fathers, even their haters) that they are capable of anything. That much will be achieved. That is the micro truth of it. It will change the lives of those who are directly involved and those who see what they are capable of achieving.”

“With some investment talented people from any environment can be brought up to a standard where they will present the game in a brilliant light that will attract new fans and that will provide a model for the broadcast future of football. That is local people, with local knowledge with world class training presenting their local version of the world game to their local area and I really hope that that will prove to the world that this is a viable model for the future. That we have struck on something here that is very special.”

“Will the signal go?”

“For all of this I have no doubts around any of it… other than can I connect the computer and make sure that the signal gets to New Zealand to be distributed! That’s the stuff that is giving me anxiety! Not the training. Not the capacity of the women. Not the travel. None of that. Just – will the signal go?”

Not only is Aaron Kearney’s latest project showing the world a model for the future of sports broadcasting, he is also providing a model of how a fanatical sports lover can aspire to a rich, varied and satisfying career in sport. Through his writing, reporting, broadcasting, studying, promotion, teaching and social activism he has demonstrated that sports lovers do not have to tightly fit into a single sporting box. This multi award winning journalist and sports social worker is showing us just how many ways it is possible to leave a worthwhile mark on the world.

Aloisi versus Uruguay – Kearney was right there!

It wasn’t that many years ago that Kearney found himself on the side-line only meters away from John Aloisi as the big striker ripped his shirt off after banging a penalty shot into the back of the net rocketing Australia into its first FIFA World Cup finals series in decades and thus witnessing one of Australia’s finest ever sporting moments from very close range. Things are no less exciting for Kearney right now. Few people would realize that the managing of the micro-details of a trip to France (like ordering special headphone jacks on-line and booking railway tickets between Grenoble and Le Havre) is exciting but his journey will start on June 4 so there are thousands of tiny details to be organized in a very short period of time. He has to get the details right!

Even though “plugging shit in” is not his strength, Kearney will be ready.  

   

SOCRATES

Short, fat, slow, uncoordinated and clumsy, ancient Athenian Socrates had very few of the physical quality required of the elite athlete. He did have, on the other hand, a better than average brain between his ears and a mouth that could talk opposing players, referees and coaches half into their graves. Socrates, as a sport analyst, is what the world needs and misses. He is an opinionated so-and-so that actually thinks deeply about sport and adventuring and likes nothing better than provoking others into deep thought. Socrates is the antithesis of the sporting jock or the West Sydney soccer supporter.

Support Sportsocratic

Thanks for reading this story! We appreciate your visit to Sportsocratic… and love providing alternative information, opinions and angles from the sporting world. The world of sport is so full of the same old stuff from the same old sources that it drives us nuts… and it makes our day giving voice to less orthodox views. If you appreciate our free service, give some thought to helping us out. It costs us big bucks to keep Sportsocratic going but, if our readers support us, our future is much more secure.

Help us to keep you entertained and informed… and enable Socrates to keep asking those big philosophical sporting questions.

Support Sportsocratic for as little as a $1 and we would love you to bits. It only takes a few seconds!

Support Us

Tagged With: aaron kearney, broadcast, fiji, france, new zealand, newcastle, pacific, papua new guinea, soccer, solomon islands, training, vanuatu, wims, World Cup

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related

SOCRATES’ RECENT TWEETS

Tweets by Sportsocratic

Secret Sports Person

Their sporting life – A journalist’s story

April 7, 2021 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

“Bill” could have been a great rugby player… but he was more interested in other things. Do people display characteristics of their personal and working lives through their performances on the sporting field? Socrates describes the sporting life of one of his favorite people, and shows how the skill and character of one of Australia’s best journalists was always on show, even as a young man, whether on the rugby field, the basketball court or even on a quiet country headland when threatened with fisticuff by a big bloke wearing a blue uniform. Get “Bill’s” story here. Click the pic!

Olympics Rugby Teams – Who are the greatest?

April 23, 2020 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

The rugby trivia question for the century! Which national rugby union team holds the record for the most Olympic gold medals in Rugby Union (the full-team fifteen a side game)?

Ethics and fairplay

Wallaby v France test – the moment that soared above all the others

July 20, 2021 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

There were many great moments in the final Wallabies versus France rugby test last week but according to Socrates, one stood our far above all the others. Was it a great try? A brilliant tackle? A perfect scrum or line-out? A fantastic bit of work at the break-down? According to the rotund Greek hooker it was none of those things. He reckons that the highlight of the game was a much quieter, simpler and more subdued moment. A moment that might have escaped the attention of millions of spectators. Find out about Socrates favorite moment of the test. Click the pic.

Never cheated in my life!

November 19, 2020 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

What is cheating? Is cheating a black and white moral issue… or are there shades of gray. Socrates spent twenty years in the engine room of the beautiful game of rugby… the scrum. He loved being a rugby hooker. He reckons that being slap bang in the middle of sixteen enormous, sweating blokes desperate to secure possession of the ball for their team taught him quite a bit about the fine art of cheating… what it is… and what it isn’t…. and how it can be done. Here Socrates lifts the veil on aspects of the workings of the 1970’s and 80’s amateur rugby scrum revealing some of its secrets. In so doing he shows that cheating is not a simple moral issue. he also claims to haver never deliberately cheated. Do you believe him?

matildas

Just six words…

May 20, 2021 By TIMOTHY EDWARDS 1 Comment

Have you ever wished that you could meet and have a conversation with someone you idolize? What would you say to your idol to convince them to want to stay in the conversation? What would they say in response to your brilliant social skills? How would the conversation go? How would it leave you feeling? An Australian ex-professional athlete who had played with and against some of the greatest basketball talent that this country has ever seen (Andrew Gaze, Ricky Grace, Shane Heal, Phil Smythe) once, by chance, had a meeting with possibly the greatest and most famous professional sports person that has ever lived. The superstar he bumped into, in a New York elevator, just happened to be the Aussie basketballer’s idol. How did the meeting turn out? Click the pic and discover the six most memorable words in this Australian point guard’s life.

Outstanding achievement

RITUAL: BEING CHAIRED UP THE BEACH

September 13, 2022 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

Why do we subject professional athletes to embarrassing and cumbersome rituals at times when they should be celebrating. Why do athletes agree to participate in rituals that make them look like nongs? Chas Smith makes the argument for banning the post-contest victory chair-up-the-beach. Click the pic to get Chas’ important advice to the world of contest surfing.

New surfing podcast

One of Australia’s greatest ever surfers – one of surfing’s greatest story tellers – “Rabbit” Bartholomew – talks to award winning journalist Tim Baker about life, surfing and stuff. Perfect listening for lockdown entertainment.

professionalism

To smash or be skillful? Can good defense be coached or are accidents like the Latrell Mitchell and Joey Manu incident inevitable?

August 31, 2021 By SOCRATES NEWS DESK Leave a Comment

In a tough body contact sport are occasional horrible accidents inevitable? Possibly. But probably not with the frequency that many former elite players and expert analysts argue. Socrates believes that good coaching and hard work from highly skilled players can prevent many potentially dangerous tackles and that accepting the horror accidents as inevitable and high level skills as “uncoachable” sells athletes, professional sports and coaches short. Get the story here. Click the pic.

wisdom

Its just a job. Grass grows. Birds fly. Waves pound the sand. I beat people up. – Muhammad Ali

sport at mardi gras

Athletes in the LGBTQI Mardi Gras

March 12, 2019 By SOCRATES 2 Comments

Twenty-one different sports teams marched in this years Sydney Mardi Gras. That’s twenty-one groups of out and proud queer athletes. The LGBTQI community need to be “fearless” and queer athletes are no exception. Check out these fearless sporting clubs living it up on their night of night!

A life with horses

A life with horses – or Lulu in wonderland

August 8, 2018 By TIMOTHY EDWARDS Leave a Comment

It’s well known that playing sport can be a life-changing experience. For one mum, adventurer and businessperson, having a sporty pastime was more than life-changing. Lulu’s friendship with her horses has touched her and her daughter’s lives in a million ways and created a whole new life in an ever-changing wonderland for them both. But don’t think for a moment that their horses are the purpose built catalysts for their ideal lives! Its way more complex than that… and more respectful. Read on! It’s worth it!

wisdom

“Pressure? Pressure is a Messerschmidt up your arse. Playing cricket is not!”

Keith Miller

One of the greatest cricket “all-rounders” of all time, Keith Miller was not only an exceptional performer in multiple elements of test cricketing (batting, bowling and fielding) but he was also gifted in numerous other aspects of his life. Witty, entertaining, handsome, a renowned war time pilot and gifted Australian Rules Footballer, Miller was famed for calling a spade a spade and acknowledging that there was much more to life than elite sports. Having flown fighter bombers in the Second World War under life threatening circumstances he was not one to take the “pressure” of high level sport too seriously!

trivia

Here is a cracker of a trivia question.

Who was the college recruiting scout talking about when he said the following to his head coach.

“I’ve just seen a fat guy… who can play like the wind!”

Yup. The same guy who told people that just because they had shoes like his, it didn’t make them like him in any other way. Charles Wade Barkley.

Etymology

Postecoglou coaching pointers

March 8, 2023 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

Celtic football coach Ange Postecoglou’s post League Cup interview avoided the normal “we knew we had to…”, “full credit to the boys…” and “we talked about blah blah blah during the week…” bollocks that is so common in post-match player and coach chats with the media. The coach actually revealed important insights into the way great coaches think and how they seek to get the best out of their players. Any coach aspiring to become a great coach, no matter what sport they teach should listen to this interview. Postecoglou is the real deal. There are few coaches better at getting the most out of their team.

What does it mean?

What is Elvis leg?

Admit it. You’ve never heard of “Elvis leg,” have you? What the blazes is “Elvis leg?” As is the case with every other “What does it mean…” story we have ever posted, the answer is not directly related to the name itself. It is indirectly related to Elvis, though. Have a guess what the relationship is… then click here and check out whether your were correct. Find out for certain which sport uses this term and what it means.

What is a liberator?

Of course most you aviation buffs will think that a liberator is an American WW2 heavy bomber. Fair enough. But in a sporting context does it have a completely different meaning? Indeed it does. You are going to have to click here to find out what a liberator is and does in the world of sport.

Aphorisms, insights and wisdom

“The thing that’s depressing about tennis is that no matter how good I get I will never be as good as a wall.”

More perceptive sporting analysis from Mitch Hedberg, comic genius.

 

ebook

Phillip has returned to the south of India after eighteen years. But who is the young girl staying in his hotel? And what will he learn about his estranged brother through Inez, the Spanish backpacker?

To buy The Bangalore Test, John Campbell’s new ebook novella, just click the link.

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

©2019 Sportsocratic