FTA-TV Open Mike

Remove this Banner Ad

SuperSteele22 said:
I think I can speak for the vast majority of football fans when I say that I hope the saga barely gets a mention. It's been done to death and the guy played for 20 odd seasons so there won't be any shortage of football stories which would be far more worth listening to than anything to do with the saga.
Click to expand...

And in the context of the finals and the timing of Fletcher on Open Mike, I think it'd be so disappointing.

Sure, I think it kind of sucks that Essendon seems to have deemed some advantage from the rules that were put in place for them last season - but like most others, I want to move past it now, especially with them playing Sydney next weekend. The good side of Essendon ie. the 1993 and 2000 premierships are what deserve to be focused on.

They'll cover the drug stuff, but hopefully it's 1-2 minutes, not 1-2 segments.
 
wagstaff said:
Gale ep was the first Open Mike I’ve watched for a while in full and it had all the same issues that’s turned me off the series in the first place.

Biggest problem I had with this ep was lack of in-depth discussion about his Richmond career. Why did Richmond fall away after their 1995 prelim? How did he rate coaches like Walls and Geischen? Would things have been different had Northey not left? His reflections on the culture of the club while played there? None of this was even touched.

Instead, we got yawnworthy questions about Martin that Gale was inevitably going to give diplomatic non-answers to that are now already redundant that he’s staying with the club. That’s one of the biggest problems with the show; how Mike asks questions as if it’s a current topical news interview and not an overview of someone’s career.

As for Gale’s music career, an amusing anecdote but took up far too much time in the episode.

There were a couple of interesting bits; I didn’t realise Gale actually wanted to play on in 2002 (cue Mike drooling over money issues) but this was again a missed opportunity.
Click to expand...

1000 times yes.
 
As I've said in the past for any Essendon player from 1999-2001, I would ask what it was like to play in such a dominant side and win only 1 flag and then see Brisbane win 3.

Other than that it should be about 93, how the club tried to cope post Sheedy, the biggest differences playing in 1993 vs 2015 - both on field and off field, his opinions on all the great forwards he played on over the years.
 

Log in to remove this ad.

imadodgyumpire said:
To digress a bit. Essendon mightn't have had such a good 2000 if they hadn't made the most of 99. And while they finished on top of the ladder. Brisbane getting their act together in the 2nd of 01 made that GF as good as 50/50 as it can be.
Click to expand...
And that Grand Final was representative of the year - Lions kicking 10.8 to 4.4 after half time.
Must have been some oranges :p
 
I've criticised Mike a fair bit in this thread, but in fairness I listened to the one he did earlier this year with John Rantall and thought it was pretty good.

Considering Rantall had a pretty remarkable career (TOC in two sides, was games record holder at the Swans for decades, was briefly VFL games record holder) and is largely forgotten this seemed like a great person to have on the show.

I was dreading Mike was going to obsess about the money Rantall got from North Melbourne for half the show but it actually covered a lot of interesting aspects of Rantall's career, including his desire to continue on and break the VFL games record (which came across as a bit desperate and self-serving on Rantall's part imo).

As a general rule the older the player the better the Open Mike interview is. It seems with older, lesser-known players Mike figures he has to cover the entire person's career to illustrate why they are worth speaking to. When it gets to recent or present-day players who are well-known it seems Mike gets lazy and falls back on salacious and gossipy events (and of course, endless questions about money) because people know about their career already.
 
imadodgyumpire said:
To digress a bit. Essendon mightn't have had such a good 2000 if they hadn't made the most of 99. And while they finished on top of the ladder. Brisbane getting their act together in the 2nd of 01 made that GF as good as 50/50 as it can be.
Click to expand...

Mate, they wouldn't have gotten over us in the 2001 Preliminary for starters, if Gold-spank hadn't of murdered us in the last quarter.
 
wagstaff said:
I've criticised Mike a fair bit in this thread, but in fairness I listened to the one he did earlier this year with John Rantall and thought it was pretty good.

Considering Rantall had a pretty remarkable career (TOC in two sides, was games record holder at the Swans for decades, was briefly VFL games record holder) and is largely forgotten this seemed like a great person to have on the show.

I was dreading Mike was going to obsess about the money Rantall got from North Melbourne for half the show but it actually covered a lot of interesting aspects of Rantall's career, including his desire to continue on and break the VFL games record (which came across as a bit desperate and self-serving on Rantall's part imo).

As a general rule the older the player the better the Open Mike interview is. It seems with older, lesser-known players Mike figures he has to cover the entire person's career to illustrate why they are worth speaking to. When it gets to recent or present-day players who are well-known it seems Mike gets lazy and falls back on salacious and gossipy events (and of course, endless questions about money) because people know about their career already.
Click to expand...

Passing of time means that he can ask about stuff that when it happened no one wanted to speak about.
He doesn't use this enough to his advantage.
Too many simple one-dimensional questions.
 
The Fonz said:
If you took out the questions about Dustin Martin, the Benny Gale one would have lasted three minutes :/
Click to expand...

TBH all the guys who played and now are in front office have totally sucked.

They generally spend the whole time talking in cliches, pumping guys up, won't say a bad word against anyone etc.

no point getting those guys on the show.
 
Belnakor said:
TBH all the guys who played and now are in front office have totally sucked.

They generally spend the whole time talking in cliches, pumping guys up, won't say a bad word against anyone etc.

no point getting those guys on the show.
Click to expand...

Yep, absolutely.

More characters from he 60's, 70's & 80's please, like Jim 'The Ghost' Jess.....God knows there's plenty more of em out there to choose from.
 
To be fair Mike wasn't bad for Fletch.

First thing Fletch says is that he would have liked to have won more flags - he lost 2 PF by a point - ask him more about that. What exactly did Sheedy say after 1996? Next year in 1997 they finish 3rd last - connected at all?
Did he ask him a single question about 1999 PF loss to Carlton?

Was like it like playing under Matthew Knights after Sheedy?

Only other thing i would have asked is if he got any funny lines from opponents who grew up watching him and were now playing against him.
 
The Fonz said:
To be fair Mike wasn't bad for Fletch.

First thing Fletch says is that he would have liked to have won more flags - he lost 2 PF by a point - ask him more about that. What exactly did Sheedy say after 1996? Next year in 1997 they finish 3rd last - connected at all?
Did he ask him a single question about 1999 PF loss to Carlton?

Was like it like playing under Matthew Knights after Sheedy?

Only other thing i would have asked is if he got any funny lines from opponents who grew up watching him and were now playing against him.
Click to expand...
he tried to allude to some of the banter a couple of times, but Fletch didn't give him much. Seems he was a quiet one on the field.
As for Knights, i think it's clear most of the seniors didn't enjoy that time. Lloyd is certainly on record saying he didn't see eye to eye (would love Mike to do one with Lloyd).

Felt Mike asked him too many questions about other greats. Pretty sure he answered him 3 times on Ablett, Lockett, etc.
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

citizen-erased said:
he tried to allude to some of the banter a couple of times, but Fletch didn't give him much. Seems he was a quiet one on the field.
As for Knights, i think it's clear most of the seniors didn't enjoy that time. Lloyd is certainly on record saying he didn't see eye to eye (would love Mike to do one with Lloyd).

Felt Mike asked him too many questions about other greats. Pretty sure he answered him 3 times on Ablett, Lockett, etc.
Click to expand...

There's only three things Sheahan is interested in: Ablett Sr., Lockett, and a person's salary.
 
I liked how he kept the Saga to about 5 minutes, but actually felt Fletch was pretty open and raw about discussing it and could have probed a bit deeper.

Not so much, what were you taking, but further to the group as a collective throughout it

And I say that wanting the topic to eb avoided because I thought Mike would ask 30 questions and Fletch would be a brick wall on it
 
TheLoungeLizard said:
I liked how he kept the Saga to about 5 minutes, but actually felt Fletch was pretty open and raw about discussing it and could have probed a bit deeper.
Click to expand...

I enjoyed the Fletcher one. I didn't feel like Mike got too tied down on one topic. If anything it could have gone for another 30 minutes.
 
OH BOY WOWEE!
 
BT should’ve been one of the better Open Mike episodes, but Sheahan’s patented interviewing weaknesses made it less interesting than it should’ve been.

Why on earth take 2-3 minutes debating how BT says Orazio Fantasia, or get BT to watch a lengthy montage of his own commentary? Just wasted time.

Also thought Mike was pretty soft on BT’s p***ter Harry Taylor comment, letting him fall back on the old ‘political correctness gone mad’ mantra. I don’t think that derogatory term has suddenly become unacceptable in the last couple of years, it’s been unacceptable for several decades which is why it was such a shock when BT said it.

When they finally got to BT’s playing career there were some interesting segments like the messy saga surrounding missing the 1982 Grand Final (would’ve liked to have heard what BT thought of Francis Bourke as a coach in that saga) and Collingwood originally only planning to play him in MCG finals in 1990 than reversing their decision, but a lot of interesting topics were missed.

When BT talked about how Alan Bond’s son tried to entice him back to Richmond with a blank cheque, had to laugh when they cut back to Mike and it looked as if his tongue was about to hit the floor.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

FTA-TV Open Mike

Remove this Banner Ad

Back
Top