Letter to Fox Sports

Dear Fox Sports,

I would like to make a complaint about the commentary offered by two of you employees - Andy Harper and Michael Cockerill.

I find that should Sydney be playing a match, the commentary offered by this duo is often biased towards Sydney - which seems to be their hometown. It is almost as frustrating to listen to as some of the English commentators with Manchester United.

Secondly, Harper carries on and on and on at times. He needs to take a leaf out of the Simon Hill/Robbie Slater pairing. The make commentary when necessary, and each of them do not speak for longer than 10-15 seconds. I can't tell you how long Harper speaks for, as I have resulted to the use of the mute button on my remote control.

In last night's Perth vs. Newcastle match, Vaughn Coveny received a yellow card for "diving/simulation" in the box. Poor decisions by referees are out of Harper's and Cockerill's hands (how a ref can not expect a player to fall over when he's made contact with the 'keeper defies the law of physics... even if he didn't want to award the penalty, he could have let the play go on - no penalty and no yellow card.) However, Cockerill applauded the referee's decision. Solely because he believed that by booking Coveny, it was a step in the right direction in the fight against simulation, even if in this case it was the wrong decision. Harper did do the right thing, admitted that he too had though Coveny had dived, realised he was wrong, and expressed his concern at the stance taken by Cockerill. Even after replays showed that Coveny had to fall down due to his collision with Tommich, Cockerill did not seem to change his mind, or admit that he could have been wrong.

I also wish the express some concern about some of the figures of speech from Cockerill.

1. When the referee booked Colosimo and showed him a yellow card, Cockerill said that the referee had given the player a yellow card. This implied that the ref no longer had the yellow card, or maybe he carries a few on him, so by giving Colosimo one it doesn't really affect the referee.
2. Bridge came off for Rodriguez promted Cockerill to make comments that could imply that van Egmond was a cheat, as he had "an ace up his sleeve."
3. There was another comment, which made absolutely no sense, as it used a negative term to explain something positive. It's slipped my mind now, but rest assured that in the future I will write down all Cockerill-isms and express my concern over them.

Meanwhile, keep up the otherwise good work - maybe don't get too carried away with replays. The Newcastle penalty taken by Carle was missed as a result of replay over-enthusiasm and we had to watch the penalty as a replay.

Yours sincerely,

Scary Monkey (a.k.a. Cecilia)