“It’s about creating content, basically,” Kane Cornes told the podcaster Dylan Buckley in 2021. “You’re always thinking, ‘what am I going to say next?’ Or you’re lying awake – what’s the angle going to be tomorrow? What’s the reaction here?”
Cornes has been in the football news all week. Jason Horne Francis was the matchwinner on Saturday night, but Cornes became the story. It’s the same most weeks. He trends on Twitter. He defends himself on TV, radio and social media. He drives the agenda. He weighs in. He lashes out. He pushes back. He’s the game’s most divisive figure.
He’s pretty honest about who he is, and what he’s doing. He’s a content creator. He was obsessive as a footballer, and has brought the same intensity to his new career. He is a keen marathon runner, and is similarly indefatigable as a pundit. By the time most of us have buttered our toast, he’s found a dozen things to object to in the footballing world. He remains the consummate tagger – he doesn’t let go, and he doesn’t concede ground.
I’m conscious that this is turning into a hit piece. It’s really not my intention. Cornes has his place. He has his talents. He’s excellent on special comments on radio. In an industry where so many have a few bob each way, he’s willing to stick his neck out. He recently took over Wayne Carey’s weekly column in The Age and has already had more original takes than Carey managed in eight years. He’s unquestionably the hardest working person in the football media. He has collared radio, TV and print. He’s firing up at six in the morning on radio, and still going at 10:30 at night on Footy Classified. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone in football who puts in more hours.
In many ways, he reflects a wider media malaise. His schtick is symptomatic of a sporting landscape where journalists and analysts are further distanced from the people they write and talk about. More broadly, it’s symptomatic of a media where a handful of loud, opinionated and well-paid voices dominate the landscape, where all that matters is the click, the engagement, the outrage. In this country, there are Kane Cornes clones opining on The Voice, on climate, on anything that actually matters. They’re experts on everything. They never back down. What matters above all else is the strength of their conviction.
“I consume a lot of American media,” Cornes told Buckley. “And they just don’t care! The best ones, the highest paid ones, the ones with the biggest profiles, are the ones that have a big opinion….that’s just the strategy that I’ve gone with. Yes it’s been calculated to go that way, but it’s my style and it’s what I believe in.”
Overreach in the football media is nothing new. Look at Tony Lockett spearing his crutches at a young Eddie McGuire. Look at Jack Riewoldt being chased through Richmond train station like he was one of those dodgy plumbers of A Current Affair. What’s changed, and what Cornes has seized on, is the emphasis on opinion. “We play an opinion-based game,” Brad Scott said a few years ago. And these opinions, these hot takes, particularly from Cornes, are increasingly focused on very young players.
In November, potential draftees are “contested ball beasts”, “full of upside” and “young men of outstanding character”. Someone whacks a polo top on them. They’re no longer a number. They’re in the system. And as far as people like Cornes are concerned, they’re suddenly fair game. He has considerable history on this front. He said Sam Walsh, who was 18 years old and three months into his career, wasn’t a worthy No 1 pick. He didn’t like Sydney Stack’s use of Tik Tok. He didn’t like Jack Ginnivan’s use of a GoPro. There are common themes – you’re nothing special, you’re nothing until you win a premiership, don’t enjoy yourself, don’t get ahead of yourself. He seems determined to leach every last morsel of fun out of these young men. But they’re not NFL or Premier League players. They’re not making 500k a week. Most would prefer to ply their trade without being ripped apart for posting on Instagram, or for having a whacky haircut, or for having three beers instead of two, or for any of the other piddling offences deemed atrocities by Kane.
There’s a weekly trajectory. A 6:30am sneer on radio becomes the week’s story. It then prompts a rebuttal, then a column, then a podcast, then an ‘industry conversation’. So and so weighs in; so and so hits back. By the time the actual round rolls around, we’re sick of football. We’ve forgotten who’s arguing with who. As Charlie Cameron tweeted a few years ago, “Is it just me or is everyone in the AFL media arguing against each other to make a story out of it?”
The thing is, and I’m doing it now, we’re giving him exactly what he and his bosses want. We get all wound up by any one of his dozen daily gripes. We send him narky tweets. His comments are reported word for word by every news outlet. He drives the news agenda every week. By even focusing on Cornes here, I’m part of the problem. I get that.
But if you like this sport, if you read newspapers, and if you use social media, he’s almost impossible to avoid. He’s like the gambling ads. He’s ubiquitous. He’s the tagger who nags and niggles. All he wants is a reaction, and we keep giving him one.
Subject yourself to enough of these hot takes and it can leave you resenting the sport. But the onus is on us. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who have simply stopped consuming football media. They might watch The Front Bar on a Wednesday night and go to a game on the weekend. It’s important to push back. It’s important to shake the Cornes tag. It’s important to have coaches like Ken Hinkley who defend their young players. It important to realise there’s excellent work being done elsewhere – in analytics, in club-focused blogs and in long form profiles. Football is more than content creation. It’s more than an “opinion-based game”. And it’s more than a searing hot take. If Cornes and a few of the more prominent flame throwers could appreciate that, maybe the rest of us could enjoy it a little bit more.
