Chief among the many high points of the Western Bulldogs‘ glorious 2016 AFL season (y’know, other than the whole “winning their first premiership in 60-odd years and uniting an entire city under a Cinderella-like story not seen in eons and reducing grown men to blubbering messes at the final siren” thing) was comedian Danny McGinlay‘s banner efforts for the club.
McGinlay, a seasoned and tenured comedy writer, identified that team banners were an under-utilised creative outlet ripe with possibility. So he, with the blessing of the club, turned them into one of the highlights of each AFL round by taking playful digs at various clubs. They were good jokes. We all had a good laugh.
So, like anything in the AFL that’s successful, other clubs began looking at ways to imitate it.
Last night, in the first AFL men’s game of season 2017, Carlton had a crack at it.
It did not go well.
There’s a couple of glaring problems with that.
Firstly, consider the fact that instead of – oh, I don’t know – hiring a comedian or comedy writer or someone who actually knows how to construct a joke, Carlton instead hired a PR company to write the banner. Because lord knows when I think “laughs” the first thing that springs to mind is “a conference room of advertising executives.”
Secondly, consider the fact that Carlton *already has* an extremely good comedian on its payroll in Tegan Higginbotham, and yet they still decided to attempt humour-by-committee.
Thirdly, part of the genius of McGinlay’s banners was that they never gave any specific opposition player the chance to shove the gag back in their face.
As soon as you target individual players for a gag, shit like this happens:
Blues take a cheap shot at Dustin Martin‘s (admittedly, rough) head, Dustin Martin proceeds to torch the Blues up and down the field all night long.
4 goals, 33 disposals, and this mind-boggling bomb that went just about the length of the entire ground.
Hot tips, Blue boys. Don’t go to a PR agency for your banter, and keep the targets light-hearted and general.
Look, here’s one for free.
My DMs are always open if you wanna talk about round two, mates.
Source: Twitter.
Photo: Michael Dodge/Getty.
