That would be silly. Tony has got it wrong, and 'fessed up -- even though his name was not attributed to the orginal sin. Publicly ackowledging his error WAS the consequence.
Tony is one of New Zealand's very best sports writers, and argubably our pre-eminent football writer, with decades of covering the game. He's also a bloody decent bloke and a real lover of football. He's actually one of the best media friends the code has got.
i would add that these days there is a lot of pressure on newspaper staff to come up with humourous little vignettes, gossip and rumour to fill anonymously-penned columns such as Sidelines or Diary. Indeed, i got a note the other day from my editor begging for any "funnies" to fill a similar column.
And it is very easy for the telling of a tale to get twisted as it gets bandied around, with scarily little time for fact-checking these days. An occupational hazard.
it would have been very easy for the paper to publish an unattributed apology, implicating nobody, for what was an unattributed item. For whatever reason, that did not happen.
But Smith put his hand up, and took his medicine, when many others might well have hid behind anonymity. Fair play in my book. Forget the churlish notions of retribution. Let's move on.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/nzsportsprogrammes
