HOLDEN’S move to consider the future of its sponsorship of the Collingwood Football Club over remarks made about The Age’s football writer Caroline Wilson would be an over-reaction to an issue that has been blown out of all proportion. Withdrawal would do both Holden and Collingwood a disservice.

For those not in the know, on TripleM radio, Collingwood president Eddie McGuire, his North Melbourne counterpart James Brayshaw and former Richmond coach Danny Frawley joked about holding Wilson under water when discussing a fundraiser for Motor Neuron Disease research in which football luminaries had tobogganed into a pool of iced water.

Their remarks sparked a storm of outrage in social media because the comments were taken to be aimed at a woman and that led the opinion setters to make a link with domestic violence against women.

That in turn led Holden to question its on-going support for Collingwood.

All those involved have been condemned by the football world and have since issued apologies to Wilson.

But this was not about women; it was about journalism.

Caroline Wilson is a very high-profile football writer and broadcast commentator who makes her living digging up information in the AFL world that, in many cases, the leaders of the AFL world would rather she not run.

It would be fair to say that she is a journalist who is fearless, forthright, opinionated and controversial and that why she has her job at The Age and gets gigs on plenty of football shows on radio and television.

So it would be fair to say that Wilson has trodden on plenty of toes over the years – which is her job – and that those joking about holding her underwater were really expressing the kind of frustration Wilson has generated with her columns and commentaries over time.

In the rush to whip up an ice storm to find offence aimed at women and make a leap to domestic violence, those outraged overlooked the simple fact that this was not about a women, it was not about gender, it was about a journalist who is happy to dish it out in her field of expertise whenever she thinks it is warranted.

And you have to ask if the same thing would have happened if Wilson was a man.

All those three football commentators were doing, was dishing it back by making a joke about Wilson the journalist while discussing the topic of the moment, an ice bath. And it is instructive that in a nearby 3AW studio the same joke was made to Wilson who was in the studio and she let the comment go through to the keeper.

I have been doing this since 1965 and if I have learned anything in that time it is that not everyone is going to be your friend, you are bound to cheese off people when you run things they don’t want aired or hold an opinion others dislike. It goes with the territory. It is part of the job.

And if you cannot take it when people offer the odd backhander or make a joke about you as a means of venting their frustration with you, then it’s time to get out of the newsroom.

By John Mellor