Perspective with Ryan Bridge: Let the Jennie Wyllie saga be a warning to sports PR professionals

A quick Christmas message to all the PR people advising sports people and sporting organisations - could you please start talking?

The less you talk, the dodgier you look.

Stop hiding your CEOS and board chairs under bushes in the hope scandals and poor decisions will be overlooked and forgotten and swept under the carpet. Because if 2025 has taught us anything, it's that they won't and they don't.

Jennie Wyllie is gone from Netball NZ. No surprises there.

There'll be no surprises either when half the board follows her out the door. They'll be lining that up as we speak with announcements to come soon, I would've thought.

But, like cricket, we've got the top dog at a top sporting body disappearing before Christmas without a once-over in the press from their higher-ups. Because Matt Whineray is not fronting this. He's clearly on holiday somewhere.

In the world of American football right now, much is being made of Travis Kelce's media management. He refused to do interviews post-match because they lost. Yes that's TayTay's boyfriend, and yes that's the Kansas City Chiefs. They've won a couple of Super Bowls recently. Now they're not even going to make the playoffs.

So he's upset, obviously, and doesn't wanna talk to pesky journos. And I get that. I understand that. They're athletes, they're emotional, they're up and down like a yo-yo.

But when something goes down in the business of sport, in my view - you should front it in the same way as a regular company CEO or a politician would.

The fans are the voters, the shareholders. And they deserve some respect. Respect is shown through communication and right now, they're getting the corporate equivalent of the middle finger.

And all of this is made worse by the fact that this is what got them into this mess to begin with with Dame Noels.

They didn't front. When they did, they didn't say anything. And then the mood reached fever pitch, almost every single Silver Fern who'd ever donned a bib came out and had their say, even the Government stepped in.

Then, finally, things changed.

One of the reasons I love netball as a sport is because of the straight-up, hard-as-nails personalities that tend to dominate it. They're no nonsense and they're straight up the guts.

Management ought to take a leaf out of their book.

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