I'M no great fan of Peter Peters.
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![Newcastle Knights officials will be hoping the lessons learned in 2022 will prove to be the making of coach Adam O'Brien. Picture by Jonathan Carroll Newcastle Knights officials will be hoping the lessons learned in 2022 will prove to be the making of coach Adam O'Brien. Picture by Jonathan Carroll](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/AFKkRPHwQbXhqFfb42nFTx/13604a08-645e-4250-b137-02e30dc193ca.jpg/r599_884_3792_2300_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
During his many years alongside Greg "Hollywood" Hartley in the radio commentary box, their shtick was so irritating I used to change channels.
And in the occasional dealings I had with him in his capacity as Manly media manager, he exuded the type of arrogance that you would expect from those Silvertails who believe the world begins and ends on the "Insular Peninsula".
But for some reason it seems that every Sunday morning I just so happen to be in the car when his weekly segment comes over the airways on the Big Sports Breakfast radio program.
Normally I don't pay much attention to the man they call "Zorba".
But last Sunday my ears pricked up when the hosts asked him which coaches he felt were under the most pressure heading into the 2023 NRL season.
He immediately nominated Newcastle's Adam O'Brien, followed soon after by St George Illawarra's Anthony Griffin.
O'Brien, he acknowledged, had steered the Knights to seventh in his first two seasons at the helm, before a 2022 campaign he described as a "disaster", when they finished 14th and won only six games.
Peters said Knights fans were traditionally "forgiving", but if Newcastle again failed to reach the finals, the club might well feel compelled to wield the axe. He added that O'Brien had "promised the world, but delivered an atlas".
It was harsh stuff, but he's entitled to his opinion. He's no doubt been highly paid for it over the decades.
It also left me with a dilemma.
I don't agree with Peters, but I found his comments interesting. It made me stop and listen. And, from experience, that suggested to me it was newsworthy.
That's where it gets awkward.
Football clubs tend to view stories as "positive" or "negative".
Positive is when players visit sick kids in hospital or help little old ladies cross the street.
Negative is when your captain gets sacked for texting inappropriate images to female staff members, or when two players are filmed emerging sheepishly from a toilet cubicle on a night out.
I don't buy into this whole positive/negative nonsense.
My job is to write stories that people, hopefully, feel inclined to read.
What I've learned over the years, however, is that in a one-team town, the messenger sometimes has to negotiate a minefield, while trying not to get shot.
So the feedback I received from the powers-that-be this week was predictable.
Why would I regurgitate such comments from an old dinosaur like Peter Peters?
It's a fair question, and I certainly pondered it long and hard myself before reporting what he had said.
As I explained before, it was a conundrum.
I realised there was a fair chance it would go down like a lead balloon.
I also agreed with the sentiment that big Zorba is almost irrelevant, and to my knowledge he's never had a good word to say about the Knights anyway, so why should I give him the time of day?
There is also the whole issue of the media reporting what other media say, which seems to be standard practice for most of those clickbait-style websites.
I don't like that style of journalism, and it reminds me every day that the world was a better place before some jerk invented the internet.
So all that considered, why would I proceed to write that particular story?
Well, it's this simple.
If big Zorba had declared on the radio that O'Brien was a coaching genius who would turn the Knights around and win the premiership this season, I'd have reported that for sure.
But he didn't.
He offered a less-flattering opinion. An opinion that, as I stated before, I don't share.
But in my humble opinion, his opinion was worth reporting.
Not just because it was so brutally honest, but also because it underlines what plenty of others out there seem to be saying.
For example, the Daily Telegraph ran a story yesterday under the headline "Who will be the first coach to be axed in 2023?", and sure enough, O'Brien was in the top three.
They say perception is reality, and unfortunately for the Knights, the reality is that the general perception of their club probably falls short of how they would like to be perceived.
It's perhaps not much fun if you're one of the coaches in the hot seat, but that goes with the territory.
At the end of the day, it's a process of elimination. There are four brand-new coaches in the NRL who are unlikely to be sacked any time soon.
Then there are the Craig Bellamys, Ivan Clearys, Trent Robinsons, Wayne Bennetts and Ricky Stuarts, who are basically unsackable.
Hopefully one day we're talking about O'Brien in the same breath as those multiple premiership winners.
But he ain't there yet.
Fortunately O'Brien strikes me as pretty thick-skinned. After apparently taking a vow of silence this off-season, he popped up on SEN radio for an interview this week.
One of the hosts was former swimmer James "The Missile" Magnussen.
The same Magnussen who last year lambasted the Knights as "a full-on basket-case".
I guess what it shows is that our "Adzy" doesn't take it personally or bear a grudge.