Talk:Luke Watson

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NPOV Correction[edit]

I have amended parts of the section on the Ubombo rugby festival speech, as the "Dutchmen" statement was alleged and was not recorded on tape, as the previous format appeared to report as fact the statement, which has not yet been proven.

NPOV Correction[edit]

I have rewritten the article to eliminate validly disputed NPOV issues, and to remove extraneous material.

Your feedback would be most useful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wdford (talk • contribs) 15:52, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]


NPOV Check[edit]

Could someone please check through this article to remove some non-neutral point of view statements? For example, these could be looked at:

  • "A natural leader in his youth"
  • "Luke Watson has been one of the most controversial figures in recent South African sport." This is probably true, but needs a citation.
  • "Watson was initially invited to play against the Springboks for the World XV in 2006. This created much initial excitement, as Watson would seemingly have the chance to match himself against Jake White's first choice loose forwards. However the then Western Province director of rugby, Nick Mallett, reportedly talked him into refusing the invitation so as to "avoid the risk of injury shortly before the start of the Currie Cup series"" . It is a general practice of major sports teams to worry about a key player getting injured -- I do not see the need to include this (unless, of course, it is an innuendo of sorts...which is, in any case, inappropriate).
  • "Watson was ignored for the 2007 World Cup, and Jake White's first choice loose forwards acquitted themselves with distinction." That's irrelevant: it has nothing to do with Watson's abilities; neither does it give an indication of how he would have performed. "Comments like this from respected opponents validate White’s theory that large loose forwards are essential in the modern game." This is one quotation -- and clearly not enough to prove a general case.
  • "Under their new captain the Stormers have enjoyed their best Super 14 season in a long time, and only fell short of a semi-final berth by a single point." This also presents a point of view: by putting it in the article, the innuedo is clear: Watson was fired, and consequently the team did well - therefore Watson is a bad captain. Not only is it irrelevant - it contributes to forming an image of the person involved.
  • "The appropriateness of a coach seeking the approval of a player’s father before making a critical decision was not commented upon in the article." Is this neccesary?

One needs to recognize that even if each of these extracts appears minor or neutral in isolation, in the context of an entire article, a clear non-neutral point of view is established.

I felt, upon reading it, that the neutrality pointed in completely the opposite way with lots of negative opinions stated about his personality!:

  • "When direct political interference finally gave Watson the chance to play for the Springboks against Samoa in 2007, his one-dimensional approach and his inability to adapt to alternative patterns were starkly exposed"
  • "Luke Watson is known to have a very strong personality, and his outspokenness often borders on abrasiveness and even arrogance."
  • "Such comments by any other South African player would have been sanctioned for "bringing the game into disrepute", as happened to former Springbok coach Nick Mallet, [17] and was threatened against Jake White himself. [18] However, there is no indication that any action was ever taken against Watson for this blatant contravention of the code of conduct."
  • "Part of his controversial forced selection in 2007 included being selected to tour Australia and New Zealand for the away leg of the Tri Nations series, as Coach White had elected to rest many of his first-choice players. Watson withdrew from the tour pleading injury, but then made a “remarkable recovery” to play for his province in the Currie Cup on the same day as the first Tri-Nations match.[6]"

In fact just read the whole section on controversies, and tell me it isn't biased! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.33.126.162 (talk) 11:49, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll edit these references unless someone else does / objects. 41.243.42.27 (talk) 11:15, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More Editing[edit]

I have edited most of article on Luke Watson. More work will be needed but now I am confident this page will provide a more netural assessment on the South African player. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Minamoto (talk • contribs) 22:10, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

POV/OR corrections and structure changes[edit]

There seem to be a lot of POV/OR statements in this article. I'm going to be:


  1. Rewording for conciseness.
  2. Removing/rewording statements that violate NPOV and OR.
  3. Restructuring. I think the article could be better structured, and the current structure gives undue weight to controversies around Watson at the expense of his rugby career.
  4. Adding a bunch of fact tags. While the article has a decent number of citations, it seems that non-obvious conclusions have been drawn by the editors based on those sources, without support. I'm going to be careful with removing those statements for now -- I'll remove them later once the tags have been in place for some time, to allow anyone else to cite supporting sources if they exist.

Oldernews (talk) 11:13, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the "controversies" are what really makes this person notable to begin with. He has had a pretty ordinary career by the standards of professional rugby (so far), so its very possible that any reader coming to this article would be looking for background on "what was all the fuss about". Although most of Watson's international career was played as a last-minute substitute, he does have the "distinction" of having been forced into a test squad by direct political interference (which would have a soccer team banned under FIFA rules), and having been described as "cancerous" by his Test captain. Obviously the content must conform with WP:Policy, but editing out that which makes Watson notable would be a policy violation in itself. Wdford (talk) 21:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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