CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The Betoota Advocate’s rugby league editor has today been ostracised by the greater sports journalism community for his taboo lifestyle.
Imran Gashkori, a 45-year-old loving father of three kids who works out four times a week, has been rising through the ranks of our humble regional newspaper since he was a cadet in the late 1990s.
As a career sports journalist, Imran has never had to deal with the bitterness of those who only fell into this industry because they weren’t good enough to actually make it in the sports they ended up spreading gossip about.
This character trait already means he’s an outsider in the toxic world of changeroom rumour mongering.
In his regular trips to Sydney in Brisbane for grand finals, Origin and Magic Round – our town’s premiere NRL reporter has found that he is quite often the butt of jokes from his contemporaries at Murdoch and Nine.
The main reason for this relentless ridiculing, is Gashkori’s decision to not be a failed degenerate alcoholic who loves cheating on his wife at brothels and liasing with dodgy bookmakers who are linked to bikies.
Some of the sledges he has endured from rival journalists in the past include: “Dork Alert!” and “Oh look, it’s Mr Happy Family!!” as well as the venomous “Shouldn’t you be at home with your kids mate?”
While Gashkori admits that this kind of macho banter comes with the territory of his chosen field, he does struggle to get the big scoops because he is often unable to clear three days in his calendar to go on cocaine benders with former players.
“I just gotta work with what I’ve got” he says.
“That means I can only really report on the performance of footballers and coaches, as well as the other interesting football related news”
As Gashkori explains, by not being an absolute pig of a man, he’s never really been able to chase ambulances with clickbait headlines that often veer on lazy Anti-PC rhetoric and borderline racism.
“It’s tough, you know” he says.
“Part of me would love to spend 50% of my life making up shit about players falling out with coaches, or following up on leaked sex tapes and drugs charges”
“But I’m more of a ‘report on the game and go home to your kids’ kind of sports journalist”
