In this day and age of online social networking, the public arena for athletes has expanded beyond the sports arena, media conference, after-match function, and physical public spaces.
The power of social networking tools such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have also expanded tenfold, creating phenomena such as viral marketing, mass social movements and boycotts.
Two athletes in New Zealand have utilised these powerful forms of communication to express their thoughts in times when perhaps their emotions were unedited and raw.
This is what makes tweeting and facebooking so engaging for sports fans and nosey-parkers.
Public relations experts, media liaison officers and spin doctors have no time or power to intervene and the audience is given very real access to their sporting heroes and heroines.
So why all the fuss?Cory Jane tweeted about the performance (or lack of) of the Chiefs and Hurricanes teams to the point of suggesting that very few of them deserved All Black status considering their recent lack of form.
Cathrine Latu finally lashed out at the netball fan on the ANZ Championship facebook page who mentioned her weight as if it was a reason why her team could not win against the Magic.
I commend both athletes for expressing their opinions and ideas online in an eloquent and understandable way. These days, it is very difficult to get a player to open up and be honest because they've been told to regurgitate the same clichés, to mention the sponsors, and to speak no ill words against the organisation or officials.
Doesn't that take away the human element of sport?The reason why individuals enjoy watching athletes is because of fleeting unguarded moments. That expression of anger, frustration, joy, elation, competitive spirit, determination, and exhaustion is what keeps us hooked.
We also love it when athletes continue to be exposed immediately after games when they're struggling to get some oxygen into their lungs.
But that window of opportunity closes pretty quickly. Athletes soon register they're in dangerous territory with regards to verbal diarrhoea.
Twitter and Facebook are places where athletes can express themselves and do away with the middle man (or woman) that is the journo. As a result, sports journalists scan these sites for the controversial angle they crave.
Everyone seems to be praising Latu's post in response to a fan's prediction that the Magic would win because the Mystics shooter is "far 2 overweight".
This seems like a strange comment to make considering Latu is the most accurate shooter in the transtasman league this year. Why was Netball NZ willing to go to such great lengths to make her eligible for selection if her weight was hindering her performance?
Latu's post suggests she isn't afraid to call someone an idiot or loser if the glove fits. She also took this opportunity to encourage people who were different to continue fighting their way to the top irrespective of their size, height, or speed.
In some strange way this Facebook exchange (which took place three hours before the game) may have inspired the shooter to beat the Magic team to a pulp.
Cory Jane's tweet, on the other hand, received mixed responses.
Everyone was trying to second guess what he meant.
Jane is adamant his message was meant to be sarcastic and a joke and he'd prefer the media sharks approach him for a story rather than take his tweets out of context.
Taking a Twitter message out of context is like eavesdropping on a conversation and only getting part of the story.
Let's be honest. Don't we all agree that the Chiefs and Hurricanes have been off the boil this year, and there is no need to second guess what Jane implied? He said what he thought at the time, end of story.
Cory Jane, like Cathrine Latu, is a human being, and no matter how cyber-reliant our communication becomes, at the end of the day there is a real person putting their thoughts and ideas into words.
Who would have thought technology would bring back the human element to sport? Tweet and type to your heart's content, New Zealand athletes!
