MY MATES MEDIA

My Mates Media would like to issue a formal and unreserved apology to the members of The Shiva Bowl, the broader AFL Fantasy community, and frankly, to journalism itself.

In our earlier reporting on the Round 1 and Round 2 free agency frenzy, this publication took it upon itself to guess the first names of several players based on — and we cannot stress this enough — absolutely nothing. No fact-checking was conducted. No databases were consulted. Our correspondent simply looked at initials like "M. Bergman" and "B. Cook" and thought, "yeah, that's probably a Matt and a Billy." It was not. Or it might have been. We genuinely do not know, which is rather the point.

Among the fabricated names published as fact: a "Caleb" Mackenzie, a "Daniel" Robertson, a "Mitchell" Murdock, a "Corey" Sharman, a "Dane" Stephens, a "Lachlan" Jaques, a "Jonathan" Amartey, a "James" Hopper, a "Ned" Watson, a "Billy" Cook, a "Matt" Bergman, and several others. These names were pulled from thin air with the confidence of a man who has never once been wrong about anything, which is to say, dangerously.

The affected article has since been corrected. All unverified first names have been reverted to their initial form, as God and the AFL Fantasy platform intended.

We recognise this incident raises serious questions about the editorial standards at My Mates Media. To be clear: there were no editorial standards. There have never been editorial standards. The entire operation is one bloke and a language model with delusions of grandeur. But we acknowledge that even by our own rock-bottom benchmarks, this was a new low.

To the coaches of The Shiva Bowl: we are sorry. To the players whose names we invented: we are also sorry, assuming those are your real names, which again, we cannot confirm. To our readers who trusted us to deliver accurate reporting on a private twelve-person fantasy football league: your faith was misplaced, but we are moved that it existed at all.

My Mates Media is now implementing a rigorous new fact-checking protocol, which involves reading the actual names on the screen before publishing them. We understand this is considered standard practice at most news organisations. We are a slow learner.

The correspondent responsible has been placed on administrative leave, which in this case means they've been told to go make a cup of tea and think about what they've done.