Prue MacSween: They are ‘facile and ridiculous and unintelligent’
After Steve Smith gave an emotional press conference Thursday evening, Deborah Knight took to Twitter.
Deb encouraged her son to write a letter to Steve Smith after the nine-year-old was heartbroken watching Smith’s address.
Just spent 20 minutes consoling my crying 9 year old who is a major Steve Smith fan after he watched the press conference. Encouraging him and all kids to write Steve a letter telling him how much you love and admire him.
— deborah knight (@deborah_knight) March 29, 2018
But now, she’s faced a storm of backlash, with social media trolls criticising her decision.
Prue Macsween labels Deb’s attackers as “ridiculous and unintelligent”.
“That why I just ignore social media trolls because really, they haven’t got a brain.
“I think what you’re doing with your son Darcy is so intelligent and sensible.
“As you said, this little boy’s querying, why did his hero cheat?
“So you had an opportunity to explain that.”
She tells Deb it’s “something that we should do because they feel like they have let us all down, and to an extent, they did”.
“They must be feeling enormous guilt.”
Listen to the full interview with Prue below
For a professional opinion, Deb speaks with child psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg.
“I think very impressionable kids are in the process of forming an identity and they also look to heroes for guidance on how to behave.”
Dr Carr-Gregg says because Steve, Bancroft and Lehmann have given “full and frank apologies” they should be seen as setting a good example after making decisions that have brought down their careers.
“My message to the children is simple; random and chaos happens in the universe.
“Good people can make mistakes.
“The great news, cricket will be better as a result of all of this.”
Listen to the full interview below