Andrew Jennings - A Giant of Sports Investigative Journalism

Andrew Jennings led the way in exposing corruption in world sport

A giant of sports investigative journalism has left us with the passing of Andrew Jennings on Saturday January 8th after a brief illness. 

As the Director of Play the Game Jens Sejer Andersen says in the comprehensive official Obituary published Monday evening Australian time, Andrew set the benchmark for all others who have come after him.

His work on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and FIFA, in particular, was ground breaking, courageous, untiring and accurate.

Critics energised him. Setbacks made him more determined. The “sewer rats of world football” – as I termed them in my book Whatever It Takes – the Inside Story of the FIFA Way (2018) - enabled him. 

To him, FIFA and football were the “gift that keeps giving”. He would say: “In a funny kind of way, I love Jack Warner. What would I do without him?”

Sports journalism and sport have lost a brilliant individual journalist who shone a spotlight on the malfeasance of world sport when hardly anyone else would do so, and when so many (including and especially in Australia) disparaged him for it.

Those of us who were his friends mourn the loss of a person who was kind, generous, fearless, funny, optimistic, loyal, and brilliant.

Farewell Andrew. 

I won’t suggest he rest in peace because he would be most unlikely to seek ‘rest’ or ‘peace’ for long! So I sign off, as he would always sign off in our regular calls: Onwards and upwards.