Forget the Olympics, forget NRL, forget netball. Sydney’s favourite spectator sport is reverse parking. Whether from the school gate or a sidewalk cafe, people love to sit back, stare and mutter about how they’ve ‘stuffed it’.
The latest victim of the kerbside critics is Channel 9 sports reporter Erin Molan. The 33-year-old has been publicly shamed in The Sunday Telegraph social pages, apparently “spotted” by an anonymous Sydneysider “having trouble reverse parking in Coogee”.
The little scoop was apparently so newsworthy that the paper ran it again on Tuesday, forcing Molan to stand up for herself.
In a tongue-in-cheek Instagram post yesterday, The Footy Show co-host said it was time she defended herself against the lies, telling her 126,000 followers that she was actually quite adept behind the wheel.
"Soooooo I ignored this when it appeared in Sunday's paper... But given it is in today's paper again - I feel the need to release a statement," she wrote on Instagram.
"I am really, really bad at many things - cooking, cleaning, basketball, replying to emails, following directions, rap singing, bungee jumping etc... BUT I am really good at some things too - and REVERSE PARKING is one of them. Just an FYI."
Reverse parking is a skill, that's for sure — the quality of which seems to be in inverse proportion to the number of people watching at the time. In Molan's case, it only took an audience of one.
So nice one, Adam from Coogee - if that is your real name. Way to publicly parking shame. After all, I'm sure you nail it first time, every time. Cough.
In fact, let's make it interesting: two SUVs, two Eastern Suburbs spaces, a stop watch and a large audience. It's on.
Featured image: Instagram/@erin_molan