The first game of the season is next Saturday. That’s crept under my guard. I still thought the Tiges and the Blues had cornered the right to the first bounce. So far I have watched neither practice matches nor any of the babble on FoxFooty or elsewhere. Usually I reckon the year starts when they [Read more]

I’m in Adelaide. Cup Eve and just back from the Highway Inn. There’s been spirited discussion on all sorts of various topics and I’ve mostly kept my counsel. But there was one niggly moment. Eric Cantona’s famed scissor kick came up in discussion, prompting me to declare his body language as the most positive I’d [Read more]

Some of footy’s great “thinkers” caused a furore by alluding (or was it stronger – I don’t watch that stuff!) that Aborigines lack endurance and hence would suffer from further interchange limitations.* On our discussion thread for crio’s racing this weekend, Skip of Skipton pondered if chestnuts just don’t handle the wet. Funnily enough, we [Read more]

What’s your idea of a good game? A “we flogged ‘em” or a “quality contest? University of Nottingham philosopher, Stephen Mumford, considered the journey from anguished barracker to peaceful, still passionate, observer in his “Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotion” (Routledge, 2011), as explained in an interview aired on newbooksinsport.com. He also pondered the complications [Read more]

How much do you really hate “your” team’s despised enemy? Could it be that you need them more than you might concede. Does  Barcelona truly exist without Real Madrid? The Red Sox minus the Yankees? Glasgow Rangers are critically wounded. Their plight is triggering an avalanche of associated discussions, many of which look at the [Read more]

  “I can’t believe any Englishman wants a foreigner as manager of our country, I can’t believe there is one out there!” “We’ve had enough of these foreigners, they ain’t got no passion, no commitment. All they want is the money.” “Englishman in charge of England.”  (Barry Fry, after Fabio Capello’s resignation, in support of [Read more]

Being a team man is one thing but, all too often, sportsmen know that they are competing with “mates” for a spot in the side. When the chance comes, you just gotta take it. I always felt a little sorry for Peter Anderson.

Belarus’ Victoria Azarenka has usurped perennial doubles journeyman Max Mirnyi as her country’s greatest ever tennis star by winning this year’s Australian Open and capturing the coveted No1 world ranking forty years after her compatriot, gymnast Olga Korbut, was named World Sportswoman of the Year. Australia prides itself on “punching above its weight” so should [Read more]

Barry Nicholls* mused: “I measure life’s key moments through cricket. The end of primary school spells Australia – West Indies 1975-76 (when) we hammer them 5-1. Year Nine the Centenary Test, Hookesy’s five fours in a row and Mr Davis making history at least accessible. So my question is how do you measure moments in [Read more]