ROUND NINE Fireworks at AAMI Stadium They’d sold out; it was raining. They thought the big crowd needed something. As their players entered the field, the AFC let off some fireworks. Not many; just a couple of thousand of dollars
John Kingsmill’s Footy Diary
May 26, 2012 by 2 Comments
ROUND NINE Friday night Geelong had to win tonight and they did. But they made such a sluggish task of it. The Dogs are no force this year; they’re no easybeats. They’re not shirking. But they’re skinny up forward. They’re one tower short in their castle. Each goal they kick demands a sacrifice from the [Read more]
John Kingsmill’s Footy Diary: Round 9 preview
May 24, 2012 by 3 Comments
ROUND NINE – preview My wavering nerve In Adelaide’s rugged May, I’ve tipped the Crows to lose against Sydney, Geelong and Carlton. It’s been a successful ploy: I’ve lost my tips but we’ve won the games! That’s been small fish for such joy but I’ve become reluctant to change my bait. OK, this week I’m [Read more]
John Kingsmill’s Footy Diary
May 21, 2012 by 1 Comment
Round Eight Port is a Mess, Revisited Skip from Skipton was wrong when he wrote that Port versus North at AMMI was an Eight Tarpaulin Match. On the day, ten tarpaulins covered huge sections of the Outer, protecting the venue from its emptiness. And, with only 14,508 people there, all of us could have sat [Read more]
John Kingsmill’s Footy Diary: Gaming
May 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Round Eight Ultimate Footy This is a neat fantasy comp. It differs from SuperCoach where most end up drafting the same players. Here, we battle against ourselves – each player can only appear in one team. Twelve teams have a preseason draft and trade players each week. We fight one on one in nine [Read more]
Port is a mess
May 11, 2012 by 10 Comments
Round Six Port is a mess In a crunch game, Richmond fought for their season and Port limped along, as if they had all the time in the world to reassemble their parcel. Michelangelo Rucci, chief footy writer for the ’Tiser, and an avowed Port fan, lost his cool. Matty Primus should do the decent [Read more]
John Kingsmill’s Footy Diary
April 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Round Four, preview Here’s a chance Here’s a chance for Port. Collingwood is tearing itself to bits. Here’s one round where Port can note that its opposition is more ragged than itself. Here’s a chance to put their foot upon their throat in the last quarter, where the game may still be there to be [Read more]
John Kingsmill’s Footy Diary: Round 3
April 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Round Three, Think again The best thing about footy is that it only takes three weeks for the world to change, for nothing else to matter, for the dry summer to dissolve. Unexplainable gaps appear in the tipping comps; injuries punch holes in early balloons; new coaches are, suddenly, stranger than the ones they [Read more]
John Kingsmill’s football diary – Round 2
April 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Round Two, The Australian Rule of Entropy “In statistical mechanics, entropy is a measure of the number of ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of ‘disorder’ (the higher the entropy, the higher the disorder).” This year, will the shape of the season only [Read more]
John Kingsmill’s 2012 Footy Diary: Week Two
April 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Sunday, 1 April 2012 Round One Week Two 3. Ben Cousins is arrested – here’s a footballer’s story that refuses to go away. It doesn’t really matter what we think. Life after footy is no easier for him than before. We’re watching him and we care but we’ll skip any further note. On Thursday night, [Read more]
John K’s 2012 Footy Diary
March 26, 2012 by 1 Comment
Sunday, 25 March 2012 Round One, Week One 1. The season begins, oddly, with one game for the week – the Sydney derby between the Swans and the Giants. Matty Rendell goes down for a Thought Crime; Jim Stynes dies; Jason Akermanis says that Stynes was nasty on the field. He meant that as praise [Read more]
Lawn Bowls Poetry
February 12, 2012 by 11 Comments
John Kingsmill will be writing a series of bowling poems over the next few weeks. WEEK ONE Back to the Bowling Green after a long delay My father’s bowls are still too large in my hand. It’s only my obstinacy, I suppose, that makes me stay with them. His hands were no bigger than [Read more]
My current bucketlist
December 16, 2011 by 3 Comments
I want to travel. I want to do good things as a volunteer. I want to live and work outside of Australia for one year, sometime in the rest of my life. I want to learn a musical instrument… the violin will do. I want go to the gym in the mornings, not at night. [Read more]
Perfect media
November 20, 2011 by 8 Comments
JOHN KINGSMILL The best thing about radio cricket is that you know that it is on and that you don’t have to watch each delivery, each ponderous over. Radio lets you get on with your life. When life pauses, you flick a switch and it’s usually just at the right moment. The game is poised [Read more]
Yellow wins in ten syllables
October 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Australia shrug South Africa out of the World Cup; then Woodville-West Torrens stop the Dogs five years deep in victory to snare an unlikely cup. Their thick-set ruckman wins the medal and, on stage, says: “We’ll never fucking forget this.” And we will never forget those words, the TV says, drier than salt in [Read more]
Rhys is home
July 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment
by John Kingsmill* My town is a little better, more loving, less convoluted. Still cold, but Adelaide’s winter skies are cloudless for a while and then a weather system settles in for three or four days of genuine rain. Partly clouded, they call it. I think
JK’s Round 12 Wrap
June 14, 2011 by 2 Comments
by John Kingsmill Coming back from Gay’s today, there was a new piece of graffiti on a neighbour’s wall. Love, it read, in cursive longhand, on an alley wall in Regent Street South. It reminded me of Arthur Stace, writing Eternity on Sydney footpaths in chalk in the thirties. I saw Love from my balcony [Read more]
Round 11 midweek grab
June 2, 2011 by 3 Comments
We had dinner with Sara and Sophie last Sunday night; that was pleasant – these are fine women. Baked chicken and olives, lettuce wedges, a dessert of cooked apple, nuts and yoghurt. Red wine, green tea. A lovely night. May comes to a close – above average rain and the coldest sequence of autumn days [Read more]
Round Ten wrap
May 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Yes. Well. No eight out of eight this week, or any week so far. The Crows played like tits on a shrub, bombing the ball forward with no plan, no hope and no sense that they had ever played the game before. Craig sensed the anger and dropped the usual spin – we will learn [Read more]
Round nine wrap
May 23, 2011 by 4 Comments
In the end, Jonathan Brown was enough for Brisbane to regroup and craft its first victory for the year against North Melbourne. Matty Primus should take note and think again about old men. Port didn’t name Chad Cornes and dropped Brett Ebert on match day “for tactical reasons”. The team had too many forwards, he [Read more]
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