This all goes back a couple of decades, perhaps to 1989. Or even earlier. The story so far: the Hawks are too good for Geelong during the late 80s and early 90s. The Cats have a terrific team of characters who play the game with their own flair and are encouraged by the creative [Read more]
Olympic sadness
July 31, 2012 by 69 Comments
I woke this morning (a small victory in itself) to a couple of the sadder images I have seen in sport. Initially the sound was down on the TV so I don’t know what happened to the fencer. I don’t know her name. I think she was Korean. I just saw her sitting on her [Read more]
Round 18 preview
July 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
A few thoughts on Round 18. http://tatts.com/news/2012/7/23/afl-round-18
This Queensland Life
July 23, 2012 by 16 Comments
Going to Queensland changes your life. It is different, and you live differently. Footy is different here. We have been up here for a few days; we’re having a lovely time, but a different time. Most of this is very, very good. And we love it. Collingwood, for example, do not appear to be as [Read more]
Moe and Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golf’s Mysterious Genius
July 20, 2012 by 6 Comments
A couple of years ago I was playing golf with Robert O’Callaghan for a small wager, a box of Footy Almanacs to three bottles of Rockford wines (a bounty that was incentive enough). We’d had huge overnight rain in Canberra and Robert was out of the blocks quickly to go two up. Golf can be [Read more]
Round 17 preview
July 20, 2012 by 18 Comments
Some thoughts on Round 17. http://tatts.com/news/2012/7/16/afl-round-17
Collingwood less gone this week
July 16, 2012 by 56 Comments
The Collingwood Football Club might not be as gone for the 2012 season as it was last week. However, if you are brave enough to announce a renaissance based on one good quarter of Carringbush footy, where the opponent (the mighty Cats) virtually handed goals out like strip club cards at an Adelaide Oval Test, [Read more]
Worrying signs at Collingwood.
July 9, 2012 by 36 Comments
Friday afternoon. I don’t think there was a tip of which I was more certain in the history football, as I caught the tram down to the North Fitzroy Arms, than Collingwood to win Friday night’s game. They would win by a stack, and the doof-doof boys of Lygon Street would be calling for Ratten’s [Read more]
Desire in old Geelong
July 2, 2012 by 14 Comments
There was something timeless about the football in Geelong yesterday. Like the weather has been coming out of the south-west since God put breath into Adam, and the Geelong faithful have been rugging up, and turning up, since the Saturday after that. It’s wild, that weather. The Shipwreck Coast looks like it does for a [Read more]
US Open
June 18, 2012 by 28 Comments
This has been a pretty good tournament although not the best by a long way. The Olympic Course is superb: a sandy linksy course with trees – even though that doesn’t make sense. But I say that because it is windy and the ball sometimes runs on the quick fairways and greens and you have [Read more]
What happens when two (or more) clubs merge?
June 12, 2012 by 30 Comments
John Harms from ABC Grandstand and footyalmanac.com.au here. I do a segment with Walshy and the boys on ABC SA each Saturday. This week Walshy has set me some homework. He wants to hear stories of club mergers and is especially keen to find out what has happened to The naming of the new club [Read more]
Professor Johnson, the young skipper and The Doyen of Unobtrusion
June 10, 2012 by 21 Comments
Carlton v Geelong It was a Frank McCourt afternoon as Anna and I sat in the Lutheran Church at North Geelong at the funeral of old Uncle Theo, a cousin of my late father’s. Dank and gloomy, the Heavens were low, and descending. Two-year-old Anna had sensed the mood and was perfectly quiet and appropriately [Read more]
Five minutes of Stevie J: an affirmation of the footy instinct?
May 31, 2012 by 9 Comments
Stay with me on this, because we’ll get to Stevie J. But in the meantime I need to establish my thesis. I remember chatting with Roger Merrett at the launch of Ross Fitzgerald’s footy book about the Brisbane Bears. I think that was just before the 1996 season got under way. We mainly talked [Read more]
Tin-arse Collingwood have the law on their side
May 22, 2012 by 42 Comments
Wednesday night and I’m at the Celtic Club in Melbourne. I love how Australian Irish Clubs, especially the Brisbane one, make you feel like you’re down the road from Bewley’s. I think it’s the crosses carved into the wooden staircases and the blokes in cardigans with soup stains on their ties. The drinkers all look [Read more]
USA to Australia- A young boy’s introduction to footy.
May 8, 2012 by 6 Comments
My boys were born in Melbourne we moved to California when they were 2 and 3, they have spent the majority of there short lives in the USA. After living there for a little over a year there was a heartbreaking moment when I realised that my kids now sounded more American than [Read more]
Ritual or routine?
May 7, 2012 by 24 Comments
Growing up, footy, for our family, was a matter of ritual. Each season developed its own rhythm, its own timetable, and we would find ourselves doing the same thing at the same time each week. Church, school, Saladas and Vegemite and Adventure Island after-school and then kick-to-kick, Monday’s newspaper to read, and F-Troop, being allowed [Read more]
Painting the globe orange
May 2, 2012 by 9 Comments
I am just back from Canberra. I enjoyed the Greater Western Sydney’s first match up there on the weekend, and I reckon there were plenty who did as well. It started with a longish lunch – on the Friday, and finished with the final siren as the shadows fell on Manuka and the Canberra chill [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Rosemary and Football
April 24, 2012 by 5 Comments
At the door to my (outside) study, there is a healthy rosemary bush. It usually reminds me of happy times: roast dinners, especially, which the kids look forward to. “Can you get me some rosemary please?” I ask Theo, the oldest, as I start clattering trays from the oven. And thus begins the process of [Read more]
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