I can’t really remember much of Four Weddings and a Funeral, other than Hugh Grant playing to the bumbler in all of us, but especially in the feckless blokes among us. I remember enjoying the movie, in the way that you enjoy happy-sad things. I also remember the poem it featured: “Stop all the clocks”. [Read more]
Harms with some thoughts on Round 3
April 11, 2012 by 3 Comments
http://tatts.com/news/2012/4/10/afl-round-3
History starts somewhere
March 19, 2012 by 21 Comments
We’re about to hit the footy season and for a writer that means lots of footy writing. When I’m at my desk, immediately to my left on the bookshelves sit a number of reference books. These include the two volumes of The Shorter Oxford Dictionary (surely one of the great publications), Roget’s, various books of [Read more]
Force For Good
March 16, 2012 by 9 Comments
This is a transcript of a seminar called Force For Good held at the National Museum of Australia. It involved Sean Gorman, Che Cockatoo-Collins, and David Headon. I moderated it. It is conversational and hence may lack a little structure (in its form and in its thinking) but it addresses the elements of the topic. [Read more]
Is motor racing a sport?
March 14, 2012 by 4 Comments
John Harms asks the same old question that pops up each year at the North Fitzroy Arms: is motor racing a sport? http://tatts.com/news/2012/3/14/john-harms-on-the-australian-grand-prix
Murphy and Gaita
February 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment
I can heartily recommend this Rotunda event on February 29. Bob Murphy is known to us through his fine work across the half back line and in The Age. Raimond Gaita is a philosopher, teacher, writer who came to significant public prominence through his memoir Romulus, My Father, which is a fine, fine book. This is [Read more]
Duck hunting
February 9, 2012 by 12 Comments
People are inventive. They have found many ways to pass the time. Sport is one of them. But sometimes sport is more than that. People have also found ways to elevate the soul. Some play Bach and watch David Gower. Others have their souls elevated by fiddle-music, Ford pick-ups, the squeal of a pig, and [Read more]
A beer and a Weppa-burger please
January 31, 2012 by 16 Comments
These days, when I return to Brisbane, I always make my way out along Coro Drive, past those great watering holes, the Regatta and the RE, down Sir Fred Schonell Drive, to the university. I like to do a lap of the beautiful grounds, just as I. Lamb (Australia) and I did in my Morris [Read more]
You want cricket? Real cricket?
January 29, 2012 by 19 Comments
It’s either sad. Or hilarious. But then again, it might be both. Last night: a sporting feast on TV. The summer-exhausted kids go down: I crack the Little Bridge sparkling white (literally), and sit down to watch the tennis. All over. Now, I can watch the trots from Ballarat with Sushi Sushi going for 17 [Read more]
Adelaide, its cricket ground, and The South Australian nation
January 23, 2012 by 14 Comments
Thursday morning, December 2010. I am at the table in my Melbourne terrace house, reading a very Melbourne newspaper, The Age. Despite the urbanity it assumes, the pages remain parochial in that black T-shirt, black polo-neck, macciato sort of way. Already there are football stories – in December. There are always football stories: trivial and [Read more]
Cricket: the post-Christmas lunch form of the game.
December 25, 2011 by 10 Comments
It is heading towards midnight here in Brisbane. The kids have carefully laid out Santa’s smoko in front of the fireplace; it seems Santa prefers mince pies and water served in a Dora the Explorer cup. We have been to the Christmas Eve service at St Andrews on Wickham St in the city where we [Read more]
Umpires’ Day at the Gabba
December 3, 2011 by 4 Comments
The second day of the First Test between Australia and New Zealand will be remembered as a day when weirdness and officialdom took over the game. Actually, let me start again: the second day of the First Test between Australia and New Zealand will not be remembered.
SA v Aus – Day 5: St Cummins Day
November 22, 2011 by 14 Comments
Australia has won the second Test at The Wanderers in Johannesburg by two wickets. In a tense finish, Pat Cummins secured the victory. He played with a freedom of spirit and nonchalance that made any old dog feel even more battered and confused as we watched in our own muck in the middle of the [Read more]
Day 4: what’s not to like about Test cricket
November 21, 2011 by 31 Comments
I was in the car when play resumed on the morning of the fourth day at The Wanderers, my mind strongly of the view that the Australians would struggle to contain the South African batting line-up, and certainly were unlikely to dismiss them unless they attacked early. It has been an unusual Test wicket in [Read more]
Clarke’s counter-punching saves the day
November 10, 2011 by 33 Comments
It didn’t have the feel of the first morning of an Ashes series. But it should have. It seems obvious these two competitors should play five-Test series, home and away, every couple of years. Or at least three and three if neither home broadcaster will give up their summer income. But it was a [Read more]
Who wins the Melbourne Cup?
October 30, 2011 by 42 Comments
Here is the Melbourne Cup field. No doubt you have form guides scattered around the study (lounge room, loo, kitchen bench). Thought you might like to start the discussion. Mount a case for your selection: 1 11113-66-101 AMERICAIN(15) Gerald Mosse 58.0 Alain de Royer Dupre 2 2-01794-1311 JUKEBOX JURY(6) Neil Callan 57.0 Mark Johnston [Read more]
Can the Cats win without Stevie J?
September 30, 2011 by 2 Comments
Everything points to this Grand Final being a cracker. Even the weather. As the Friday dawn is breaking over the People’s Republic of Northcote I can see small patches of blue sky. The morning paper tells me that Beams is out for Collingwood and young Fasolo is in, and that there is no change in [Read more]
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