A buck’s day can be a very good thing. A very good thing. I’ve been to a few – all pretty tame affairs, by yobbo Australian standards. Thankfully. (Like the night I had a rest from the card table to find many of the other lads watching Sound of Music on TV.) My own started [Read more]
JOHN HARMS – Easter Monday: West Coast Dave and the Cats make it feel great to be alive
April 8, 2010 by 4 Comments
by John Harms It’s Easter Monday. Perfect sunny Canberra day. The Bruces are over for lunch. The kids, post sausage-in-bread, are kicking the soccer ball, and Theo (aged two) is filling up the golf hole with dirt from the marigold garden. There are no marigolds as the snails have eaten anything that resembles new growth. [Read more]
Round 1 – Ess v Geel: the wait is over.
April 2, 2010 by 2 Comments
When I was a kid in Shepparton, I remember that long, long wait for footy to start. Cricket had finished and the linseed oil was put away, and the sports pages were filled with footy again. I remember the first Saturday morning of the season when I was about seven years old. Getting up and [Read more]
Doggies can deservedly dare to dream
March 22, 2010 by 4 Comments
by John Harms 2010.3.15 It’s Sunday night. Kids are asleep. I’m doing a bit of financial planning. I’m sitting here sitting here with a glass of red, one eye on the Premier League Darts, and the other on the Betfair AFL premiership market. The Western Bulldogs have been backed from $6.40 before the NAB Cup [Read more]
Please explain: can somebody decipher the language of texting and blogging for me?
March 18, 2010 by 47 Comments
Sportsfans Can someone please decipher the language of texting and blogging for me? What are the terms, and what do they mean? Please explain. JTH
Manning Clark House – essay writing competition for high school students
February 24, 2010 by 6 Comments
G’day high school students, Manning Clark House is a cultural and scholarly centre in Canberra. Each year we have a Weekend of Ideas. This year the theme is Fair suck of the sauce bottle: a celebration of Australian language. In conjunction we are running a competition: BE A JOURNO FOR A DAY All you have [Read more]
Third Test, Day 2: Ponting a chance for the Camira?
January 15, 2010 by Leave a Comment
by John Harms We are on the Newell Highway. At last. Just south of Goondiwindi. Stumps have just been drawn at Bellrive; a couple of disastrous run outs ruining the Pakistanis day . The Handicapper has taken the wheel. The kids have been very good, sleeping from Michael Clarke’s dismissal, all the way to Pakistan [Read more]
First Test, Day 2: Views, Sport, Weather on Channel 9
December 27, 2009 by 1 Comment
by John Harms Cyclone Laurence has been gallivanting around the country this Christmas. He started up on the North-west Shelf, then had a puff at Port Headland, drifted towards Uluru where he turned the rock into a giant roof (it was just a pity there were no tanks to catch the run off), hooked up [Read more]
Golf: Tiger and the seed of destruction
December 17, 2009 by 11 Comments
By John Harms It’s official. Tiger is bigger than climate change. Bigger than Copenhagen and the ETS and greenhouse gases and ozone layers. Bigger than global self-destruction. Bigger than any of the statesmen and stateswomen who are trying to understand what is happening to this planet, and what might happen to this planet, and how [Read more]
Third Test, Day 1: Gabba grass memories – cheery; WACA prospects – dreary.
December 16, 2009 by 29 Comments
I was reminded by the WACA test today, and I’m not sure why, of December 1979 when the West Indies came to the Darling Downs, to Gold Park, in Toowoomba. I had played quite a few Colts games there. The Windies side included Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge and Desi Haynes, IVA himself, and both Murrays, DA [Read more]
A thoroughly Australian few days
December 11, 2009 by 10 Comments
by John Harms I have always had a sense of being Australian. Not in a flag-waving, Aussie-Aussie-Aussie sense. It’s more a feeling of being connected to the place I come from. The land. The people. The way of life. A job if you can find one. A beer and a bet. My first overseas trip [Read more]
First Test, Day 2: Gabba Test not quite the same when you’re working in Canberra
November 27, 2009 by 18 Comments
by John Harms I’m always at this Gabba Test. Mainly because I haven’t had a job since 1991, when the West Indies still ruled the earth and had blokes who could bowl quicker than any radar gun said they could – or says this current crop can. But life moves on. And I start the [Read more]
Racing: The Mug gets an early whack on The Beaver
October 11, 2009 by 8 Comments
It was set up to be a magnificent day’s racing at Caulfield yesterday, and it was. I have been extremely conscientious in fulfilling my duty to celebrate the premiership properly which has meant I have not paid much attention to the form guide. However there is nothing like a couple hours in an airport and [Read more]
Harms: Cats crush cockroach with sleight of hand and weight of boot
September 23, 2009 by 1 Comment
SATURDAY night and I’m at the Punt Road end of the MCG. Behind glass. Thanks to a kind invitation from Bruce Houston and the Tatts Group who are obviously working their way through the share register. My portfolio is made up exclusively of Tatts shares, 231 from memory, a wedding gift from Bimbo Read and [Read more]
Harms: The Magpie Creature just won’t die
September 17, 2009 by 5 Comments
THIS is madness. I am getting worried. About the creature that is the Collingwood Football Club. It is like some alien in a sci-fi movie; some vile, bile-spewing monster that cannot be killed. Like some vampire in the last leg of a midnight-to-dawn marathon and all you have to protect you is a pair of [Read more]
Fifth Test: A good night spoiled as Punter’s exit sums up series
August 27, 2009 by 4 Comments
by John Harms I’m feeling really ripped off. About the cricket. Even more ripped off than I felt in 1975 when those activists dug up the pitch at Headingley and McCosker and Walters didn’t get the chance to chase the huge total England had set for them. They would have got `em. My 13-year-old mind [Read more]
Round 21: Doggies fans are real
August 27, 2009 by 1 Comment
by John Harms It’s Friday night. I am a little concerned. The Cats are wobbly, and the Dogs have a top four spot to play for. But the result doesn’t matter too much anyway (I tell myself). I do a lap of Etihad Stadium, wandering slowly along the concourse on the first level. Red, white [Read more]
Harms: Elementary, my dear, as Watson unravels Saints’ claim
August 19, 2009 by 2 Comments
Our little bloke, Theo, 21 months old, is running around madly and chatting away (“Jlong”). He loves balloons. He plays balloon-footy, which is more like balloon soccer, until the balloon goes in the air. He puts both hands up, reaching, waiting for it to float down, and than double hands it away, like Brendon Lade. [Read more]
Harms: On (the wonderful) Geelong fan
July 22, 2009 by 8 Comments
by John Harms I know it is awkward to talk about your own, but sometimes it has to be done. And it has to be done honestly. So I’m going to say it up front: the Geelong supporter is the embodiment of all that is good and true. The world has never seen, in any [Read more]
Second Test – Day 4: Australians still in it
July 20, 2009 by 8 Comments
Second Test – Day 4 Test cricket is just brilliant. The elements are mixed so perfectly. The English brains trust was probably thinking of batting for a few more overs on the fourth morning just to grind the Australians into the Lord’s dirt, but the clouds gathered, the trust was re-convened and Andrew Strauss declared. [Read more]
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