John Harms delivered the George Lovejoy Memorial Lecture in Brisbane.
Almanac Rugby League: Yes, Virginia, there is meaning in rugby league
October 5, 2012 by 26 Comments
Almanac Rugby League – Queensland Cup: The battle of the Bayside – football with soul
September 29, 2012 by 4 Comments
Queensland Cup Rugby League Grand Final 2012: Wynnum Manly Seagulls 20 d Redcliffe Dolphins 10 by JJ Leahy The initial convict settlement in Queensland was established at Redcliffe on the shores of Moreton Bay in 1824. However, it was moved in the next year up the Brisbane River to the current site of the CBD. [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – The finals for the small-minded
September 14, 2012 by 4 Comments
Your team has missed the finals. Maybe again. Maybe for the first time in years. Either way, it hurts. You can switch off altogether and pretend not to give a damn. But, its rugby league, you love it, and that means there’s still plenty of ways to enjoy the footy over the next few weeks. [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – NRL Finals 2012, Week 1: Melbourne v Souths – Rabbitohs in the lights
September 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment
By John Robotham The portents weren’t good. My seven-year-old daughter, Lucy, was conflicted – wearing a garish purple coat over her knee-length Rabbitohs jumper, circa 1999 – a look that amused many. As we joined the river of purple flowing down Batman Avenue she felt more self-conscious, pulling the coat tight around her. [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – NRL Finals 2012, Week 1: New Territory
September 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment
by Russel Hansen Today South Sydney play two finals matches in Melbourne. What a bonus: before the NRL qualifying final, Souths play the enemy – the Roosters in an elimination match in the Toyota Cup. In some ways, it is still a little surreal. A lifetime of ribbing and sledging, particularly living in [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Return to the Promised Land
September 7, 2012 by 3 Comments
By John Robotham
Storm vs Souths in a qualifying final. My club against the outfit I love to hate. The people’s club, with 104 years of rich history, ranged against an interloper created to fit the needs of a national competition.
Almanac Rugby League – NRL Round 25: Melbourne v Cronulla – Storm rises like Lazarus – again
August 28, 2012 by 7 Comments
You know things are going bad when the team’s padre can be seen leaving the ground before the final siren. Apologies to Father Bob for giving up on the Melbourne Storm in their round 25 match against Cronulla, but seriously, who leaves a game when you have three of the game’s finest in your line-up?
Almanac Rugby League – The Kangaroos and an Irishman’s Rugby League Odyssey
August 6, 2012 by 7 Comments
By Dara Lawlor It’s a dreary winter’s Saturday in 1980’s Dublin and a young child is watching Grandstand on BBC1. A black haired man with brown skin and the funniest name the kid has ever heard toe pokes an oval ball between two big sticks and at the end of the game a smaller and [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – The fine line: Origin at its best
July 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment
After Game I of this year’s State of Origin series, I made the point that Liam’s theory that there’s a fine line between winning and losing in SOO was alive and well. Two games later, it’s reinforced in spades. The margins were 8, 4 and 1 with an overall differential of +5 to Queensland. I [Read more]
Back to basics: Local sport in 3 parts
July 4, 2012 by 5 Comments
BACK TO BASICS Local sport in 3 parts There’s nothing like local sport to help you connect with the community. Corporate demands, overly structured game plans and totally rip-off prices go by the way to be replaced with a cheery welcome, lots of space, family friendly prices and much good humour. It’s good just to [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – The Revolution can wait: radical Brisbane and rugby league
July 1, 2012 by 4 Comments
Queensland remains a wonderful place, full of obvious contradictions; the sort of contradictions which are hidden away in other places, the ones that work hard to present an air of sophistication and urbanity. Queensland’s down-on-the-farm, rent-a-holiday-unit-to-a-southerner conservatism prevails. But from colonial times Queensland has given rise to a small, energetic group of progressives; intellectuals and [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – This Is Not The Way Home
June 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Fremantle. It’s a pleasant enough place to sit and watch the rest of the world spin by, but it is barely a city or is one in name only. For all of its industrial attachments, Fremantle’s charms are quite easily found in numerous other port cities; somewhere else. Everything that happens here from the marketplace [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – The cursed existence of a Roosters supporter
June 26, 2012 by 1 Comment
All supporters do it tough at times. Its part of the attraction, addiction even, of passionately supporting a sporting team. In a cruel sort of way, we need to experience the dark, heavy feeling of despair that lingers for days after a loss to also truly appreciate that overwhelming, sun-is-shining, birds-are-singing, life-is-good elation that takes hold after a win. But [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – A progressive side of rugby league?
June 26, 2012 by 7 Comments
Can’t say I am an expert on rugby league, but I do know it had some good early links with the progressive side of politics. Have read a little bit, and spoken to friends who have an understanding of the game, which has made me intrigued in finding out more. Correct me if I’m wrong [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – On how to improve the greatest game of all
June 11, 2012 by 3 Comments
When you’ve done life’s hard yards and made it into the grumpy years, you understand with cold and dispiriting certainty that there is no turning back the clock. But that doesn’t mean that in the face of crass, intolerable change – or ‘progress’ as the suits would wish to sell it – you should give [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – From the Lang Park terrace: State of Origin 1985
May 30, 2012 by 1 Comment
I have strong memories of a State Of Origin at Lang Park in 1985. JP Strano rang me that morning and suggested we go. In those days, you could stroll at lunchtime to the ticket sellers in the City and procure tickets at an affordable price. As Jack and I walked out onto the street, it began to [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Redemption Rugby League
May 28, 2012 by 2 Comments
The last time Penrith played Manly they lost 30-0 and I wrote what may have been the shortest match report in Footy Almanac history. Fast forward a few weeks and things aren’t looking much better for the Panthers. Only the eels are keeping them out of the wooden spoon position and it seems as if [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – The Fine Line
May 27, 2012 by 2 Comments
Two years ago, Liam Hauser’s history of Origin matches carried the subtitle The fine line between winning and losing.(State of Origin: 30 years, Rockpool Publishing, 2010) He demonstrated that rarely has there been any deviation from this observation of the ebb and flow of matches throughout the history of the concept. I think [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – A forward explains rugby league
May 20, 2012 by 4 Comments
It is largely unknown to players and followers of the modern game that rugby league started off purely as a contest between opposition forwards, loosely divided between running into each other and taking no prisoners in set scrums. This pitted six men of statuesque physique, supreme fitness and superior intelligence in packs against one another. [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – It’s all there in black and white
May 5, 2012 by 1 Comment
Footy tragics, by definition, are sentimentalists. Why else would we put ourselves through the agonies of hope and anxiety, triumph and disaster? Our obsession manifests itself in many ways – in my case I collect Big League programs. Of those that are gathering dust in a corner of my study is the one from Round [Read more]
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