I thought about taking the train from Bris Vegas to Skilled Stadium at Robina on the Gold Coast with my 12 year old daughter. It would be Alan Tongue’s last game in Queensland and it would nice to say goodbye. Tongue has been our mutual hero for different reasons. I like how he plays every [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Loving The Locals: Wests Tigers v Parramatta Eels
August 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Loving the Locals Leichhardt life is a peach. “Why?” I hear you ask To say that my wife, Ronnie, is a very committed Tigers would be akin to saying that Pope Benedict XVI is a very committed Roman Catholic. For mine though, where else is it possible to wed a café culture to the rough [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – The Form Slump
August 22, 2011 by 3 Comments
The once-mighty (often mighty, actually, when you consider the 11 premierships in a row) Dragons are in a slump. The reigning premiers played the very sharp Melbourne Storm outfit on Friday night, in far-off Melbourne town. The slump is about to get deeper. Those close to me would argue that of all the [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – NRL R24, 2011: Glory, glory to South Sydney
August 20, 2011 by 1 Comment
We’re heading west on Parramatta Road. Every other car has a white rabbit sticker on its back window. After looking like dead men walking just a month ago, Souths have won three in a row and are suddenly in with a show of making the semis. If they win tonight, that is. Boxhead and I [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – NRL R24, 2011: Celebrating Billy
August 20, 2011 by 2 Comments
I first visited Melbourne in 2000, a lads trip from Canberra in a busted-up Camry that lost both reverse and fifth gear mid-trek as Rohan, Bommy, The Judge and I all took our turns holding the bastard in fifth as we chugged down the Hume. It was the first time I had met Parko. We [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Fire Up
August 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Fans who enjoy Rugby League can consider this the end of the rainbow because they have just found their pot of gold Stephen Ferris and I (Brett Oaten) host a rugby league “show” every Friday morning on FBI 94.5 in Sydney and have done so for many years. Our standards are so low that not [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Rugby League comes to The Footy Almanac
August 18, 2011 by 5 Comments
Growing up as a young Canterbury diehard in Orange, when all you would get were two games a week on television and your main contact with the Big League came through Rugby League Week and The Daily Telegraph, the highlight of every Christmas was David Middleton’s Rugby League yearbook. The book was a goldmine for [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Monday nights
August 1, 2011 by 1 Comment
Monday night was good for nothing much at all in the old days. Except rissoles and mash and getting over the trauma of returning to work. Footy training was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I do remember one Monday night, though, in the mid-80s when my mate PJ and I decided to go to the Keperra [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Celebrating Darren Lockyer
July 11, 2011 by 8 Comments
Darren Lockyer still has a few games of football left in him, but when he stood on the stage after Queensland’s victory last Wednesday night, the whole of the maroon world paused to listen and to reflect for a moment with him. With humility in his face, he turned to the crowd, and in a [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – State of Origin 3
July 6, 2011 by 5 Comments
byDavid Butler NSW go into tonight’s State Of Origin decider at Lang Park with a realistic chance of winning the series they have failed to win for the last 5 years. Even those like myself who have had only a passing interest in Rugby League after having been immersed in it as a kid [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Katter’s FNQ position stable thanks to good old rugby league
June 24, 2011 by 6 Comments
When, on Wednesday, Bob Katter rose to his feet in the lower house of the national parliament and defended Johnathan Thurstons, some condemned his actions. They said that Australian politics had fallen to the depths, and that it showed how disgraceful this parliament was. (“The worst in Australian history”). People weren’t of that view in [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Queensland, just.
May 26, 2011 by 4 Comments
Yet another fine, fine example of the State of Origin genre last night: Queensland come out powerfully with their two props creaming New South up the guts, and with the defence back-pedalling, Cam Smith, JT and Locky going nuts and throwing the ball around beautifully. They score and it looks like the same thing is [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Some Origin thoughts from an ecumenical fan
May 25, 2011 by 3 Comments
by Lee Carney Australia is a unique country when it comes to its sport and particularly the football codes, like fans of sport in all nations we follow our teams religiously, having our moods go up and down based on the fortunes, of what in this era of trades and free agency is really a [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Granny’s five cents goes a long way (a late sixties boyhood in Sydney)
May 22, 2011 by 12 Comments
Sausage roll five cents, (sauce one cent extra); musk sticks, cobbers, freckles, milk bottles, musk sticks, bananas – cent each; bertie beetle, choo-choo-bar, both five cents. Shiny packet on top of the glass-topped bench: same as a snag roll (minus sauce); forget bertie, forget the black mouthed bar; bargain! Give over the echidna; Mrs Mineo [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – A personal journey through rugby league in Brisbane from the 1950s to the 1990s
May 18, 2011 by 31 Comments
by Greg Mallory ‘’Doubles on the main game! One of the most enduring memories of going to rugby league in Brisbane was the sight of the double sellers assembled at the gates. At Lang Park they were the most vocal and theatrical — as you passed through the turnstiles you were confronted with about [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – The Goodna Footy Floods of 2011
May 12, 2011 by 2 Comments
THE GOODNA FOOTY FLOODS of 2011 by Tony Caswell (or TC, The Goodna Gunna) The river came up, and the rain came down A playing field of green, became a slush of brown The footballs are gone, along with tackling bags All the teams jerseys, are now muddied rags Gary, the President, he carried the [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – The making of a Swannies fan
March 15, 2011 by 10 Comments
by David Butler I am the Sydney equivalent of a “Broadie Boy”, brought up amongst the factories and workshops of western Sydney. I spent the seventies negotiating the bland tarmac between brutal suburban Rugby League grounds. Belmore Oval, Leichhardt Oval, Redfern Oval and Cumberland Oval. I watched as the first scrum erupted, as always, with [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Tough times in Goodna
January 12, 2011 by 28 Comments
John Harms wrote this piece about Goodna at the time of the major floods in 2011.
Almanac Rugby League – Book Review: Voices from Brisbane Rugby League
August 5, 2010 by Leave a Comment
This review was previously published in Queensland Labour History http://www.boolarongpress.com.au/photos/Voices%20from%20Brisbane%20Rugby%20League%20Large%20%281%29.jpg Review of Greg Mallory, Voices from Brisbane Rugby League: Oral Histories from the 50s to the 70s, Boolarong Press 2009 Greg Mallory, and his editor, Gail Cartwright, are to be congratulated for adding to our archive of oral history collections. Like all such works, this [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Anzac Day: From Reservoir to the ‘G’, to the eye of the Storm
April 29, 2010 by 2 Comments
The national anthem brings the dawn service at the Reservoir cenotaph to a close and a greying man wrapped in black and white trumpets, Carna Pies! Some giggle into their winter coats while a few women puff on heartstarters. Children hang from parents’ arms. A craggy digger approaches another standing at the rear of the [Read more]
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