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]
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]
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]
Jim Stynes
April 16, 2012 by 23 Comments
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]
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
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]
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.
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]
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]
Out: Cohen. In: Katrina
September 29, 2011 by 18 Comments
One lazy afternoon, in a marquee on the banks of the Brisbane River, in a spot which would have been three metres under water last January, I sat with the battered and the downtrodden at the feet of Michael Leunig. We had been drawn to him in our individual and collective downtrodden-ness because his topic [Read more]
Cats in control
September 26, 2011 by 10 Comments
Friday. I am having lunch with an Eagles fan who is such an Eagles fan he is known as West Coast Dave (a fine contributor to these pages I might add). He is down from Canberra and is in a preliminary final mood. A Group 1 theoriser (with a masters degree in sports psyche which [Read more]
Dawdling Sri Lankans still a chance
September 20, 2011 by 7 Comments
I have played in cricket teams which lacked direction. Ones where you sat around the dressing room comparing hangovers, and talking about Friday’s play in the Test match. Then wandered out to bat. Or sauntered out to field. No chat. No plans. No sense of where we were on the ladder. But not many of [Read more]
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