1. Hey, Silver is looking pretty good. We have lived with a week of Olympics and shaded expectations. The golden avalanche has disappeared, our addiction to international success well and truly back in the box along with the expectations of certain success levels in international sports: tennis, Olympics generally, cricket specifically. We are [Read more]
Learning from Pierre
August 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment
By John Green My jobs are almost done. I’ve ridden the bike up to La Trobe Uni and back for the exercise, completed the Saturday morning chores for the favour of the wife and visited a mate in the Austin. It’s time to spend some hours in front of the box watching a double header [Read more]
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]
crio’s Q?
August 5, 2012 by 3 Comments
Fans don’t like their side losing. It always hurts. But after the Hawks had reeled in the Cats yet still lost, I wondered… would you prefer to get beaten by “lengths” rather than by a “nose”?
The song remains the same
August 5, 2012 by 19 Comments
We’re sitting in the All Nations Hotel on Friday afternoon. Yeatesy is leaning on the fireplace telling us about the 1989 Grand Final; about the day he knocked The Kid on his arse, bruised his spleen in fact. Yeatesy is a beauty; a raw boned country footballer made-good, the quintessential six foot three and three [Read more]
Alicia Coutts – Thunder Road
August 5, 2012 by 23 Comments
Climb in back Heaven’s waiting on down the tracks Oh-oh come take my hand We’re riding out tonight to case the promised land 4 am March 9, 1976 – Hancock St Doubleview – John has just tied his boards to the roof and got in the back of my EJ. The rain is horizontal so Mark [Read more]
Cats Allegiance
August 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment
We’ve done it again–defied the odds that is! Speaking of odds, earlier in the week I remarked to my brother Harry how generous the line odds of +25 points were for the reigning premiers. Then again hardly surprising with all the Hawthorn hype and the pervasive penchant for people to write Geelong off. Another brother [Read more]
Hawkins pips Hawks in match of the year
August 4, 2012 by 1 Comment
GEELONG 9.3 10.5 14.9 18.10 (118) HAWTHORN 2.0 7.6 11.8 17.14 (116) 3 Hawkins, 2 Sewell, 1 Mitchell For a Geelong fan, beating Hawthorn with a goal after the siren is one of the sweetest tastes life offers. Only a big finals win beats it. There’s no point building it up. Tonight the Cats won [Read more]
Friday footy is a beautiful thing
August 4, 2012 by 7 Comments
Friday Footy is a Beautiful Thing. I finished work not long after sunset, watching the moon wobble up from, then across, the mountains. It was almost full, but not, as if someone had dropped it on its head. As I came down the logging tracks into the valley, towards the nearest farms, that lead [Read more]
Crio’s racing
August 3, 2012 by 9 Comments
Mick Stumbles has a great Aussie name and is an NT icon. After coming to Darwin originally to train greyhounds, Stumbles found himself at the microphone at Fannie Bay and has been an integral part of the Racing Club and its Carnival since 1971. He announced recently that he will hang up the binoculars after [Read more]
The Pre-Wap – Round IXX
August 3, 2012 by 15 Comments
THE PRE WRAP – ROUND IXX FOR THE PHILOSOPHICAL MARNGROOK FAN And what a week it’s been in Footy Eddie. If the unravelling of the Australian swimming team doesn’t spoil the Ayatollah’s sojourn in the Olympic City, what’s going down at Harrison House certainly should. The worst kept secret in the History of The Game [Read more]
The secrets of Olympians
August 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Sometime during the past 12 months, I fell in love with PostSecret. PostSecret is a website updated each Sunday with a series of postcards which have been sent to the site that week, each containing the sender’s anonymous secret. I love the site because it can make you laugh, take pause, and even re-think one’s [Read more]
VAFA Div 1 – Round 14: Give me footy
August 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment
My wife thinks there is something wrong with me. Actually, she thinks there are lots of things wrong with me, but what she really cannot fathom is how disinterested I am in the Olympics. And it is true. I could not care less for Australia’s achievements in the pool, and on the other various courts [Read more]
Time for a Think Tank
August 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Happy Olympics to all, This European Summer has been a killer for sleep – but we toil on. Meanwhile Brock McLean ensures that the local game keeps plenty of news inches filled. But really did he say anything we did not already know! There has been much blubbering about the penalties that should be inflicted [Read more]
Round 19 preview
August 2, 2012 by 3 Comments
Just trying to find a winner or two. Some very good line betting to be done. http://tatts.com/news/2012/7/30/afl-round-19
The AFL is Federation all over again!
August 2, 2012 by 2 Comments
I’m currently working on Australian constitutional law and it strikes me that the creation of the AFL is very much like what happened when Australia federated. The States created the Commonwealth which then took on a life of its own and made the States its beggars. Now the AFL, created by the clubs, has taken on [Read more]
Rivalry
August 2, 2012 by 25 Comments
This all goes back a couple of decades, perhaps to 1989. Or even earlier. The story so far: the Hawks are too good for Geelong during the late 80s and early 90s. The Cats have a terrific team of characters who play the game with their own flair and are encouraged by the creative [Read more]
A Blue day in the outback
August 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment
By Callum O’Connor Deny sleep long enough and it will ignore you when you need it. I’m aboard a bus that has been faithfully lurching and wheezing its way up from Melbourne for 30 hours since 7 am on Wednesday morning with the thirty of us who are on the 2012 Eltham College /school Central [Read more]
light and shade
August 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment
sunset a few purple patches kill off the game evening sky no great signs only flashes playing the bottom team the caller questions a lack of urgency twilight game the zig-zag path to goal empty seats Cloke marks alone and unattended fading light Wood losing what little he had twilight the light and shade of [Read more]
Hindsight….it’s a beautiful thing
August 1, 2012 by 4 Comments
By Neil Anderson Whenever I check the Almanac’s website for the latest offerings and before I have a go at writing myself, the first thing I see written in bold lettering is, ‘Write From The Heart’. This credo is evident in most pieces and none more-so than articles by JT Harms. I have finished reading [Read more]
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