For those either without Foxtel or with a better offer on a warm February night, I offer a few thoughts on the Pies’ opening NAB Cup games. The Fahey family lounge was full of black and white jumpers as we settled in for the first instalment of the year, this time from the grandiosely named [Read more]
The role of the skunk in the evolutionary development of football
February 19, 2012 by 24 Comments
by Clint Rule As I get more feeble in my footballing forties I feel the need to have something lateral additives to keep up with the new bloods. Functional ideas. You know the Bob Neil Volley Hybrids. I like explorer socks – comfy, thick and warm but short so they don’t fill up with water in the [Read more]
NAB Cup: North Melbourne v Richmond v Hawthorn
February 19, 2012 by 5 Comments
Year 12. It is an interesting year. It has its ups, and it has its fair share of downs. Those moments when you just can’t handle the pressure of the work that is piling on your shoulders at an alarming rate. Thankfully I haven’t experienced that, yet. The good experiences though? Where to begin! The [Read more]
Why Adelaide will win the flag
February 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment
THE OPTIMIST’S GUIDE TO SEASON 2012. By Alex Wadelton At this time of year, if everything goes right, every fan thinks their team can win the flag. Yes, even Richmond fans. So, over the coming weeks I will discuss in a completely unbiased and alphabetical manner why every single team can win the [Read more]
The return of football
February 17, 2012 by 12 Comments
By Adam Ritchie The AFL pre-season competition is upon us and that means the return of glorious football. Personally, this couldn’t have come at a better time. My withdrawal symptoms were becoming alarming and quite frankly dangerous. The other week I went for a kick in my backyard and pretended the ladder was [Read more]
Season Eve Optimism
February 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Can you smell it in the air? No? Try again. Raise your nose up a little higher and let out a big sniff. Can you smell it now? It’s that time of the year again when the fragrance of optimism and feelings of hope are abundant. It’s in the air. It’s in our hearts. It’s [Read more]
Crio’s Racing: Lightning Stakes 2012
February 17, 2012 by 16 Comments
It seems like Spring. Not only because we’ve had a heat wave and a flood in the last hour, but also because that further creases my brow regarding Saturday’s track conditions for the fantastic meeting at Headquarters – and I’m even contemplating grabbing a Winning Post to whet my appetite. Yep. Racing is getting great [Read more]
One With The Lot
February 16, 2012 by 9 Comments
I knew I shouldn’t have eaten it. The hamburger. The bloody thing nearly killed me. I was on Tavira, a minute island just off the south coast of Portugal. It was September 1987. I say just off the coast because a couple of good torpedo punts from the mainland would land on the island’s beautiful [Read more]
A unique life member
February 15, 2012 by 6 Comments
by Andrew Weiss In sporting clubs around Australia on honour boards within clubrooms there are names of people who have been given life membership at that particular sporting club. For some the achievement of becoming a life member may have been because of playing so many games at a particular level or playing for [Read more]
Almanac Rugby League – Hope is all we have
February 14, 2012 by 2 Comments
by Paul Connolly “Hope is necessary in every condition,” Samuel ‘Magic’ Johnson once wrote. “The miseries of poverty, sickness, of captivity, of being a Sharks fan, would, without this comfort, be insupportable.” Keen scholars will realise that I added the bit about being a Sharks fan. (After all, there’s about a [Read more]
Book Review: Australia Story of a Cricket Country
February 14, 2012 by 7 Comments
Editor: Christian Ryan Publisher: Hardie Grant RRP: $90 (Almanac price $75. Details here) We are told a lot of things nowadays. We’re told nobody buys books anymore. That iPads and eBooks are the inevitable, irresistible way of the future. Even cricket administrators tell us few under thirty care much about test cricket now. [Read more]
Caviar for two
February 14, 2012 by 13 Comments
Caviar for two It’s Saturday morning and there’s but one thing on my mind: Black Caviar. I don’t buy into the baloney about her being the greatest racehorse of all time. Seventeen emphatic wins in a row is impressive; very impressive. But they have all been sprints! If someone were to say to me, “Usain [Read more]
In A-League of its Own: 12/2012
February 13, 2012 by 2 Comments
Tom’s weekly outlook on the A-League Melbourne Victory has begun to resurrect their season with a 2-1 win over league-leaders Central Coast Mariners at AAMI Park on Friday night. Despite going 1 down, the Victory were the ones coming from behind to grab points this time around, with goals to Carlos Hernandez and Harry Kewell [Read more]
Waxing lyrical on shaking hands and sporting war!
February 13, 2012 by 13 Comments
A few years ago the then Carlton AFL player Brock Mclean announced on a mainstream footy show that he refuses to shake his direct opponents hand on the footy field before a game, because that “is what his Dad did”…. I remember being disgusted by this (and venting on the nackers site) and now on [Read more]
Crio’s Q: Buy Local!
February 13, 2012 by 4 Comments
“I can’t believe any Englishman wants a foreigner as manager of our country, I can’t believe there is one out there!” “We’ve had enough of these foreigners, they ain’t got no passion, no commitment. All they want is the money.” “Englishman in charge of England.” (Barry Fry, after Fabio Capello’s resignation, in support of [Read more]
Channel 198: Watching Footy From San Francisco
February 12, 2012 by 9 Comments
by Damien Holloway What do Al Jazeera, Taiwan Outlook, France 24 News and Dwayne Russell have in common? Channel KCSMD 198. More on that later. I moved over to the USA in December of 2005 to marry an American girl. On previous visits I had regularly watched a weekly footy wrap on one [Read more]
One Tony Lockett
February 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment
If not for the indecision of the Collingwood board in 1994, I would be a one-toothed Magpie supporter today. Some eighteen years later, after what one would describe as the greatest mistake ever made by the Collingwood board – though the bloodless coup of Nathan Buckley in 2009 may rival it, only time will tell [Read more]
Peter Argent: Cricket Slips
February 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment
This cricket clothing faux pas (embarrassment) happened during the final of the 2012 Grand Final of the Senior Country Carnival at University Number one oval on Thursday Feb 9. The batsman in question in Yorke Peninsula an Lower North all rounder Matthew Higgs This guy is the prospective son in law of 1980s Australian batsman-keeper [Read more]
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