Hogg vs Warne via Whateley

  By LES EVERETT   Discussion on ABC TV’s Offsiders (Sunday 19 February) turned to Shane Warne’s attempt to make a return to the Australian cricket team. The talk was sparked by a story by Gideon Haigh in the nice-looking new website The Global Mail… http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/shane-warnes-never-ending-glory-part-1/67/ Panellist Gerard Whateley suggested a return via the Australian [Read more]

Things are cranking up

Sorry for the delay in hitting the keyboards but it was due to circumstances beyond my control that being lack of content. Bugger all been happening in the H of S as February is basically the gestation prior to the impending rebirth of the football season. The A-League continues to provide interest to fans of [Read more]

Murphy and Gaita

I can heartily recommend this Rotunda event on February 29. Bob Murphy is known to us through his fine work across the half back line and in The Age. Raimond Gaita is a philosopher, teacher, writer who came to significant public prominence through his memoir Romulus, My Father, which is a fine, fine book. This is [Read more]

Floret Pica NAB Cup Week 1

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

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

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

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]

Raiders of the Lost Costume Closet

Hobart Cup day arrived last weekend.   It was a long weekend in Hobart but not for the Cup. Hobartians no longer enjoy a public holiday for their major race day. That was confiscated a while back when the government of the day announced: that things were tough. Since then the Cup has meandered about [Read more]

The return of football

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

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

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

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

  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

  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

  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

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]

Peter Argent Photos: Great catch that!

Photos by Peter Argent    

In A-League of its Own: 12/2012

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!

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!

  “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]