Football hero’s homeless grace

Just because you’re down doesn’t mean you have to be out. Brian Doyle tells a beautiful story of a struggling ex footballer who returns to the place where things worked well for him. http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=21978 Courtesy of Eureka Street

BART

By Sam Duncan It is a widely known fact among those who knows me that I love Bart. Rarely is there a horse in the Spring, trained by JB, who I’m not on.  I was on Bart when I was eight years old, sitting on my Grandmother’s knee cheering home Let’s Elope to victory in [Read more]

THE ELCHO BOYS LOVE THEIR FOOTY!

I’ve lived in the remote aboriginal community of Galiwinku, Elcho Island for well over a year now and am still astounded by how much they love their AFL. Last year we had a really successful senior season, with 7 teams competing in a gripping battle for the premiership. With 3 rounds to go all 7 [Read more]

The Almanac 1950

I came across Mullen’s Australasian Footballers’ Almanac during a tidy-up of my footy bookshelf. It was part of a collection of treasures given to me by my cousin Gil Farmer a couple of years ago. Gil was making room on his shelves and I was happy to take possession of copies of Ross Elliot’s West [Read more]

English Hope Springs Eternal

This Guardian piece from Mike Selvey shows that even some of the more level-headed English pundits are starting to get their hopes up. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/nov/04/england-australia-ashes-phoney-war

In A League of its Own: Episode 16

Tom’s weekly outlook on the A-League Gameweek 13 in the A-League certainly wasn’t one of the goal-filled entertaining weekends that we’ve become accustomed to this season, but instead, it was a round where 4 out of 5 matches finished 1 goal to nil. These weren’t necessarily boring games of football, but just games where both [Read more]

Caught Behind 1/100

By Steve Ingham An opinion piece on Australia’s favourite summer sport THE SOUND OF SUMMER While every commentator and fan in the country is ringing the alarm bells about the state of the national cricket team- and I will address that later- I want to focus on my favourite sounds of summer: ABC Grandstand Cricket, [Read more]

Blues in Strife

The Carlton Football Club was thrown into a state of high uncertainty after this week’s release of the BRW 100 richest Australian business people. There was a glaring omission of the Blue’s redeemer, Richard Pratt, from the list as well as concern over the rising number of claims against his estate by aggrieved mistresses. A [Read more]

Grand Final wash-up: is that all there is?

When asked by a reporter why he had decided to visit Canada, the Irish playwright, Brendan Behan, is said to have replied “I saw a picture at the Airport saying “Drink Canada Dry” so I thought I’d come here and try”. My more modest intention, following a Collingwood Grand Final win, was to line the [Read more]

Crio’s Question: Notable Growths

Chances are that you’ve either chucked out the razor and/or got an inbox clogged with sponsorship requests. As a Movember tribute, let’s highlight some notable growths and maybe put together some teams and lists. No Arantxa Sanchez gags please!

Wood On You

A few weeks ago, I had an idea.  I want to find out some things about wood. Not wood as in Colling – wood.  I know all about that ‘cos I’m one of them. No, I’m talking about the other kind of footy wood. I ran my idea past Daff and he asked me to [Read more]

TOP CATS ALL CLASS AND BREAD AND BUTTER PUDDING

It isn’t often that one gets the opportunity to spend time with some of the top people in the AFL. Fortunately my trip to Ireland with the International Team gave me a rare treat As a 60years plus Pivotonian man I was delighted to spend time with two of the top cats in Geelong’s great [Read more]

Collingwood Newsletter

Well Magpie fans, can you believe it’s already been 38 days since our glorious victory. Incredible as it seems we are already beginning to mount the premiership defence for 2011 with the players recently returning from altitude training in the penthouse at Crown. The excitement amongst the group in palpable and there seems to be [Read more]

A Well Oiled Oaks Day

Have you ever looked really closely at a well oiled machine? When you were younger did you ever take the head off a Holden 186 motor and marvel at the shiny mechanical thingies, all oiled up and tuned to perfection, ready to propel the Kingswood along? No? Me neither. But when I arrived at the [Read more]

Book Review: A Prodigious Tome for an Epic Tale

A Prodigious Tome for an Epic Tale Book: The Red Fox: The Biography of Norm Smith Writer: Ben Collins Publisher: The Slattery Media Group, 2008. Contemporary football biographies continue to fill a lucrative corner of the sports publishing market place. Rarely does a champion seem to retire without the close accompaniment of a publishing deal. [Read more]

Jack Anthony leaves Danni (and Collingwood)

Sat –Nov 6th 11:26PM- a confirmation on the Herald Sun website reveals Jack Anthony has left Collingwood and will nominate for the pre-season draft. — Take a glass, throw it to the floor and smash to a billion pieces- that’s what happened to my heart. I had no awareness of anything around me, Jack left, [Read more]

Almanac Racing: Spring Carnival Final Day 2010

Bookies have, as usual, so far claimed the points at the annual “Flemington fill-up” and will be looking to top up at the outstanding fourth day of the “Festival”. Punters were losing confidence in a tricky track after some early blow-outs on Oaks Day but they rallied late to get a bank for a counter-attack [Read more]

Radio One

For some of you that have met me at the Almanac launch last year and various lunches throughout 2010, you would know by now that I’m a shy kid, I keep to myself mostly, and am pretty terrible at keeping my end of the deal in conversation. So it may take many of you by [Read more]

London to a Brick

The spring carnival is a funny time of year. The mix of once a year punters with regular mugs makes for interesting conversations, the most notable being the wonderful use of racing terms that provide the veterans with an air of being all knowledgeable. I’ll start with a couple: Black Type Races – No it [Read more]

Woggabaliri

I’m surprised there hasn’t been some discussion of Woggabaliri. It’s threatening to go viral on bigfooty/fourfourtwo/the world game and so on. Woggabaliri is supposedly an Aboriginal game that resembles keepie uppie and has been claimed by the FFA as an indigenous form of soccer. The FFA are using it as a plank in their World [Read more]