The Blues were seconds away from securing a finals berth but there is little time to dwell on the club’s latest episode of anguishFootball, the historian Manning Clark once said, is “an emotional bath of agony and ecstasy”. For Carlton, this week’s bath was run on Thursday night, with a two-hour soliloquy from a crack QC. It bubbled over 48 hours later, at the City Road end of the MCG, with the son of a stand-up comedian sinking them at the death. The Blues had it in the bag. They were a dozen seconds away from finals. “Did you see that?!” Luke Darcy kept squawking in the commentary box. We’ve been seeing it for a quarter of a century, the...
After a decade of finals but no flags under coach Chris Scott, the 2022 Cats are the best placed since 2011 to win Geelong a long-awaited premiership At the end of the 2018 season, following yet another cutthroat final that had gone belly-up in less than ten minutes, another final where the Cats had looked old, slow and ripe for a rebuild, Chris Scott addressed the players, staff, and sponsors. “We’re not giving up,” he told them. “We’re not playing it safe. No rebuild. No managing expectations. No acquiescence to equalisation.”For many, it was typical Chris Scott – stubbornly trying to beat the handicapper. Every year, the Cats would lug their weight, and race on the speed. Every year, they...
Saturday’s Test in Sydney will be a street fight in which Australia must match England for mongrel, then punish them with speed and skillThe first rugby international staged at the Sydney Cricket Ground was on 24 June, 1899. Australia wore sky blue jerseys, fielded two five-eighths and played two men in the front row. The British XV, featuring players from all four Home Nations, employed a tactic of dribbling the ball upfield at their feet in a rush. But it didn’t work. After being locked at 3-3 for most of the Test, Australia scored two converted tries in the final seven minutes to win 13-3.According to referee, WG Gerrard, Australia won because “they kept slogging all the time. They were...
The greatest of the game threes, featuring heroes and villains and everything in between (and yes, that includes The King)So, here we go again. Another State of Origin decider is upon us and it’s hard to tell who is more excited – footy fans or Nine Network executives. In a world of streaming services and watch on demand, an Origin decider is one of the few TV events that can still put millions of bums on lounge-room seats at the same time and Wednesday night’s climax to the 2022 series will be no exception.From the moment rugby league’s interstate war went to a best-of-three contest in 1982, we have witnessed 21 deciders, with Queensland emerging triumphant on 14 occasions but...
By moving to Western Sydney Wanderers the Serbian playmaker has ensured any bond built with the Sydney FC fanbase will evaporateWhat do Sol Campbell, Luis Figo, and Miloš Ninković have in common? They fill the not-so illustrious turncoat archetype; players that with one stroke of a pen abdicated their chances to become legends of their club and, at best, cast a cloud across their legacy. In swapping Sydney FC for Western Sydney Wanderers, Ninković has arguably come as close as any in the A-League Men to rivalling Campbell’s move from Tottenham to Arsenal or Figo’s switch from Barcelona to Real Madrid. Plenty have played on both sides of the Harbour City in the past, but none have possessed the kind...