In six short months the teenager has progressed from a fringe youth prospect at Central Coast to the English Premier LeagueGarang Kuol is officially off to Newcastle United. Having rode a wave of momentum from A-League youth football to the biggest league in the world in less than a year, the world is at the feet of Australian football’s next big thing. Now, with an entire nation watching on, he stares down the barrel of taking daunting, and treacherous steps into the unknown.Just a week on from becoming the youngest player to debut for Australia since 17-year-old Harry Kewell, Kuol was formally unveiled as the latest member of the Toon on Thursday after flying to the UK following the Socceroos’...
Like Cooper Cronk and Cameron Smith, he has built his game not on rare brilliance but on relentless excellenceIn rugby league, the story of great club dynasties is the story of great halves. Parramatta and Canterbury dominated the 1980s on the backs of Peter Sterling and Steve Mortimer. Canberra and Brisbane’s rise in the early 1990s came with the emergence of Ricky Stuart and Allan Langer as the two great No 7s in the game. Andrew Johns led Newcastle’s only sustained period of contention. Brad Fittler carried the Roosters to three straight grand finals in the early 2000s. Cooper Cronk kept Melbourne at the top of the premiership for more than a decade before shifting to the Sydney Roosters and...
One team have undergone an incredible metamorphosis while the other have simply allowed combinations to settleIn March this year, the Newcastle Knights finished their first NRLW season with a loss to the Gold Coast Titans. It was their fifth defeat of the five-game season and was far from an illustrious entry to the competition.Fast forward six months and the Knights are heading into the grand final as favourites to win their first premiership, in one of sport’s more remarkable turnarounds in form. How did such a transformation come about? For it was not simply that the change happened from one season to the next, but also that, due to the pandemic, the seasons occurred so close together – both falling...
With ‘15 or 16 players’ cemented in coach Graham Arnold’s plans for Qatar 2022, the fight is on to be the best of the rest“I’m going to reach out to Panadol as my new sponsor because I’m going to have quite a number of headaches to fit into a 26-man squad,” Socceroos coach Graham Arnold said in the aftermath of his side’s 2-0 win over New Zealand on Sunday afternoon. Delivered with a wry smile, it was a rehearsed gag that spoke to one of the biggest challenges the 58-year-old – and every other coach heading to Qatar 2022 – will face in the coming months.Between now and 14 November, Arnold faces the mammoth task of weighing up a complex...
In terms of the code’s place in Sydney’s sporting landscape, Sunday’s decider will be the most symbolic in some timeHad Peter V’landys, Andrew Abdo and the powerbrokers at NRL headquarters sat down at the start of this season and handpicked their ideal grand final fixture, it would almost certainly have comprised Penrith and Parramatta. This Sunday’s decider is a match-up made in heaven, and one which ticks every box.Under the V’landys reign, political power in the NRL has shifted away from Sydney’s east and north and settled in the west – a region now very much at the centre of the governing body’s strategy and desire. Both the Penrith Leagues Club and Parramatta Leagues Club sit inside the 12 biggest...