His forced absence is bad news for Queensland but Maroons mythology was built on these backs-against-the-wall momentsWhatever seemed the most prescient storyline heading into State of Origin III quickly took a back seat when news dropped from the Queensland camp that Covid-19 had struck, with star five-eighth Cameron Munster and winger Murray Taulagi testing positive and forced to miss the decider.As important to the 2022 team as Wally Lewis was to the Maroons sides of the early 1980s, Munster’s forced absence is the worst possible news for rookie coach Billy Slater and the Queensland faithful who had attached their wagon to his horse for the all-important game three. The loss of is a hammer blow to Queensland’s chances, seen no...
Australian produced his best in the first set of the Wimbledon men’s final but was ground down by an inscrutable opponentNick, you will be back. Hmm. Will he, though? There was the sense of a slightly awkward set of wedding speeches about the ceremonials at the end of this men’s Wimbledon singles final, a four-set victory for Novak Djokovic that seemed, for all the quality of the tennis, to be oddly inevitable from about 50 minutes in.This was, of course, a Djokovic story once again but then men’s tennis has basically been a Djokovic story for the last 10 years. Here the lineal world No 1 was utterly clinical, his levels vertiginously high, riding out a sublime first set when...
Anderson’s clutch goal was the exclamation mark on a season in which Gold Coast have finally earned respectNoah Anderson barracked for Richmond as a kid. It was a strange choice, given that his dad was a two-time premiership player with Hawthorn. Noah was 11 when a rugby league player beat the Tigers with a kick after the siren. His dad Dean was on the Gold Coast this weekend. That day, he’d learnt that former teammate Paul Dear had died of pancreatic cancer. That night, he watched his son kick the most important goal in the history of the Gold Coast Suns.It shouldn’t have got to that point. The Suns were 40 points down and playing as badly as they have...
Wins for Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland have set up the prospect of some history-making in the southern hemisphereOne weekend of eye-raising rugby results does not necessarily change the world. Equally, there has never been a day to compare with Saturday. A clean sweep of wins for Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland against the southern hemisphere’s top four teams is unique in the game’s history, despite the south hosting all four of the fixtures.No Irish or Welsh team had previously won in, respectively, New Zealand and South Africa. Now here they both are, just one final push away from winning a best-of-three series. The same is true of England and Scotland, who also bounced back from first Test disappointment to...
The Australian leads the head-to-head 2-0 but his record against top 10 players in best-of-five-set matches is alarmingIt has been seven long years since a 19-year-old Nick Kyrgios reached the second of his two career grand slam quarter-finals up to that point. Between his big wins over big players and the controversy he courts everywhere he goes, his public profile has only grown in the years since but his notoriety did not correlate with greater success on the court.This year, though, the Australian has turned a corner. He arrived at Wimbledon playing the best, most consistent tennis of his career and has used it to blaze a trail into his first grand slam final. Continue reading...