The recent spate of suspensions for dangerous tackles may be the least understood and worst explained change in the history of the sport“If we keep going at this rate, there’ll be no tackling by the end of 2024-25”, Brian Taylor squawked on Friday night. “When you play this game, surely you sign up for a dangerous game. You’re not a tiler, laying tiles in a safe environment. It is a dangerous, physically brutal, one-on-one sport, and that is the most appealing thing about it.” “I give up on that one,” Matthew Richardson said. “I’ve just got no idea,” Luke Hodge added.It was in response to Jarrod Berry being reported for dangerous tackling, which was swiftly and predictably thrown out. It...
Blues coach was a magnificent footballer but after an abysmal season-and-a-half the reality is he hasn’t made it work at the clubHere’s Carlton chief executive, Brian Cook, last night: “Michael Voss will be with us until at least the end of next year.” Here’s the president, Luke Sayers: “The boys love Vossy … Vossy is a phenomenal human.” Here’s sportswriter Peter Ryan: “The Age spoke to six people inside and outside the club who are familiar with the environment surrounding the Blues’ current predicament, and none thought that moving on the coach was an option even worth considering.” Here’s pundit David King: “It’s not anywhere near the crisis some are making it out to be – most issues simply require...
The Gold Coast Suns also showed substance in victory over Adelaide while the GWS-Richmond clash put other prime-time match-ups in the shadeMany moons have waxed and waned since the Gold Coast Suns were a talking point following a round of football that did not question their very existence. For years the expansion club have been hard to take seriously, a team slightly less threatening than a Carlton forward’s set shot. But on Saturday night, they radiated energy like sweat on a humid Darwin night, kicking nine unanswered goals either side of half-time to defeat Adelaide by six goals.For so much of their history, the Gold Coast has been a broken team with the soul of a Docklands’ ATM, wrecked by...
Queensland’s 3-0 series win over NSW in 2010 is the only sweep since 2000 and this year’s series is again too close to call Most Australian rules fans have forgotten (or chosen to forget) that they owned the State of Origin concept for a century before the big boppers in the north caught on. Since the VFL/AFL abandoned their interstate carnivals in 1993 and ceased all state-based clashes in 1999, rugby league’s State of Origin has become “Australian sport’s greatest rivalry” – the purest expression of mate v mate and state v state. It started as an experiment – Australia’s then-captain Bob Fulton predicted “the non-event of the century” – but 43 years on Origin has become the very essence...
Resources, workload and the media can make it a stressful job and the wolves will always circle if the results dry upPressure, the fighter pilot and champion cricketer Keith Miller once said, was a Messerschmitt up your arse. It’s a quote often wheeled out by Mark Latham types bemoaning a world gone soft. It bobbed up a few times last week in regards to AFL coaches, who are apparently stressed, under-resourced and burnt out. Two of the most successful coaches of their generation stepped away from the game in recent weeks. “Coaches feel like the scum of the industry,” Caroline Wilson said. Even Craig McRae spoke of the enormous toll it takes on his wellbeing and his family life.Not everyone...