Posts filed under 'Sport'
I was quite amused, whilst watching the Rugby Union match between Australia and Italy on the television, to see what can only be described as steam billowing off the players who were clearly much warmer than the air which surrounded them.
The result, however, when a large group of them got together (for a scrum, for example) was a fog, through which it was difficult to see all of the players.
I maintain that it is not cold tonight, indeed it is currently 0.9 degrees. It will be cold though if the temperature continues to fall. I think the Bureau’s rounded overnight low of 1 degree was wishful thinking.
Meanwhile Rex Hunt is singing on 3AW. The fat lady sings. Richmond are home…even if Denis Cometti does think they look like Richmond, which is not a compliment.
Samuel
June 13th, 2009 at 09:37pm
And yet one can easily work out who, in the crowd at Canberra Stadium for the Rugby Union match between Australia and Italy, is a tourist…they’re the ones who are rugged up like Eskimos.
It’s 4.5 degrees outside right now according to the Bureau…I could quite happily go for a walk for an hour or so without a coat right now…but alas I’m inside listening to 3AW’s AFL coverage, and later I will be watching The Bill.
Samuel
June 13th, 2009 at 07:37pm
Well that certainly saves me from keeping an eye on the scores for the rest of the household, as 3AW are providing “around the grounds” scores of the Melbourne Storm NRL match during their AFL coverage, and the other match is on TV.
Many thanks to 3AW’s Graeme Bond for saving me a bit of work tonight.
Samuel
June 5th, 2009 at 08:12pm
One of Channel Nine’s few decent rugby league commentators has reportedly “stormed out” mere hours before he was going to join the commentary team for tonight’s State of Origin clash in Melbourne.
FORMER Queensland State of Origin star Ben Ikin has stormed out of Channel Nine only hours before he was supposed to be commentating on tonight’s showdown in Melbourne.
A furious Ikin phoned Nine’s director of sport Steve Crawley early this afternoon to resign from all his commentary duties.
[..]
Ikin, who is the son-in-law of super coach Wayne Bennett, is angry that Channel Nine’s A Current Affair is doing an investigation tonight into a business owned by his father on the Gold Coast.
[..]
Steve Crawley confirmed Ikin had quit but refused to comment, other than saying, “”At this stage I’m just concentrating on getting the telecast right for tonight.’’
Ah well, it just makes the already superior coverage on 2GB that little bit better. Best wishes to Ben, I hope he pops up on Foxtel or radio in the near future.
Samuel
June 3rd, 2009 at 02:45pm
The mighty Bulldogs had a wonderful second quarter and blitzed the Swans by 40 at Manuka Oval. I’m very very happy about this.
I would have loved to be there, but didn’t buy tickets as I knew that I would be too tired to get there in time. As it happened, I was right, and slept until 1:30pm and ended up watching the game on Southern Cross Ten whilst listening to the other match, North Melbourne V Brisbane, on 3AW Football. It’s the first time (as far as I can recall) that Rex Hunt has sent the fat lady around the grounds to sing for a match which they aren’t covering…mid-way through the second quarter, and again near half time.
Now listening to the Friday edition of the The Rush Limbaugh Show (not a typo), and later tonight The Bill is on ABC1.
Samuel
May 30th, 2009 at 05:39pm
Good news: Brumbies lose to the Chiefs 10-7, taking with it their slim chance os making the Super 14 finals
Good news: Crusaders defeat the Blues 15-13, propelling them in to the top four
Bad news: The Hurricanes defeat the Reds 37-28, putting the Hurricanes back in to the top four
Good news: The Crusaders have a better points difference than the equally placed Waratahs, keeping the Crusaders in the top four, and in the finals.
Now it’s just a matter of ensuring that the Bulls prevent the Sharks from winning and getting four or more tries.
Update: Bulls win 27-26, Crusaders are in the finals! Very good news.End Update
Samuel
May 16th, 2009 at 09:37pm
Ian Craig is retiring. It was bound to happen eventually, but it is sad to see the various voices of racing disappearing.
AFTER 45 years entertaining the racing world with his dulcet tones and classic calling Ian Craig has announced his retirement.
Craig, the longest serving fulltime racecaller in Australia, said the decision to hang up his binoculars was quite an easy one.
“I have been planning to pull the pin for some time now,” Craig said.
[..]
“I have called 35 Golden Slippers and AJC Derbys and thought the time was right to hang up the 10-by-50s.”
Craig, 67, started at 2UE in 1965 before moving to 2KY in 1968. He will call his final race meeting at Gosford on June 24.
He could not single out one performance as a career highlight but rates Kingston Town, Luskin Star, Sunline and Octagonal among the best thoroughbreds he has called.
One wonders who will fill Ian’s shoes for Sky Channel and 2KY. Regardless of who it is, I get the distinct feeling that the days of “personalities” calling races are all but over.
Samuel
Image courtesy Racing And Sports
May 4th, 2009 at 05:00pm
I went for a two hour walk to my post office box and back at about 2am, and found a letter, marked “urgent”, from a gentleman in Cobram in there, urging me to drop most of Channel Ten’s AFL commentators in favour of Kelli Underwood, an up-and-coming female commentator who caused a stir in 2005 when 3AW made her a match co-commentator, a move which Ten have repeated recently during their NAB Cup coverage, making Kelli the first female to call AFL football on television.
I agree with the sentiments of the letter writer as I think Ten’s commentators are generally quite awful, and Kelli is a vast improvement, however I’m not sure what I can really do about it.
I think I’ll write back to the letter writer asking for permission to publish their letter in full as a “Letter To The Editor”. That’s probably the best thing that I can do under the circumstances.
Samuel
March 4th, 2009 at 04:03pm
I knew this would happen…I said as much a week ago. None the less, an email to 2UE’s Steve Price:
G’day Steve,
I heard you talking to Mark Parton about the heat at the tennis on 2CC this morning.
I have a simple solution to the problem…move the tennis to winter. It rains less on average in winter, so you’d have less rain delays, and it’s colder in winter so you wouldn’t have to worry about heat stress…and if it was really cold, the players could keep warm simply by playing!
Enjoy your day.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
January 28th, 2009 at 09:24am
Can anyone explain to me the logic behind playing tennis in summer?
Every year we have the Australian Open in Melbourne in summer when it is absolutely boiling. At this time yesterday it was 40 degrees, and yet for whatever reason a whole bunch of people decided that it would be a good idea to run around hitting a ball back and forth for hours on end.
And if it’s not the heat that they’re whinging about, it’s the rain…and Melbourne is almost the London of the southern hemisphere when it comes to rain. There are two days of rain expected in the coming week for Melbourne which, as good as that may be for allowing the tennis to continue for most of the time, just means that there’ll be more whinging about the heat when it’s not raining. Perhaps the London analogy is actually accurate here as I could draw some parallel between that and a common derogatory phrase about people from England who complain about things.
So explain to me why tennis is played when it’s either going to be hot or wet, when it would surely be much more sensible to just play tennis in winter which is a statistically dryer time of the year. Sure, the crowds might be slightly less excited at the prospect of sitting in the freezing cold during the matches, and you’d probably struggle to entice international spectators to “come and watch tennis in the cold”, but at least the players wouldn’t be too hot, the rain wouldn’t stop play half as much as it does at this time of the year, and the meat pie industry might get a bit of a cash injection from all the patrons wanting hot food.
I suppose that when it comes down to it, playing tennis in summer really is just an excuse for the organisers and players to complain…and let’s face it, tennis is so deathly dull on its own that they have to do something to make it interesting. If it weren’t for the soap-opera antics at the tennis, Seven would be much more likely to bid for the television rights to the lawn bowls.
From my perspective though, I’ll just keep ignoring the tennis as much as possible, and be thankful that there is no live commentary of it on the radio…the television commentators struggle to stay awake, just imagine the amount of dead air that radio would have if somebody actually tried to cover the tennis.
Perhaps if I ever try to run for politics again I could have a policy of banning tennis, and encouraging more golf and lawn bowls…the economy might not be all that great afterwards, but at least we wouldn’t have to deal with tennis ever again.
Samuel
January 21st, 2009 at 01:53pm
As usual I’ll be providing results as they happen
Or I might be sleeping. Sorry, but I slept through most of the day.
Anyway, the results:
1st: 10 – Viewed. Win $45.50. Place $14.00
2nd: 12 – Bauer. Place $6.50
3rd: 4 – C’est La Guerre. Place $7.80
Quinella $553.20. Exacta $1156.30. Trifecta $22,324.20
Full list of finishers:
1st: Viewed
2nd: Bauer
3rd: C’est La Guerre
4th: Master O’Reilly
5th: Profound Beauty
6th: Moatize
7th: Mad Rush
8th: Nom du Jeu
9th: Zipping
10th: Newport
11th: Ice Chariot
12th: Guyno
13th: Littorio
14th: Varevees
15th: Boundless
16th: Red Lord
17th: Prize Lady
18th: Septimus
19th: Barbaricus
20th: Alessandro Volta
21st/Last: Honolulu
Did not finish: Gallopin
Scratched: Yellowstone, Zarita
And that means that, as usual, the owners of the horses that I tipped should have just packed up their bags and gone home:
Nom Du Jeu: 8th
Littorio: 13th
Alessandro Volta: 20th
Samuel
November 4th, 2008 at 09:29pm
It’s that time of the day on the first Tuesday in November when the owners, trainers, jockeys and other connections start refreshing the page on this blog constantly, waiting to see if their horse is one of the three which might as well go home. Yes, it’s time for me to tip three horses which I think are likely to come first, second and third in the Melbourne Cup.
My tips:
Nom Du Jeu
Alessandro Volta
Littorio
If you can’t be near a TV or radio at 3PM, but still want to hear the race, then there are a number of webstreams available. As usual I’ll link to a few because they’re likely to hit their listener limits around race time and if you can’t get on to one, you may be able to get on to another one.
Sport 927 Melbourne
2KY 1017 Sydney
ACTTAB Radio Canberra 88.7FM
As usual I’ll be providing results as they happen, and will have the full list of finishers from first to last as soon as it’s published (I’m usually ahead of the news websites and Channel Seven with that one!) so if you’re running a sweep and need that list to see who came last, don’t change the page, just refresh it!
If you’re betting today, good luck, and please bet with your head, not over it. If you need help with a gambling problem, give Lifeline Canberra a call on 13 11 14 or your local gambling helpline.
Samuel
November 4th, 2008 at 05:08am
I managed to find a good point about having the Olympics on at night and Seven’s AFL coverage delayed until 7:50am in New South Wales…if I sleep for thirteen hours from 6pm on Friday, I can wake up on Saturday and still see most of the AFL.
Anyway, the Dennis Cometti quote (and I had to decide between a few…it seems that letting Dennis loose to call all the action without Bruce McAvaney next to him results in far too much amusement, not that I’m complaining of course). Dennis referred to Ryan Hargrave as looking “fresh”, and then a minute or so later Hargrave looked quite exhausted, which prompted a number of Dennis’ co-commentators to have a bit of fun at Dennis’ expense.
Not long after this, Ryan Hargrave was off the field with ice wrapped around his ankle. One of Dennis’ co-commentators (possibly Nathan Buckley) noted that Hargrave didn’t look very fresh any more, prompting Dennis to say “if he was an avacado, you wouldn’t buy him”.
Samuel
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:13am
All of the swimming in Beijing has reminded me of the day that I came to the conclusion that swimming just wasn’t for me.
I was in primary school and was reluctantly taking part in the weekly school swimming trip to the AIS pool in Bruce. For one reason or another I was relegated to the half-length pool and the supervising teacher encouraged me to swim from one end to the other and back again. I’m not entirely sure why, but I decided to try to swim that distance as quickly as possible…perhaps I thought that the quicker I did that, the sooner the torment would be over.
Anyway, swimming as fast as I could, I managed to swim the entire 50 metres in just over five minutes, which means that I had reached the incredible speed of just under 10 metres per minute. It may have only been five and a bit minutes, but it felt like half an hour.
Not surprisingly, the teacher also agreed that swimming wasn’t my forte. I still had to go on the weekly swimming trips, but I didn’t have to enter a pool again.
Incidentally, whilst reading that, did you read “forte” as “for-tay” or “fort”? You may be interested to learn that technically, the correct pronunciation is “fort”. Answers.com explains with help from the American Heritage Dictionary:
USAGE NOTE: The word forte, coming from French fort, should properly be pronounced with one syllable, like the English word fort. Common usage, however, prefers the two-syllable pronunciation, (fôr’tā’), which has been influenced possibly by the music term forte borrowed from Italian. In a recent survey a strong majority of the Usage Panel, 74 percent, preferred the two-syllable pronunciation. The result is a delicate situation; speakers who are aware of the origin of the word may wish to continue to pronounce it as one syllable but at an increasing risk of puzzling their listeners.
Samuel
August 19th, 2008 at 11:53am
The amazingly amusing statements coming out of the Chinese media are just too good to resist:
The People’s Daily, a newspaper controlled by the ruling communist party, has made the rather bold declarations that last night’s opening ceremony is a “potential turning point in world history” and “will become an important page in the history of world civilisation”.
Meanwhile The China Daily (with information courtesy of official Chinese news agency Xinhua) reports that:
Beijing fired over 1,000 rain dispersal rockets on Friday evening to blow away rain clouds for the smooth opening ceremony of the 29th Olympic Games at the National Stadium, confirmed the local observatory on Saturday morning.
It was the largest rain dispersal operation in China, and the first time that such technology has been used to ensure the weather condition for Olympic opening, said Chinese meteorologists.
“We fired a total of 1,104 rain dispersal rockets from 21 sites in the city between 4:00 p.m. and 11:39 pm on Friday, which successfully intercepted a stretch of rain belt from moving towards the stadium,” said Guo Hu, head of the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Bureau
Apparently the weather bureau had forecasted rain which leads me to wonder why, if they were so confident of their technological achievements, they didn’t issue a forecast of “it would rain, but we’ll make sure it doesn’t”, and why we have only been told about the 1,104 rain dispersal rockets after the event.
Perhaps this perplexing sentence explains it:
“Under such a weather condition, a small bubble in the rain cloud would have triggered rainfall, let alone a lightening,” said Guo, whose team had monitored the movement of the rain cloud heading for Beijing from 7:20 am Friday.
With English skills as excellent as those, a forecast of “rain avoided due to rain dispersal rockets” would probably have come out as “fire of rockets raining away” which could very easily have alarmed the international media who had already reported on a terrorist threat against the opening ceremony.
As much as I really don’t care about the actual sporting events of the Olympics, I have to admit that the reporting of it and the bizarre stories being produced by China’s bizarre media are most enthralling.
Samuel
August 9th, 2008 at 05:21pm
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