Wallabies

Was a week that started with endless huffing and puffing over the carbon tax ever going to end in anything other than a black out?

The Wallabies didn’t lose their Rugby World Cup semi final against New Zealand last night because Quade Cooper kicked the very first ball of the match over the sideline, and was largely ineffectual thereafter. Though as omens go, that first kick was a doozy.

Neither, as some are suggesting, did they lose because of biased refereeing, or because the result was somehow influenced by telecast sponsor Tom Waterhouse - the son of a bookmaker implicated in Australia’s greatest racing scandal.

Continue reading "All Black Sabbath" »

Prepare for a week of verbal warfare. Here on the civilised side of the ditch, expect perfectly hilarious sheep jokes, gibes about silly accents and clever references to the dole queue at the Bondi Junction branch of Centrelink.

Over in the land of the long white ugg boot, expect endless tedious quips about Quade Cooper, Quade Cooper and Quade Cooper. With a few Quade Cooper jokes thrown in for good measure.

Cooper is the Wallabies fly half who grew up in New Zealand but left when he was a schoolboy because his mother wanted him to play for a team that didn’t choke every World Cup. The Kiwi version of the story is that he left in order to raise the IQ of both countries.

Continue reading "We’ll smesh ewes Kiwis like fush and chups, eh brus" »

When Australia’s universal good guy Pat Rafter makes Lleyton Hewitt look well-mannered, you know the Australian sporting universe has been turned on its head.

Everything went wrong for Australian sport this weekend. Everything. The NZ Warriors knocked Wests Tigers out of the NRL finals, Ireland beat the Wallabies in the Rugby World Cup, Sri Lanka dominated the cricket, and the Davis Cup turned ugly on court and off.

Sheesh, even the early Melbourne Cup favourite is now a Kiwi horse. But let’s talk about the two that really hurt – the Wallabies and Davis Cup.

Continue reading "Woeful Wallabies not on their Pat Malone" »

Good communication is critical in rugby and some of the stars of the Australian rugby team have taken it off the field and onto the web with a burst of activity on Twitter.

Perhaps it’s from the giddy highs of their win against South Africa in Brisbane on Saturday, one of the best performances an Australian team has put on for many years. But over the weekend some of the squad’s key players have been hyperactive on the social network, talking to fans and pulling back the curtains on the Wallaby camp as they tweet about their roommates, pets, and practical jokes.

The tweeters comprise most of the Wallaby back line that starred on Saturday: Quade Cooper (@QuadeCooper), Matt Giteau (@giteau_rugby), James O’Connor (@Rabbit832), Drew Mitchell (@drew_mitchell) and Adam Ashley-Cooper (@AdamCoopy).

Continue reading "Wallabies backs running some new lines on Twitter" »

Against my better judgment I turned on the rugby union on Saturday night to see the Wallabies vs the All Blacks, traditionally the biggest game on the Australian rah rah calendar.

It was probably at about the time of the fourth penalty for lying on the ball, or wrong side of the ruck or possibly, being rugby, driving the wrong make of luxury 4WD, that the remote finger got awfully itchy.

Soon I was simultaneously keeping up with the cricket, the silly science fiction movie on Channel 10 and Gordon Bray’s running commentary on how that wasn’t really a penalty under law 543, sub section b of the improperly binding to a maul code.

Continue reading "League wins the running battle of the rugby codes" »

News that the Australian Rugby Union has torn up the contract of Lote Tuqiri is bad news for the Wallabies players and their fans.

Tuqiri has been one of the best and most consistent performers for the Wallabies in what have been pretty lean times in recent years. It was only the year before last that the ARU saw fit to re-sign him on a $700,000 a year contract until 2012.

Yet we can’t really evaluate whether it was justified or not because the ARU isn’t saying why they sacked him.

With a series of recent crises enveloping the NRL and following John Elliot’s revelations about the AFL, the ARU will be super-sensitive to any bad publicity for its code. But the secrecy surrounding Tuqiri’s sacking only begs the question, what are they hiding?

Put simply, this stinks of the ARU wanting to protect its image as the gentleman’s code and not wanting to soil its reputation with details of why one its most highly paid players had been dumped mid-season.

Continue reading "Locked out of the club: come clean on why you sacked Lote" »

You use different muscles when you’re fishing, You find that out the hard way on serious fishing trips. Recently I was taken out on the water after the Super 14 season with the fishing gurus from Modern Fishing magazine. I was little nervous as I was out with guys who drop a line, day in, day out and really know their stuff.

By the end of the day I was casting lures, my arms stiff as a board and struggling to match the distance the other guys were getting. I had to pretend that I wasn’t hurting. I couldn’t let them know I was struggling.

Fishing is my way of switching off. I love it. It’s just good to get in the boat and do battle with nature. I am lucky to live in Western Australia where the fishing is great and the scenery perfect.  My ideal day is to head out to Rottnest Island with my family or mates and just fish and swim. Throw in a couple of beers and it’s a great couple of days.

Continue reading "I love fishing, and I’m not just throwing you a line" »