Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2017 i Inside Sport

New Zealand and Queensland have almost the same number of people. That’s an intriuging enough argument that 4.69m is roughly the threshold for putting together a great footy team. AS AN INVETERATE lover of cross-cultural sporting comparisons, I often come across a certain saying: “That’s impressive for such a small population.” Australians, with our humble tribe of 24 million or so, like to invoke it a lot. It reinforces the sense of ourselves as a middleweight nation punching up. The logic holds that a larger country with more people naturally has more human resource to play with. True to a degree, but a couple of events in the past month have led me to question it. Instead, I’ve come around to asking: to build sporting greatness, how large a population…

…

“They need to go back into the pavilion, put the creams on and go out and take wickets and score runs. They’re already paid top coin.” after 1 beer REASONED ARGUMENTS IF YOU THINK THEY’RE GREEDY “Australia’s cricketers could have thought this through a little better before they decided to dig their heels in against Cricket Australia over their collective bargaining agreement. If they don’t sort this out before the Ashes at the end of the year and get back out on the field, the players will burn up the public’s sympathy and in the end will just look, well ... greedy.” IF YOU’RE ON THE PLAYERS’ SIDE “Good on Smith and Warner and every single other high-profile cricketer for not giving in to Cricket Australia. Every few years…

Could Clayton Oliver win the Brownlow Medal in 2017? It is a question few expected to be asking about the pale-faced, red-headed second-year midfielder. But week after week, ask they do. For Melbourne’s young gun (Oliver celebrated his 20th birthday last July) continues to win the ball at will, plucking it out of a congested mash of more seasoned opponents before dishing it out by hand to a team-mate who sends the football Melbourne’s way. Whether he can win the medal or not, what is certain is that he has been a revelation. Before the season Oliver, recruited from the Murray River town of Echuca, was rated a 500-to-1 chance to win the game’s highest individual award. In May, after a blistering start to the year, Oliver was third favourite…

So, this is it: the nadir. Australian rugby has bottomed out and now lies at its lowest ebb since 1920 when Queensland left just about en masse to rugby league and only an All Blacks tour of NSW saved the game from ruin. The game today could not get lower if it broke off from Australia like an iceberg, and sailed away to melt in the Coral Sea. How did we get here? Friend, how long have you got? It’s a malaise a decade in the making. And while there have been a few spikes – Super Rugby titles, a Rugby Championship, even Olympic gold – the greater game languishes deep among the trough lollies. And nobody got time to hang among the trough lollies. Crowds are down. Ratings are…

Had rugby thrived in California alone – with a population bigger than Australia and New Zealand combined, and an economy larger than France’s – it could have been the core of a lasting American presence in the 15-man (or maybe even the 13-man) game, much as that state has been the source for US teams in water polo, volleyball and a host of other sports. Robert Messenger notes that in the short time the colleges played rugby, they formed the core of two teams that won Olympic golds in 1920 and '24. However, a century after Stanford and Cal’s experiment, it can be argued that the outlines of rugby-playing Pacific rim are emerging. Rugby is poised in Japan, while the US and Canada have taken to sevens. The American sevens…

Got your lifestyle goals in sight? Don’t blow it over winter. Stay motivated with your Accredited Practising Dietitian. FIT AND (NEARLY) 40 Gone are the carefree days of your 20s, and your 30s are rolling by. Before you know it, you’ll be celebrating the big four-oh. Once you could eat and drink whatever you liked, and still have the stamina to run around on the footy field or soccer pitch on the weekend. But the forties marks the onset of mid-life, when your body can start to show the signs of wear and tear from bad health choices and the stress of juggling work and family. In the next few years, your metabolism starts to slow down, which means you can lose lean muscle and develop a ‘middle-aged spread’ of…

Tied for the lead on the 13th tee at Royal Birkdale, Jordan Spieth hit his drive wide-right onto a grassy hill. He had to declare the ball unplayable. Under the rules, Spieth could go back along the line of the target. However, this took him into the equipment vans ... Getting a penalty drop from the vans, Spieth and caddie Michael Greller disagreed on choice of club. Spieth relented, and hit three-iron instead of three-wood. Greller was right. Spieth eventually got up-and-down for bogey, falling a shot back of Matt Kuchar. Spieth took half an hour to play the hole, but he had limited the damage. And when he went five-under over the next five holes, the Open was his.…

1 Poor, old boxing – still able to captivate the sporting audience, as the Jeff Horn-Manny Pacquiao fight showed. And then just as able to confuse and alienate, as the aftermath of Horn-Pacquiao proved. If you’re still watching, the sweet science has a spotlight moment coming up over the next month, one that spans all the contradictions and frustrations of modern boxing. 2 With reservations, we have to start with Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor. The August 27 fight in Las Vegas is such a carnival act, even judged against the low bar of boxing’s standards of crassness. The match of the unbeaten Mayweather and UFC star McGregor was seemingly willed into existence by social media trolling, and we’re now compelled to watch, in the can’t-look-away fashion of a car…

This One Counts The Confederations Cup and the high-profile friendlies are all nice, but when it comes to real stakes, it’s no exaggeration that the Australia vs Japan (Aug 31) World Cup qualifier is the Socceroos’ most important game for a while. The equation in front of Ange Postecoglou’s side: two games left, tied for second in their group but behind Saudi Arabia on difference, a loss to the Japanese will likely mean having to go the play-off route (and Aussie soccer fans know how they feel about that). It will be a tough trip to Saitama to face the Samurai Blue (the Saudis also have to play Japan, but get them at home). But if those positive signs we were seeing by the end of the Confeds against Chile…

 THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 2017: Melbourne Storm supporters love their rugby league team the same way you love yours. They’re pumped when Melbourne wins, and have the cat ducking for cover when their boys are bested. That they wear a far-from-traditional rugby league colour – purple – rather than your red, blue, gold, cardinal and/or myrtle is neither here nor there. “EVEN FOR MY DEBUT I PROBABLY WASN’T AS NERVOUS … BEING ON THE SIDELINES WAITING TO COME ON, I FELT THE CHALLENGE WAS TAKEN OUT OF MY HANDS. I WASN’T AS CONFIDENT.” Further, their fans were devastated that one of the club’s favourite sons, Billy Slater, missed almost two full seasons through horror shoulder injuries. Gutted: in the same way that Johnathan Thurston being missing in action for the Cowboys…

When New Zealand bowed out of the 2007 World Cup, losing to France in the quarter-finals, it was a national embarrassment and a catalyst for change. Kiwis never wanted to feel that way again. And thus began Operation Co-Operation. They didn’t call it that. But they could have. “That World Cup was a surprise for them,” says Wallabies' skills man Mick Byrne, who spent ten years in New Zealand rugby. “It’s a pretty big statement, but they worked out that what they had been doing wasn’t going to keep up. “So their Super Rugby teams and All Blacks got together and asked, ‘How are we going to fix this?’ and ‘What have we learnt from it?’.” As in Australia, there had been “division,” according to Byrne. Provinces saw themselves as…

 On the verge of his rookie season in the NFL, Solomon Thomas has a moment to reflect. He’s back in Sydney, his home for five years until his family moved back to the United States when he was seven. The newly minted San Francisco 49er, selected third overall out of Stanford University in last April’s draft, remembers those days long before dreams of the gridiron had set in. It’s fair to say that few NFL defensive linemen grew up with Ian Thorpe as their sporting idol; Thomas, as a kid going to swimming classes and the beach in the early 2000s, naturally did. Thomas is in town as a parting favour to his alma mater, spruiking the American college football season-opener being held in Sydney for the second year. Thomas…

1 You knew when this cricket dispute was getting serious when a) the Ashes were threatened, or b) Mitch Starc signed an endorsement deal with a rival company to Cricket Australia’s car sponsor. Or was it when David Warner emerged as the most visible leader of the players in this dispute? 2 The Jeff Horn-Manny Pacquiao fight was re-scored by five judges at the behest of the World Boxing Organisation. Their consensus findings: Horn won six rounds, Pacquiao four, and two were even. The WBO basically leaves us where we were before – in need of a rematch to figure this out. 3 Jamie Whincup, steady accumulator he, equalled the career wins record in Supercars. Whincup’s victory in Townsville was his 105th, tying team-mate Craig Lowndes. 4 Ah, women’s tennis…

With English Premier League teams splurging money in the transfer market in the chase for success, the striker merry-go-round has captivated the fans. Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, even West Ham and Everton have new marksmen aiming to stamp their authority on a league already containing the likes of Harry Kane and Sergio Aguero. Whoever comes out on top of a tightly contested race for the top goal-scorer, one thing is for sure: goals will be flying in this season. Harry Kane $4.33 The Tottenham marksman has been the leading scorer over the past two EPL campaigns with a combined tally of 51 goals. The 24-year-old deemed as England’s great hope is one of the most clinical strikers plying his trade in Europe, and his on-field relationship with Dele Alli has…

WITH another season of the National Football League upon us, we’ll expect to see the likes of the New England Patriots, the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers continue to enjoy their traditions of success. But it’s interesting to observe that a good chunk of America’s professional football league has never tasted the sport’s ultimate success, victory in the Super Bowl. Some of the teams are relatively young; others have startlingly long records of futility. As the 2017 season unfolds, and the road to Super Bowl LII (that’s 52 in the non-Roman) in Minnesota opens up, spare a thought for one of the following clubs if they appear to have a shot at glory – it will be their first. A timeline of the not-so super 49.1 HIGHLY EXPOSED…

Has there been a more ominous warning of what’s to come in the second half of an NRL season than what we saw in this year’s State of Origin series? In particular, the show put on by the new “Big Four” in Origin III? After all the conjecture and speculation surrounding Queensland’s departure from its successful pick-and-stick selection policy of the decade just gone, that the Maroons would eventually field a “spine” of players from the same club seemed like an obvious solution to a problem many thought would take much longer – years maybe – to resolve. The Storm’s fullback, five-eighth, halfback and hooker combination not only delivered Queensland its 11th Origin series in 12 years, it basically banged a “WATCH OUT” sign into the ground of planet rugby…

“IF YOU HAVEN’T GOT ENOUGH SELF›MOTIVATED PLAYERS THEN YOU WON’T BE A GREAT FOOTY CLUB, AND THAT’S THE CHALLENGE.” Call it Australian football’s version of Moneyball. A modus operandi which, once proven successful, is then viewed as the blueprint for those wanting to build a competitive sporting team from scratch. In the movie adaptation of the book, Brad Pitt played Oakland’s general manager Billy Beane. When the book is written on the story of the Melbourne Football Club, who will then play coach Simon Goodwin in the big-screen version? And what about Paul Roos, the man entrusted with bringing respect back to a once proud football club? For while there are chapters still to be written on this latest Demon incarnation, there are signs that suggest casting agents should begin…

Occupation Footballer for Manchester United Origin Antwerp, Belgium Born May 13, 1993 Height 191cm Weight 94kg Status Fourth player, and first foreign-born, to score more than 80 Premier League goals before the age of 24; one of three players to score ten or more in each of the past five EPL seasons; $124m transfer from Everton this offseason was the sixth-most expensive in history. MUSCLES  Lukaku first came to prominence when he landed at Chelsea as an 18-year-old. The man-child had come by his impressive physique, he said, without ever lifting a weight, and had been playing against men in Belgium’s league since he was 16. Even as modern football has trended away from the classic archetype of the big, no.9 centre-forward, Lukaku’s size and power are formidable assets. CORE…