Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2015 i Inside Sport

LET’S NOT START COMPLAINING WHEN THERE’S TOO MUCH MEANINGFUL CRICKET! IS THERE ANY other sport that is so, well, time-consuming to follow as cricket? To start with, we have a five-day game that sometimes ends with no side winning, which some people seem to think is a bit too drawn-out and esoteric. So they come up with a shorter version to keep them happy, the one-day game, except this form now lasts for seven weeks! And still we can’t get enough. The ICC World Cup, which began sometime last decade and finally resolved itself on March 29, was a joy. I know lots of people complained about the length of the tournament, but not around here. I can agree that there’s too much meaningless one-day cricket these days,…

1 In February 2015, Roger Federer became the fourth man to serve 9000 aces in his career. Who are the other three? 2 Which five sports are involved in a modern pentathlon event? 3 Which five countries have hosted the most Formula One Grand Prix races? 4 In BRW’s top-50-earning Australian sportspeople, who were the only two women to make the list? 5 In the group stages of the 2015 Cricket World Cup, which batsman hit six fours in one Mitchell Johnson over? 6 Which NRL team plays its home games at GIO Stadium? 7 Who captained the 2015 AFL Indigenous All Stars team? 8 The sport of polo was contested in five Summer Olympic games. Name one of the two countries to have won the gold medal. 9 Which…

ON DECEMBER 27 last year, news filtered through the Australian rock climbing fraternity that Monique Forestier had finally conquered the route called Tiger Cat (grade 33) in the NSW Blue Mountains after two years of trying. In the arcane world of rock climbing, this was what you’d call a peak experience. It meant she was the first Australian woman to twice climb routes graded 33. To put the achievement into some perspective, the hardest route climbed by an Australian male is grade 34. Forestier is 41, the mother of a five-year-old, and still (obviously) climbing at the very top level. The route›Tiger Cat (pictured opposite) is located at a cliff called Elphinstone; it is 35 metres long, overhangs by about 12 metres, and has three main “crux” sections – with…

THE ACT of identifying and naming a feature of the human anatomy has led to a revolution. It has impacted on almost every sport known to man. But focus on “core strength” is not new. Exercises that develop the core – most of which use the body’s own weight – pre-date weight training and other strength exercises by centuries. People were developing their “core”, without calling it that, from the beginning. Examples are the ancient Eastern discipline of yoga and the vigorous calisthenics practised by the Roman legions. The actual term is now becoming more widely used in the yoga community, but core development was always essential to yogic practice, which penetrates deep into the midsection of the human body, and did so when exercise and its technologies focussed on…

CANTERBURY PRIZE PACK Our Freeze Frame Freebies caption comp winner will score for themselves this awesome bundle of goodies, which includes a Packaway gym bag, three sock packs, a Packaway jacket and a cap. That’s almost $160 of high-quality gear, so make sure you have your sense of humour finely tuned. “FACE FLAT, FACE FLAT, FACE FLAT … OH NO! IT WAS FEET FLAT, FEET FLAT .” March’s Freeze Frame Freebies caption competition was won by Vicky Rezo via email. Email your entries for this month’s Freeze Frame comp on page 16 to iscomps@insidesport.com.au, or check out the website: www.insidesport.com.au. If, however, you are still “analogue”, and resist the march of technology, you can still post your entries the traditional way to Freeze Frame Comp, Inside Sport,…

• HG Nelson and Roy Slaven tagged him perfectly. If he resembles anything inanimate, the best front-row forward in the world looks like a brick with eyes. His wife Tess thinks it’s spot-on, too. And Glenn Lazarus doesn’t mind it. What he doesn’t like is being called “Grumpy” or “Cranky” ... “Bullshit,” he blurts, while Tess and I sit at the Lazarus kitchen table watching him squirm. His face reddens and he speaks through a grimace masquerading as a grin. “I’m caring. I care about my wife and kids. Sometimes I get frustrated.” The Brick With Eyes by Graham Bicknell • In season 1993, Dwayne McClain will be one of a number of NBA-experienced players trotting around the NBL. But the “D-Train” remains a stand-out talent, a charismatic force and…

HUNTING THE HUNTERS I’d heard on the grapevine that your magazine was publishing a story about the PNG Hunters in their first season (2014) playing in the Queensland Rugby League (April issue, “Pride Of PNG”). I looked forward to reading a positive article, because there’s lots to like about this development – we all know how passionate about rugby league they are up there. I’d love to see a team from PNG get into the NRL. I reckon it would do wonders for the game. However, your article failed to report a major development: the club’s CEO, Brad Tassell, whom you quote in the article, has resigned. In the article, you touched on some of the negative forces working against him. Well, here’s what he wrote in his departing statement:…

“Masters races were said to have middle-aged businessmen winning on EPO, with some of them training as hard as professional riders and putting in comparable performances.” – From a UCI independent report, which found widespread doping occurring even in amateur cycling ... “You’ve got to go right back to the Olympic Games when they actually filled a stadium anywhere in New South Wales.” – Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, scoffing at suggestions that the city of Sydney would make a bid to steal the Australian F1 Grand Prix. “So you can’t say anything nice about them. You can’t say anything positive about them. You can’t say anything about the Voldemorts and you just can’t comment.” – Canterbury coach Des Hasler, on the refs that can’t be named. “It was a little…

AFL Every footy code is laying it on thick for the 100th anniversary of Anzac ... or it could just be the date falls on a Saturday. Anyhow, the AFL has its usual Anzac Day tilt of Essen-don vs Collingwood (Apr 25) to pack the MCG, while the Saints again take a game across the ditch for St Kilda vs Carlton (Apr 25) in Wellington. The pick of the bunch, though, is the Port vs Hawthorn (Apr 25) encounter in Adelaide, which should be a first month tone-setter. The other thing to keep an eye out for is a surfeit of rivalry games this month, but the reddest-letter is circled around Carlton vs Collingwood (May 1). This match should mark Mick Malthouse’s 715th as a senior coach, breaking the venerable…

AS THE bulk and ballast of a world- class Wallabies front-row, hooker Tom Lawton was literally front and centre at some of Australian rugby’s most famous moments. He pushed over the Welsh in ’84, dominated Sean Fitzpatrick on the way to a Bledisloe Cup in ’86 and bashed heads with the British Lions in the Ballymore bloodbath of 1989. And when Serge Blanco scored in the corner at Concord Oval to knock Australia out of the 1987 World Cup, around his ankles was our man Lawton, who really had no place being there, given he was the shape of a good-sized Kelvinator. Yet Lawton made a habit of bucking trends. In scrums which often proved dark places dominated by violent trolls, the 21-year-old Lawton really had no place being front-row…

SPORTS TECHNOLOGY – GAME TRAKA Performance Barrier For the sporting elite, avoiding injury, staying at the top of your game and recovering fast are the keys to success. State-of-the-art GPS technology is often used to measure the speed, distance and overall load on any one player on the field at any one time during a match or training session. The majority of consumer-based activity-monitoring devices on the market are worn on the wrist or upper arm and therefore can’t be used during contact sports due to safety restrictions. These standard GPS devices only sample a player’s location every few seconds and don’t provide enough information to record an athlete’s true speed and distance, especially if they’re constantly changing direction while running. In an Australian first, GameTraka’s GPS device samples a…

as good as it gets a keeper worth considering ho-hum in the bin KING RICHARD: THE STORY OF DICK REYNOLDS BY DAN EDDY, SLATTERY, $39.95 The author met Dick Reynolds as an enthusiastic autograph hunter when he was 15 years old in 1996, spotting him shuffling incognito in a shopping mall; this chance meeting led him on a path to research Reynolds’ story that by 2013 had turned into a Master of Arts degree exploring Reynolds’ impact on the Essendon community. It is this scholarly tone that characterises this very substantial tome, but this is a footballer who deserves this type of treatment. Dick Reynolds has been called Australian Rules football’s greatest player, and this is the first biography of the man. His career in shorthand: he played for Essendon…

I’ve seen a lot of tennis WAGs in my three decades (gulp) covering the game. We’ve had Academy Award-winners, cover-girls, pop stars, soapie starlets, even (believe it or not) the odd tennis player. Andre Agassi alone gave us the eye-popping parade of Barbra Streisand, Brooke Shields and Steffi Graf. Wives And Girlfriends have even swapped camps, as when Mats Wilander’s girlfriend ended up as Stefan Edberg’s wife. But never – until recently – had we seen WAGs abuse opponents. Even the former Mrs McEnroe, Tatum (aka Tantrum) O’Neal, didn‘t descend to that. But we didn’t reckon on the demure, doe-eyed, pet-portraitist Kim Sears. In the glare of the Australian Open semi-finals, before a televised audience in the hundreds of millions, the future Mrs Andy Murray fired this at her man’s…

WINNER One great thing about sports: when things happen that would be too sentimental for a Disney movie. But it’s hard not to be moved by the story of Peter Hooley, an Adelaide basketballer playing US college hoops for the University of Albany. With three other compatriots on the team, Hooley has turned the school in the New York state capital into an Aussie enclave, a mini-east coast version of St Mary’s. Hooley’s mother, Sue, was diagnosed with colon cancer four years ago. When her condition worsened earlier this year, Hooley left the team at midseason, and was with her when she passed in late January. Albany’s season had been teetering, but it won 18 of its last 19 games to make it to the championship final of their conference.…

AUSTRALIA’S LATEST WORLDBEATERS Australia are the ICC World One-Day Cricket champions after defeating co-hosts New Zealand by seven wickets in a one-sided final at the MCG. In an immaculate bowling and fielding display, Australia knocked the Kiwis over for 183. James Faulkner was Man of the Match for his 3-36 from nine overs, but he rode on the coat-tails of a blistering bowling attack: Mitchell Starc (2-20 from eight), Mitchell Johnson (3-30 from nine), and Josh Hazlewood (0-30 from eight). Australian captain Michael Clarke had before the game announced that it would be his last one-day international and he went out a winner with 74 runs from 72 balls. The team’s next captain, Steve Smith, hit the winning runs in just the 33rd over, scoring 56 from 71. “I think…

The reigning World Series champions, the San Francisco Giants, have won three of the last five MLB titles; they also have only the seventh-best winning record in baseball during that stretch. That speaks volumes about the state of the big leagues, where piles of cash spent and reams of data crunched are undone at the roulette wheel of the play-offs. Nevertheless, there’s probably been no better time to be a fan of an underdog team – as Kansas City showed last season, no club is too far from a chance at winning it all, particularly as continually shrinking run totals lead to tighter contests. SAFE BET Consensus is hard to find in DC, but there’s unanimous agreement about its team. It does seem to be the time for the Nationals,…

PREP Kara: “I usually travel to Wollongong on the Thursday morning so I have a whole day to shop for and prepare my food and settle in for a good night’s sleep. It also means I’m not too far away from home for too long.” Rob: “The last three years I’ve arrived the day before, but this year I’m going an extra day early. I just want to make sure I’m fully organised, make sure I’ve got everything prepped and ready to go with my food and getting the right amount of sleep.” TAPER Kara: “I do gradually taper down in the couple of weeks before competition, but I still maintain a strong training routine. The week of the competition looks a little different: I focus on activation and keeping…