Inside Sport November 2015

TO BE HONEST, I wasn’t sure what sort of response we would get for our Inside Sport/CAS Clubbie Awards when we kicked them off by inviting nominations back in July. It seemed like a feelgood idea at the time, so let’s put it out there and see who salutes ... Regular readers will know what I’m talking about: our recently launched sport awards aren’t aimed at the elite end of town – we wanted to recognise the contributions made at grassroots level by a legion of volunteers, and highlight these sports clubs’ vital, healthy role in our communities. But we were asking readers to do quite a bit to enter – no simple ticking of boxes here! We asked for nominations of between 50 and 500 words ...…

OFF THE GRID Just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed the feature story in your October issue on the NFL and its crazy off-season just gone. This sport is a non-stop news producer, and your article certainly caught all the most sordid, bizarre and obscure happenings of the last few months ... and the season hadn’t even started yet. The ludicrous antics of their players, including blowing off their fingers with fireworks and toying with the inflation of their game balls, put our supposedly controversy-riddled football leagues to shame. The NFL’s automatic self-generating news machine in the background of your piece got me thinking about the cries heard from sports bodies in Australia who feel they are often forgotten by the media in terms of coverage. The…

WINNER It was what the national comp dreamers of the ’80s and ’90s had envisioned, much to the chagrin of the Melbourne and Sydney establishments of Aussie rules and rugby league. But football nationalism ruled across the big codes in 2015, as the state of Queensland locked Sydney out of the NRL’s grand final for only the second time, while the vaunted Hawthorn dynasty proved the last line of resistance to a deluge rolling in from the top two out west. Cue the predictions of demise for the old metro cores of Victoria and NSW, doomed to divvy up fractions of a single city, while the one- and two-team markets go from strength to strength. Putting partisanship aside, the health of the non-Sydney and non-Melbourne teams is a good sign…

WIN Think you can write a funnier caption for this pic than our humour-challenged Inside Sport staffer? Check out page 78 for your chance to prove your wit and win stuff.…

“One day he’ll look back at the Ben Stokes dismissal at Lord’s on Saturday and realise he missed a great opportunity to strike a blow for the spirit of cricket ... By not withdrawing the appeal, [Steve] Smith showed his immaturity. He may live to regret it.” – NZ cricket captain Brendon McCullum, in a newspaper column about the dismissal of English batsman Ben Stokes for obstructing the field in the ODI against Australia. “It’s strange, you know. They are sisters. They live together. They grew up together playing tennis. Of course they love each other, but then they have to be professional and go out on the court and play each other so many times … Chapeau for that. But I don’t know if I’ll…

AUSTRALIA’S LATEST WORLDBEATERS Kim Crow is the women’s single sculls world champion, reclaiming the title she held in 2013. The Victorian-born rower won the event in windy conditions in France last month. In taking out her semi-final the previous day, she had booked her spot on the starting gates for the Rio Olympics next year; in winning the final, which she led from start to finish, she beat a powerful field that included the gold-medallist from the 2012 Olympics, Mirka Knapkova of the Czech Republic. “This feels really special” she said after the race. “It’s been a really fun year; I’ve got a great training group around me in Canberra, I’ve just got engaged, I’m getting married later in the year, and to round it off with a world championship…