Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2019 i Inside Sport

Professional club footy has a way of making fools out of those of us who are easily led into thinking that the retirement of aging superstar players means a little bit of the game is lost, too. We were being fed similar narratives surrounding this year’s State of Origin series, which in the last two years has bid farewell to living legends the likes of Johnathan Thurston, Cameron Smith, Cooper Cronk, Greg Inglis and Paul Gallen. With these big names having ridden into the Origin sunset, what now? Who will fill the void left by these giants of the game? With Queensland’s injury toll seemingly mounting by the hour, it was queried if Queensland would be able to field a team at all ... And that’s how we’re fooled. As…

Deep into winter, the Virgin Australia Supercars series will really heat up when it arrives in tropical North Queensland on July 5-7 for the Watpac Townsville 400. The Watpac Townsville 400 is one of the biggest events on the Supercars calendar; when fans swarm to the Reid Park venue located next to the CBD, with this hybrid street circuit allowing fans to get very close to the action. In 2018 the Red Bull Holden Racing Team was the class of the field, winning both races to stem the tide of Scott McLaughlin’s (pictured above right) championship run. This year they will need a carbon copy if they are to hold onto any slim hopes of Jamie Whincup or Shane van Gisbergen (pictured below right) taking out the title. Scott McLaughlin…

Hoops fantasy Who needs, you know, actual games? Offseason player movement is what spins the news cycle, and the NBA has a particularly severe case of the fantasy-team impulse that drives fandom these days. The keynote event is the NBA Draft (Jun 20) in Brooklyn, where the hottest hoops prospect of recent years, Zion Williamson, will take to the stage as the no.1 overall pick. But as good as the freakish Williamson is, the draft itself takes a backward step to the spectacle of the free-agency period, which begins July 1. The difference: if the draft is made for TV, the off-contract madness is best captured on social media, where the league’s landscape can hang on an emoji. But this offseason has legit star power, with Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard…

THE GREAT Johnny Warren was six middies deep at the Clovelly Hotel when I quizzed him about Australians’ derision for his great love, the beautiful game, the football we call soccer. He’d heard it all before, of course, all the jibes and sledges. He’d written a book about it – THE book about it – called Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters, in which he’d chronicled decades of ignorant, dopey dumb-arsery. So instead he asked a question: “What does it matter what Australians think?” Now, now – cool your jets, Aussie sports fan. The man didn’t mean it in a derisory way. It was more rhetorical – a statement of fact. Because the football we call soccer is a global juggernaut. It’s the whale to eat all the whales. And if a…

1 After everything that’s been said and done about the Israel Folau saga, consider: this could have been a problem for any of the three oval-ball codes. And it just happened to be union, at a period of maximum struggle, that had to deal with it ... 2 Glenn McGrath picks England to win the Cricket World Cup. What is the world coming to? McGrath, who famously issued blanket whitewash predictions in Australia’s favour in every Ashes, believed it was the first time he picked the English to win anything. “I can’t remain biased my whole life,” he told a cricket website. Okay, okay; the player of the tournament in the 2007 World Cup hedged a little, noting they were only favourites: “I didn’t say they were going to win…

I was at boarding school in 2007 when my Billy Slater-obsessed room-mate took me along to Olympic Park for the Melbourne Storm’s opening game of the season against the Wests Tigers. It was a rough and tumble match, with both sides bashing each other through the middle and not giving an inch. The Storm was chock-full of superstars including internationals Slater, Matt King, Israel Folau, Greg Inglis and Cameron Smith, but it was a young Cooper Cronk, in just his third year of first grade, who impressed me most. Cronk wasn’t the biggest player on the field and he didn’t have the attacking flair of the likes of Slater, Inglis or Folau, but he was tough, uncompromising and always in control: traits that have become the cornerstone of his illustrious…

1 The planet’s biggest cycling race, and the best possible advertisement for French tourism, rolls off the start line on July 6. And even after all the fanfare for the 100th Tour back in 2013, we have more centenaries to celebrate – this year marks the big 100 for the yellow jersey. 2 The origins of the maillot jaune, like all venerable sporting prizes, are murky. Three-time champion Philippe Thys claimed he wore yellow back in 1913, but the race oÿcially recognises Tour founder Henri Desgrange’s decision to award ’19 leader Eugene Christophe a jersey in the colour. The yellow was said to reflect the shade of Desgrange’s newspaper, or that it stood out because nobody would choose to ride in the colour (Christophe, for one, hated it). The yellow…

1 Miraildes Maciel Mota, more commonly known as Formiga, is a Brazilian midfielder currently playing for Paris Saint-Germain. Aside from Marta, Formiga is arguably the most famous South American footballer, but not because she has won multiple World Player of the Year awards. Instead, Formiga holds a different kind of record: at 41 years of age, she is currently tied with Japan’s Homare Sawa for the most appearances at consecutive World Cups. If Formiga takes the field in France, she will become the only footballer — male or female — to play in an astonishing seven World Cups. 2 Since the inception of the Women’s World Cup in 1991, there have been seven nations that have qualified for every single tournament: Brazil, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Norway, Sweden, and the United…

Asignificant increase in the number of young Polynesians playing rugby league has seen the proportion of players skyrocket to a hefty 47 percent of elite NRL squads. An impressive statistic, but despite this substantial rise in participation, desirable careers in vital areas including coaching, administration and media lack Pacific Islander representation. Polynesians have largely failed to break the “white ceiling” in various roles on rugby league’s corporate ladder. The difference between high NRL participation yet low representation in leadership roles poses the question: does rugby league casually discriminate? The NRL cannot boast one club Chief Executive Officer, nor an appointment on the Australian Rugby League Commission of Polynesian descent. The skew does not end there. By the numbers, the high-performance domain of first grade coaching would also seem to hold…

TOM JONAS arrived at the Port Adelaide Football Club in 2011, when the team was in dire straits. He made his debut against Hawthorn, Power losing by 165 points at the MCG; they would go on to win just three games that year. A lot has happened since then: Port made a preliminary final in 2014, but that’s as close as they have come to winning a premiership. Jonas, a defender, would continue to turn out for Port, but flew under the radar as the likes of Robbie Gray, Travis Boak and Chad Wingard dominated the spotlight. Jonas is a passionate South Australian, who considered merely making it onto an AFL list an achievement in itself … In 2019, he is leading his men alongside co-captain Ollie Wines, but admits…