Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2019 i Inside Sport

Robert Drane has been wanting to write the feature article that doubles as the cover story for this issue for quite some time. When he initially proposed it at the start of this year’s AFL season, I innocently assumed he’d wanted to merely write up a celebratory yarn about the South Sudanese players currently starring in the AFL. After all, they’re growing in number: Majak, Aliir Aliir, with surely more to follow over the coming years. It was a tad foolish to think it was going to start and end there with Bob. He is a special kind of writer; I reckon he’s the best crafter of a long-form written word in the country. I’ve been subediting his copy for over a decade, each time conceding that I’m in way…

What Cup? Just because it’s a Rugby World Cup year, you thought there would be no “The” Rugby Championship? Of course there will be, although as a concession to rah-rah’s quadrennial showcase, the hemisphere intramural will be truncated. Three matches for each team, with a hint of shakedown to each as they get set to head to Japan. The Aussies start in Joburg with the Wallabies vs South Africa (Jul 21), before returning to Brisbane for a Wallabies vs Argentina (Jul 27) fixture, which should be enlivened by our constant calls for the Argies to be dumped from Super Rugby. Will Genia (pictured) and company finish up the tournament with a Wallabies vs All Blacks (Aug 10) Test in Perth, and we ask again – we love Bill, but would…

For a rugby league club only established as recently as the mid-1990s, the Coogee Dolphins sure can boast an interesting and dramatic club history. In their first-ever season in ’94 they fielded an A-grade men’s team and an under-6s team. Disaster and devastation struck about a decade later when six of their clubmen – Clint Thompson, Adam Howard, David Mavroudis, Shane Foley, Gerard Yeo and Joshua Iliffe – were killed in the Bali Bombings tragedy of 2002. What came next was nothing short of amazing. Drenched in grief, the club raced to the side of relatives and friends connected to the six lost players and showcased everything that is great about local club sport: loyalty, support and a good ol' dose of classic club spirit. Even blokes like Mark Geyer,…

Young Glenn McGrath had a saying: “Hit the seam or whatever’s in the way.” He said it on the TV once when his nickname was “Millard” after the brand of caravan he was living in. Such mottos (they’d be memes today) appeal to young fellows; the “toughness” of it, the idea of being bad-ass. McGrath also knew the nickname “Bruce” after the string-bean Bruce Reid, so he’d take whatever he could get. Josh Hazlewood would appreciate the sentiment but would never have set it free. Never needed to. He hasn’t ever been overt in his proclamations and “done a McGrath” pre-series by naming a big-wicket bunny. Hazlewood doesn’t make proclamations. Proclamations aren’t a thing in Bendemeer; the little burgh outside Tamworth that Captain Thunderbolt robbed and which spawned the great…

HE stands all of 165cm, but Alain Prost has cast a mighty shadow over the mightiest motorsport category of them all, Formula One, for the best part of 40 years. The Frenchman, 64, remains involved in the sport he loves in an advisory capacity with Renault, and while he drove for what was, in effect, the French national team in the early 1980s, it was his exploits later that decade with McLaren, and into the ’90s with Ferrari and Williams, that saw him become, by his retirement, the biggest name in F1’s history books. Prost became the most successful driver in the sport’s history when he won his 28th Grand Prix in Portugal for McLaren in 1987, breaking Jackie Stewart’s benchmark. By the time he was done in 1993, bowing…

1 Celebrate women’s sport – just don’t let them do the celebrating. Sam Kerr says something actually interesting in a post-game interview after a vindicating win (honestly, it should be printed inside the collar of the Matildas’ jerseys), and it becomes a national talking point. This comes on the heels of the Americans getting blasted for partying a little too hard in running up 13 goals on Thailand. We will know true gender equity has been achieved in sport when female sport stars can be just as big as idiots as men, and nobody blinks. 2 Or, they could all just be like Ash Barty. The humble 23-year-old from Ipswich becomes the nation’s darling after winning the French Open, rising to no.1 in the rankings, and inciting thousands of “if…

35%/5 years MAX MONEY The LeBrons and KDs don’t just get what they ask for – individual salaries are subject to limits, which depend on factors such as years in the league, and whether a player has stayed with the same team. Effectively, the most an established star can get is 35 percent of the cap; with annual contract increases, that salary is worth $50m in the fifth year. 22 GOLD STATUS The number of players who banked $25m-plus salaries last season, and after this free-agent period, there should be more than 30. It’s the going rate to get a desired star in the NBA, and it’s why teams structure their rosters around three top-priced players. It’s also why younger stars still on their first contract – Ben Simmons’ salary…

Whitten Oval teemed with Sudanese and Vietnamese locals. A tall, strikingly dark Sudanese woman who might yet give birth to the AFL’s first eight-footer, enveloped a football in long, inquisitive fingers as though she’d just unearthed a wondrous yellow egg, and then smiled joyously.– Inside Sport article, How The West Was Won, May 2010 That very year, a significant birth did occur: the advent of African participation in the AFL. Across town from the Western Bulldogs, Majak Daw, who’d been in Australia a mere six years, had been recruited as a rookie by the North Melbourne football club. It was an enchanted moment for many Sudanese Australians. Though the community had already produced accomplished professionals in many fields, success at sport for them, as for anyone, has some kind of…

In Keeley Devery’s current role as Head of Netball for broadcast rights-holder Nine, the keen student of netball history has been able to revive some memories of the sport’s under-rated international past. Devery’s interest is not just professional but deeply personal and includes a few reminiscences of her own. Once upon a time, Devery was a New South Wales and Australian defender who combined her tertiary studies with an exceptional representative career. Now 54, Devery made her Test debut in 1985 and retired over a decade later with 63 Caps, two world championship titles, an OAM, a trillion rebounds, one reconstructed knee and a sports journalism degree. Her biggest moment came in Sydney in 1991 when, at an event still known as the world championships, a team yet to be…

Manly Beach, 1992: Arriving home after 12 months of intensive training in Japan was quite a culture shock. After the experience with Kondo Sensei at the three-month mark, I was able to let go of my life in Australia. Other than contact with close family, I closed the door and cut all ties. I was living in Tokyo and began to love it. Other than a couple of other foreign students who were also in the dojo, I avoided contact with all Aussie expats. To get the most out of this experience, I wanted to immerse myself fully and learn as much about the martial arts, the language and the culture as I could. I started to appreciate the beauty in the crowds. No pushing or complaining, just an unwritten…

1 The world’s football league – thanks England! – should be feeling pretty flush at present. After last season, it no longer had to protest loudly that it was the planet’s best comp – it monopolised the finals spots in Europe and still had its repeat premiership winners to spare. While other leagues on the continent struggle with customary top-heaviness, the English Premier League has actual intrigue in its title race, with a supreme heavyweight duel at the top buttressed by viable challengers in the next half-dozen. Every EPL season is highly anticipated; the 28th feels extra charged. 2 Manchester City defied the year-after regression to become the first back-to-back league winners since their rivals across town last did it, a decade ago. Pep Guardiola’s crack outfit gets a shot…

They’ve been doing this for over four decades – travelling from all corners of the country to Alice Springs, where they partake in the most arduous and unforgiving motorsport event Australia has to offer. Bathurst seems like a chauffeured drive up and down a hill on a spare Sunday afternoon compared to this stuff. “They” are the disciples of the Tatts Finke Desert Race, which in June was run and won for the 44th time. We don’t normally mention sponsors in this here magazine, but this year’s event heralded the 20th anniversary of Tatts as the race’s naming rights sponsor: an impressive partnership considering the ultra-cutthroat nature of elite sport and the competition for corporate support and bucks. A record number of competitors gathered at Alice this year; about 650…

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■ THE QUOTE IN CONTEXT Believe it or not, these immortal words first appeared as the caption for a cartoon published in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper during the six-Test 1974-75 Ashes series in Australia, won 4-1 by the Aussies. The artist was the legendary Australian cartoonist Paul Rigby, who also worked for newspapers in the United States and in the UK. Rigby picked up many awards and tributes throughout his long career. He died in 2006, aged 82. ■ WHAT WAS THE CARTOON ABOUT? Rigby’s famous drawing, which we can’t reproduce within these pages due to copyright issues (you’ll be right finding it yourself on Google, though) honoured the sheer pace, skill and threat posed to England’s batsmen by Australia’s strike fast bowlers of the era, Dennis Lillee and Jeff…