Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2019 i Inside Sport

Welcome to summer ... Australia’s favourite season, the one most attached to us internationally, anyway (shrimps on the barbie and all that), of course doesn’t officially kick-off until the first day of December. Sports-wise though, it’s a very different story now to how it used to be in this part of the world. A good chunk of our readership will know what I’m on about when I speak of a time (prior to say, the 1990s) when Australia’s elite sporting landscape consisted of footy in the winter and cricket in the summer ... and the big tennis tournaments. There was a quite a gap in time, too between the two bookending sports seasons. The football codes would finish in September, and it would seem like eons until the Windies, for…

FRAIL batting always makes for an exciting series. The wickets tumble. The stumps fly. The acrobats snaffle and somersault, coming up with the ball like a magician producing a purloined watch. The bowlers enhance their CVs. The careers of batsmen brave enough to face hostile thunder-chuckers or shrewd swindlers in front of millions of viewers and ominously howling live crowds shatter before our eyes. Local bowlers suddenly look so invincible in their own conditions, it’s hard to know how good they actually are. Remember 2015? When the state of Australia’s batting was so flimsy, the amazing feats of Broad and Anderson blurped with all the historical resonance of a false note on a kazoo? By Ashes 2017-18 in Australia, the same pair looked ready for the knackery, to be blunt.…

SYDNEY FC It’s largely the same squad from last season, with Milos Ninkovic (recently granted Aussie citizenship), new Socceroo Brandon O’Neill and one-time Socceroo Michael Zullo part of a rock-solid group in season 19/20 (though Josh Brillante moved to City and Alex Brosque retired). What’s eye-catching about Sydney FC is its business in the transfer market. Gun acquisition Kosta Barbarouses from Melbourne Victory is a superb addition up top, controlling midfielder Luke Brattan replaces Brillante, while talented creative midfield outlet Alex Baumjohann comes in from rivals Wanderers. Lead by former Socceroo Alex Wilkinson at centre back (pictured above) and with the pacy winger Trent Buhagiar returning from injury, Sydney has the look of grand-finalists once again. Though, as always, how the Asian Champions League affects them will be the big…

ADELAIDE 36ERS 2019 FINISH: FIFTH PREDICTION: EIGHTH While the Adelaide 36ers are not the most fancied team heading into the upcoming season, Joey Wright’s side is all-too familiar with defying expectations, most notably his Jerome Randle and Mitch Creek-led 36ers of recent years who have made semi-final (2017) and grand-final (2018) appearances. Wright has been at the club since 2013; the stability he offers as head coach must be credited for much of that success. Centre Harry Froling (above) has been tagged a Boomer-to-be and should have a mortgage on the centre spot once Andrew Bogut steps aside following the Tokyo Olympics. Froling was the 2019 NBL Rookie of the Year, a coveted award that has proven a rite of passage for Australian greats including Andrew Gaze, Shane Heal, Sam…

1 Sunshine Coast Lightning’s dominance of Super Netball has come to an end, with the winners of the first two SN grand finals falling to the Sydney Swifts 64-47 at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre in the 2019 title-decider. Adding to the end-of-an-eraness for the Lightning is the departure of respected mentor and New Zealand Silver Ferns coach Noeline Taurua, who has a desire to return to her homeland after three years coaching in Super Netball. 2 Some footy fans were proud of the progress, while others were well and truly triggered ... We can only be talking about a statue of Carlton AFLW player Tayla Harris, which was based at Melbourne’s Federation Square across the 2019 AFL Finals Series. A permanent home for “Tayla” is still to be decided at…

Turf Wars Races between horses? The real contest at the track during the spring is between Melbourne and Sydney, as the two cities have escalated their battle for the season’s racing spoils. It comes to a head this year as the esteemed Caulfield Cup (Oct 19) and the four-year-old The Everest (Oct 19) are off and racing on the same day, prompting all kinds of drawing of the lines – Lloyd Williams’ son, Nick, labelled Sydney as “irrelevant, because it’s second-tier racing”. Whichever tier it is, the money counts, and Sydney adds another big-denomination chip in the inaugural Golden Eagle (Nov 2), a $7.5m race for four-year-olds at Rosehill. Most of the nation will still be running oÿce sweeps and wearing silly hats three days later when the Melbourne Cup…

RELATIVE to its older Test match and one-day-international forebears, 20-over cricket is still an occult art in progress, with new and improved ways of winning these so-called slog-fests being discovered all the time. One player, though, who has well and truly mastered the newest format of the sport, displaying the full array of her talents whenever she takes to the crease or the stumps, has been Australian superstar Alyssa Healy. The 29-year-old wicketkeeper and right-hand bat capped off an amazing 2018-19 summer when she was crowned the latest Belinda Clarke Award-winner at the Australian Cricket Awards. Healy had already taken out the ODI Player of the Year and T20I Player of the Year gongs earlier in the evening. Healy made her international cricket debut back in February 2010 and has…

Damien Cook runs like a frill-necked Jesus lizard, fleeing all those snakes in that video, you know the one; head back, verily piss-bolting. Johnny Gibbs used to run like that, half out of fear that Tommy Raudonikis would bite him. Gibbo can’t have weighed 70 kegs. Play against Tommy and those mad Magpies, you’d run, too. There’s a bit more meat on Damien Cook, and a touch less of the startled lizard about his running gait and man-action. He’s a piss-bolter, sure, but it’s controlled piss-bolting. He’s eyes-up, calculating, at speed. Some guys play footy full-on, frothing, eyes like spinning tops. Jimmy Smith played 120 first grade games, mainly for the Roosters, and still marvels that Brad Fittler could do the exceptional, at speed, under pressure, when everyone else was…

HEADING into qualifying for the final event of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship for 2019 at Chiba in Japan, I was second on the overall leader board, four points behind the championship leader, Czech pilot Martin Sonka. Our objective was to go out there and try to win qualifying, to close the gap between myself and Martin. Unfortunately though, our aircraft suffered a systems failure; one of the cooling flaps had failed in the open position, which obviously added a lot of drag to the aircraft and changed the feel of the plane. We actually didn’t know what the problem was at the time. I just knew the plane wasn’t feeling right; I was pushing it as hard as I could. We ended up finishing seventh in qualifying.…

On June 20, 1805, the gentlemen of Eton College received an invitation from the gentlemen of Harrow School requesting “the honour of trying their skill at cricket on Wednesday, July 31 at Lord’s Cricket Ground. A speedy answer, declaring whether the time and place be convenient, will oblige.” The gentlemen did doth oblige, or something, and the first ever Eton-v-Harrow cricket match commenced, a month before Admiral Nelson’s fleet defeated the French Armada in the Battle of Trafalgar. Lord’s is like this; there are great, fat lumps of history just lying around. Playing for Harrow in the match was the poet Lord Byron, who was described as “mad, bad and dangerous” by Lady Caroline Lamb, the Anglo-Irish aristocrat and author with whom he had an affair. Of Byron’s contribution to…

“God” has descended on the Sunshine State; an ambitious, new A-League club kicks off in Western Melbourne’s heartland; Western Sydney Wanderers return to their spiritual home, while pantomime villain Kevin Muscat has exited stage right. Changes are afoot in the A-League. What’s more, we will see the most significant structural change in the history of the league. A newly independent A-League sets sail for its first summer without Football Federation Australia (FFA) at the helm. With the national governing body now at arm’s length, the crucial question is: how will the competition’s independent, club-driven structure fare? And will it make any difference to crowds, ratings, investment and excitement? There’ll be soft reds, top goals and coaching blow-ups, as the weekly news cycle drives engagement, but the broader narrative is the…

ZOOM OUT. Let’s focus on the National Basketball League and, more specifically, a player about to debut for the Illawarra Hawks – who have played at Wollongong’s Entertainment Centre since 1998 and have never staged a match attended by more than 5,839 people. We will begin outside David Yurman’s celebrity jewellers on Rodeo Drive, Los Angeles, California. A TMZ reporter rushes up to NBA star Trae Young – the Atlanta Hawks’ franchise shooter who doubles as Steph Curry’s basketball doppelganger – with a microphone and a full-court press. The topic at hand? Illawarra’s newest point-guard, LaMelo Ball, and whether he can go No.1 in the NBA draft. “Possibly, yeah, for sure,” Young says. “He’ll be No.1 or No.2 [pick] in the league, regardless. He’s a good player.” When the reporter…

COMPETITIVE sailing is a little bit like lawn bowls. Looking on from the outside, thoughts of who and what the typical sailor is might conjure up scenes of stately folk in chinos and trendy boat shoes. In reality though, competitive sailing is closer to Formula One car racing than sailing itself. A new series called SailGP roared into action this year and is already changing the sport entirely. In 2019, aboard water rockets called F50 wingsailed catamarans, which fly above the water on wave-piercing hydrofoils at speeds of over 50 knots (or approaching 100km/h), the best sailors in the world strutted their stuff in a dynamic six-nation series on some of the most iconic bodies of water in the world. While we’re on the subject, there’s some great news for…

GRAB A TROLLEY The Mentay Covers Trolley is a handy addition for the storage of your cricket pitch covers. It has a 2000mm x 1200mm deck, which is fully galvanised. The trolley can be towed or hand-maneuvered and is small enough to store away. It also comes with a 5:1 ratio hand winch. The Mentay Covers Trolley comes with foam-filled, puncture-proof wheels, so you won’t have to worry about tyre pressure or flat tyres. To find out more call 1800 037 075 or go to www.mentay.com.au or find us on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. (Note: covers are additional). FOOTY FUNNIES Whether you are an elite athlete, ambitious professional, dedicated parent or hard-working student, all of us are at times challenged by doubts and setbacks. This collection of inspiring and oft-times…