After Grog Blog

MINTAL CASE

Brendan McArdle, always a source of sensible cricket comment, thinks Stressa was stupid to fess up about the mints, and also gives a pretty good summary of the 2005 Ashes:

England played in mint condition but that wasn't the only problem

Apart from the obvious desire to boost his book sales, it is difficult to understand what drove Marcus Trescothick to reveal his Murray Mint story from the 2005 Ashes series. Has he become bitter on a game that drove him to a state of mental anguish?

DEJA ROY

Fingers crossed Sideshow Roy being sent home from Darwin won't set the same sort of tone as in 2005:

Hussey tries to stop history repeating

Another disciplinary lapse by Andrew Symonds has Australia needing to defend well with the ball to ensure they do not suffer another shock defeat to cricketing minnow Bangladesh.

The world champions decided to send the Queensland allrounder home for failing to attend a team meeting on Friday because he was fishing, and their innings in the first one-dayer lacked spark without him.

And I don't mean just that loss to the Bangers; on any one day, anyone can lose any one-dayer if the mood suits. I mean losing to the Bangers at Sophia Gardens, generally struggling in the NWS series as a whole, then losing the Ashes. Be interesting how this series sets us up for India.

TOONY T

This is Manga Me. When I showed the picture
'round the office yesterday everyone said
that the face was wrong, that it looked too old.

BELITTLE PEOPLE

Rocket science, undeed. Michael Klein, you are not fooling anyone with your tricky photography. Any imbecile can see the little Irish bloke is standing on the shoulders of an invisible leprechaun.

Rocket scientist lines up in Finnish Aussie Rules side

WHEN Juha Nieminen isn't doing whatever it is that rocket scientists do at home in Finland, he's honing his skills in Australian rules football.

SALARY CRAP

Don't want to say I told you so:

Chris Judd is on $1,000,000 a year from Visi for six hours "work" a week to "consult on environmental matters".

So, get stuffed:

Chris Judd leads as Blues go green with Visy Park

EXCLUSIVE: PRINCES Park will be transformed into an environmental haven called Visy Park under Carlton's bold plans.

The Blues will today announce details of the $18 million development.

As part of the green push, Blues captain Chris Judd will become Visy's community environmental ambassador.

Judd will spearhead the packaging company's sustainability campaign.

The use of Judd as a Visy green ambassador was a key factor in the club luring him from West Coast last year.

Visy's complex relationship involving Judd as a highly-paid ambassador and its sponsorship of Carlton has only recently been ticked off by the AFL and investigations manager Ken Wood.

That has allowed Visy to today unveil Judd as its environmental ambassador.

MEDALOTTO

Don't want to say I told you so:

GBH

Prediction: You think the Arms Race was big. Now that English sport is scooping pots of money from a national lottery scheme and kicking arse at these games, it's surely only a matter of time before we do the same. Medalotto, anyone?

So I won't:

Rudd considering Olympic lottery funding

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he is considering using a UK-style national lottery to fund Australia's Olympic sports.

'KOFF LOLLIES

Stresscothick confirms what we already knew:

England cheated to win Ashes

THE secret behind the devastating swing bowling that took England to its historic 2005 Ashes win has been revealed.They cheated.

Best line: "The [ICC] recently changed the result of the abandoned England-Pakistan Test."

Ought to shut up cheaty, cheating cheater Simon Jones:

Jones rubbishes Bracken's claim

Simon Jones has rubbished claims England used mints to create reverse swing during the Ashes.

Australian Nathan Bracken, who played for Gloucestershire, said mints were used in county games.

But Jones, a fine exponent of reverse swing, said: "It's probably just sour grapes and are you telling me that they've not done it?"

"It's a silly comment to make. I don't use mints and I'm not sure whether any of the other lads use them or not."

Bracken said the mint breath fresheners could have been the key to England's Ashes triumph.

Naturally, as is the way of over-lawyered, professionally indignant - "Me? Cheat? Never!" How many times have you heard that? - modern sport, Bracken was made to apologise when everyone knew he was right.

The most revealing part of Stresscothick's book, is that he knew he was cheating:

TRESCOTHICK SWEET SUCKCESS

He says: “For the first time, as I dived to gather the ball at square leg, I landed on my side and a shower of Murray Mints spewed out of my trouser pocket all over the grass right in front of the umpire.

“Fortunately, neither he nor the two batsmen seemed to take much notice as I scrambled around on all fours trying desperately to gather in the sweets before they started asking awkward questions.”

Wonder how many extra books this will sell.

Thanks, Nick.

BEND IT LIKE MURRAY MINT

MAYBE I'M AMAZED

... there's any maybes about it:

"Maybe once mainstream sports have filled their quotas with male performers, then it's... you can't get the critical mass of elite male athletes to get a winning male combination at the Olympics. You end up with the kids who couldn't play footy, rugby, cricket or soccer."

~~ Gideon Haigh, Offsiders

MASTIFF UPPER LIP

The underdog no longer. Forget the rowing, riding, boating, and all the other sitting down sports at which Team-GBH are excelling, the best part of watching the Poms inaction... oops, in action, will be watching their watchers, especially their press:

Over-dogs can only envy such pure joy

British reporters circled the latest in a long line of English gold medallist, the 400m champion Christine Ohuruogu. "We're giving your lot a flogging," chirped one of the English journalists. The type who, until recently, disparaged Australia's triumphalism as the uncouth bragging of nation whose self-esteem was too heavily invested in sport.

Now, as that smokescreen used to disguise decades of comparative failure by British athletes clears, the English will become acquainted with the sometimes bittersweet feeling of first-world sporting status. They will have great pride in their lottery-funded overachievers and return serve to their Australian tormentors.

But they will also squirm at the jingoism of their own version of the chest-beating Fanatics; find their own expectations can make medals that, years ago, would have been heralded as stellar feats, seem like abject failures.

ATLAS SHRUGGED

"Sally McLellan has put Australian track and field back on the map!"

~~ SEN News.

Think it was Matt Thompson. You know, the bloke who, like, speaks like a teenage girl. When Andrew Maher called Sally the Silver Princess, I knew it was time to change the station.

GBH

Have you got the brace 'n' brits that the Poms are doing well at the Olympics? Peter Hanlon does:

Poms are winning, call an inquiry

SOMETHING utterly jaw-dropping has happened at these Games, and it has nothing to do with a tall man with the weight a nation on his shoulders stumbling before the first hurdle.

The Brits have overtaken Australia on the medals table. This darkness has descended, and yet there has been no declaration of national emergency. Clearly, Kevin Rudd hasn't been the same since trying the Great Wall red at the opening ceremony dinner.

Hanlon is obviously doing it hard putting up with GBH of the ear'ole from cocky cockneys all over Beijing, but you know something - over here in my splendid isolation, I'm not.

I'm ambivalent to Team-GB winning medals. Mainly because there is really only ONE sport that matters. In the unlikely event you need a hint: that sport rhymes with Kick It! But also because it’s a tidy reminder that when countries other than Straya, ones with larger populations and even larger GDPs (a GDP on HGH becomes a GDR - think about it), start throwing money at rowing/swimming/shooting/horsing/bicycling/etc like we do, we will struggle to match them in all but our pet disciplines.

England cottoned on to our little scam after Sydney 2000, instigating their lottery scheme. But just wait until India and their Burgeoning Middle Class start flexing their cheque books, not to mention their muscles/rifles/rackets/pistols/yachts/barbells/bows&arrows/nosepegs/etc.

Prediction: You think the Arms Race was big. Now that English sport is scooping pots of money from a national lottery scheme and kicking arse at these games, it's surely only a matter of time before we do the same. Medalotto, anyone?

TELL 'IM 'E'S NIGHTMARIN'!

Get a grip, Malcolm. Rowing, cycling and sailing are NOT the Ashes:

Perhaps it was a mistake to tell Poms 'on ya bike'

NOT again! And so soon. Opening the paper to find the Poms ahead of Australia on the gold medal tally was reliving a nightmare.

It had that same heavy, groggy feeling of suddenly waking on the couch during that fateful early morning in 2005 to find Australia had lost the Ashes.

SPORTY SPICE

Old chum Simon Barnes is a bit quick off the mark, what:

I want to talk sport, Aussie

EXCUSE me, but this is Britain we're talking about, isn't it? As in Plucky Brit gets fourth. As in Plucky Brit says it was my dream just to be here. As in Plucky Brit says making the final was my gold medal.

Britain, a country in which we are used to quarter-final exits on penalties, Ashes whitewashes, lost and bewildered rugby champions, and the annual Day 1 round-up of the Wimbledon wild-cards who have bitten the dust.

Yes, that Britain. The one that the Australians laugh at, the one Americans hold in contempt. Well, you're talking about the country that won nine gold medals in the course of an epic weekend of Olympic sport.

While Rafael Benitez thrillingly decides that he's not leaving Liverpool and Frank Lampard even more thrillingly decides he's not leaving Chelsea, out in the real world of sport, it's been one British victory after another, nine golds over the long weekend that started on Friday night.

It's like waking up to find yourself an East German.

SPINNING ON EMPTY?

Question: do these relentlessly repeated, post-race answers seem a little rehearsed?

"Would have loved gold... tried my absolute hardest... s/he is a worthy champion... I did my best... I'm stoked... I couldn't have put any more into the race... I'm empty... just happy to be here... completely spent."

KANGAROOZE

"The pressure the Kangaroos exude on the opposition."

~~ David Schwarz, 5 minutes to go, North v. Carlton

FOUR'N TWENTY MAGIC SALAD PATTER

Friday night football, Storm v. Chooks:

Sterlo (19th minute): "Ben Jones is from Condobolin."

Sterlo (27th minute): "Apologies to Ben Jones."

Rabs: "Yeah, he's from Coonabarabran, he's a Unicorn." 

Sterlo: "He was born in Cowra, I know that."

Rabs: "No, he was born in Orange."

Sterlo: "I'll just stay quiet for the next 13 minutes."

Matty: "I just want to know how many unicorns there are in Coonabarabran."

Rabs: "Same as Cessnock."

HUNGRY BACKS

"They've done enough, Melbourne, to starve off that foray forward by the West Coast Eagles."

~~ Michael Christian, on the 1/4 time siren, Melbourne vs West Coast

That was not the only thing wrong with the coverage of the Demons/Eagles game:

Melbourne's 34-point victory over a disappointing West Coast summed up the old adage that football can be a difficult game to follow.

For a start, how can a club coming off a 116-point loss last week start $1.65 favourites and comprehensively defeat their opponents like they were good things?

To be fair to the Sunday Herald Sun's Glenn McFarlane, he wasn't the only pundit touting that line. Most every expert was scratching his or her head that Melbourne had somehow become the bookies' favourite for Saturday's game.

Why?

Were they merely pressed to pump out generic, think-free copy? Or maybe they were playing to the tank. (Riiight. Like West Coast are all about tanking for Pick 18.)

Melbourne's form-line, Geelong last week excluded, has been reasonably good. Sure, they haven't won a game since Brisbane in Round 14, but they were "in" almost every game, probably should have won a couple, and were only belted by the Cats, while they slumped in the second half against Freo in Perth. West Coast, on the other hand, have been OK in Perth, beating St Kilda and Essendon, but have been absolutely shocking otherwise.

So, how can a club coming off a 116-point loss last week start $1.65 favourites? Simple. 16th was not playing 1st, 16th was playing 15th at 16th's home-ground.

Another thing:

Both teams were guilty of failing to simply kick the ball long and direct.

That was Martin Boulton in the Sunday Age. Is he 88 years old? That's the rubbish talk of the fossilized fatheads in the MCC who, harking back to the G.O.Days when the best players smoked Craven A at half time, relentlessly scream "Kick it!" as players string together handballs. Word of advice: footy has moved on, ya plonkers. Geelong have been setting world-record pace for hand balls over the last two years and guess what? They won the flag. Today, Carlton routinely kicked the ball long and direct to Fevola and guess what? North Melbourne just as routinely picked them off and then pulled their pants down going the other way.

More.

The free kick count: West Coast 26, Melbourne 8. Someone, somewhere mention it, will ya. Yes, I know it's less about "how many" and more about "where and when", but 3.25 times the number of frees is, in the word of noted American lisper Wallace Shawn, "incontheeeevable", especially for a visiting team.

The steak knives.

The votes in the Sunday Age:

C. Morton (Melb)...... 8
P. Wheatley (Melb).... 7
C. Bruce (Melb)........ 7
B. Green (Melb)........ 7
S. Armstrong (Melb).. 7

OK, I'm struggling a bit there, but Armstrong does play for West Coast.

WORD ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL

English soccer, Nationwide Conference South, Welling United vs Maidstone. The keeper has just let in an easy goal.

SHIRTS ILLUSTRATED

Looks like Robert Nelson won't be putting his daughter on the cover of Sports Illustrated:

Sport: where we all find our inner idiot

The social role of sport is to provide an outlet for intelligent people to behave like brainless people. Everyone knows there's no intrinsic point in shifting a leather ball from one post to another, no matter how energetic or invested the contest. Nothing is achieved outside the game; no one is wiser or can add a benefit to the world beyond the fury of the struggle.

Intelligent people also recognise the costs of sport, severe and permanent injuries, which burden our hospitals every weekend. But sport is a sanctioned release from responsible thinking, and all these scruples are put aside. The whole point of sport is to insulate you from the things that matter.

The habit of getting excited and screaming for no good reason creates a momentary dome of ignorance; it's a hallowed asylum of folly, a carnivalesque institution of mania against the onus of wisdom. Important and urgent questions should be discussed, such as global warming; but the clamorous distraction of sport assures even the brainiest people that they too can enjoy the mind of an idiot.

I was therefore sceptical of the Basil Sellers Art Prize. Why conceive a lucrative prize around sport? Sport is the antithesis of art, because art is all about the purpose beyond the work. Art engenders speculation, a portal to new insights and imaginative growth. Like music, science and philosophy, art promotes an intoxicating wonder for where the mind can reach. Sport offers no similar transcendence, because it lacks any admirable purpose beyond its own arbitrary exertions.

CHINKO AND THE MAN

We all know the Spanish have a sophisticated sense of humour:

Spain in Paralympics scandal

A Spanish gold medallist has accused the nation's Paralympic team of fielding athletes with no disabilities in order to win medals.

So, this comes as no surprise:

Spanish basketball red-faced over slit-eyed Olympic photo

Spanish sport's poor reputation for insensitivity towards racial issues has been further harmed by an advertisement in which the country's Beijing Olympic basketball teams make slit-eyed gestures.

Bravo.

PUNCHO LINE

Just in case we missed it the first time... "Get it? Get it?"

Second Spanish team photographed making 'slit-eyed' gesture

A second group of Spanish Olympic athletes has been photographed making “slit-eyed” gestures, threatening to overshadow the Beijing Games with a row over racial stereotyping.

The latest photo to emerge shows Spanish women tennis players pulling the pose, apparently in anticipation of their Federation Cup match against China in April.

Keep 'em coming, amigos.

AS MUTE AS A BUTTON

Wanted to call this post Chinging In The Rain.

Glamourous "singer" who can't sing is over-dubbed by "imperfect" singer who can.

But it didn't, you know, rai...

Anyway! How about that Szechuan chicken?

And how about our mighty Aussies? With all those other countries now throwing booty at their own athletes, it can only be a matter of time until we fail to reach our medal count... sorry, medal tally from the Athens Olympics - Sydney? That's just so 8 years ago - and the athletic people start screaming for more money.

GOING UP-SKIRT

I'm at my desk here in Melbourne, thinking to myself that next time I'm on the way up an escalator in Japan I will pull out my phone, hold it down low, at arm's length, leer, and take photographs up a girl's skirt. Can't believe I never thought of it before. I'm absolutely positive no one would notice.

Is this phenomenon common on Japanese escalators? It seems a strange place to take surreptitious snaps up girls' dresses. That's not the only strange thing: the picture itself looks odd. Not odd because the Japanese have sought to add in the detail of the girl crying. I mean odd because it looks to me like the picture has been stuck on with sticky tape. The photo has to have been stooged since it is both unadorned and still there. If the picture was here in Straya you can bet it would have been covered in graffiti, or at the very least pinched and currently hanging in pride of place over a bar in some bogan's pool room, right next to the No Parking sign.

Thanks to my friend Creative Jim the Green Man for the photo. He is currently attempting to SEO (whatever that is) his website up the Google rankings. Coincidentally, Jim is a phone-calling photographer who owns a phone that takes photographs.