THE BEST OF 2014
You win some. You lose some. In March I wrote: I will not be unkind. I will not be unkind. I will NOT be unkind. OK, I think I've got it. I think I can manage this ...
It is about the Swans and Buddy Franklin. You will recall your humble correspondent ranting unpleasantly from the beginning that the deal between the Swans and Franklin last year – whereby a club famous for its team-first, team-always culture put $10million over nine years towards a 27-year-old party fiend with chronic knee problems who didn't finish in the top 10 of the best and fairest in his last season with Hawthorn – might have been a tad close to the worst decision made by a sporting organisation since Balmain decided to get Alan Jones to coach them.
And last Saturday we had, if not the denouement, then at least the beginnings of it.
For when you have Greater Western Sydney spending the money it could have given to Franklin on securing four – count 'em, FOUR – experienced, first-class AFL players and dusting the Swans in the first round, with Franklin getting only one goal and looking out of sorts meantime, is it not bleeding obvious that things are awry? If that his how the first game of a nine-year stretch looks like, how do you dinkum think the last game will be? Insanity from the first. Send angry emails, etc, to pfitzsimons@smh.com.au, and see if I care. I shall be in my trailer.
(In fact, Franklin went on to have an extraordinary first season of the 10 he is contracted for. Still a ludicrous deal!)
LETTER OF THE YEAR (if i do say so myself)
Written in February:
Dear Waratahs,
Good luck on Sunday against the Force at the Sydney Football Stadium. We'll be watching. One thing, though. You may know that story of the American journalist Barbara Walters, who visited Jerusalem in 1991, and interviewed a very old man who has visited the Wailing Wall three times a day to pray for the past 85 years.
"At dawn," he tells her, "I pray for world peace. At noon, I pray for peace in the Middle East. At dusk, I pray for all the peoples in all the world to come to know each other, and stop hating each other."
"And what does that feel like," Walters asked, "having done that for all those decades?"
The old man looked at her and decided to give it to her straight: "Like I'm talking to a f----ing wall!"
And that, Waratahs, is how many of us have felt about you over the years. Of course, we love you, just on principle, but year after year after year, commentators and supporters alike have begged you to play the game the way it is meant to be played, most particularly in these parts – running the ball from everywhere, displaying thunder in the forwards, lightning in the backs and passion all over the field. Win, lose or draw, we want to sense that as enthusiastic as we are to see you play like that, it is as nothing to the furious fervour you have for playing that way.
And year after year after year, though there have been glimpses of that approach, way too often you have regressed to kicking for the corners when in your own half, and then employing just two tactics in your half – the "up" and the "under". It's dull. And it's what has taken crowds of 35,000 or so down to 20,000 or so. We don't want it. We won't watch it.
Still, maybe this is the year. We hear that coach Cheika has you fit as fiddles, as primed as pumps, as bullish as a battleship on the burst, raising a bow wave to engulf a small island. But we've heard that kind of stuff before, too. Now we want to see it. Go hard.
Yours, etc,
TFF
(And they did! When the dust had settled, the Waratahs had gone on to a wonderful Super Victory, beating Crusaders after the bell in the final 33-32 – in one of those classic rugby snoreathons the critics rave on about – in what looked at the time to be the harbinger of a new age for rugby in Australia. Right now it looks more like it was a false dawn, but we live in hope!)
JOKE OF THE WEEK
An 82-year-old golfer by the name ofMorris goes to the doctor to get aphysical.
A few days later, the doctor notices Morris walking down the street laughing and chatting with a drop-dead gorgeous young woman on his arm. At their next appointment a week later, the doc says: "You're really doing great, aren't you?"
"Just doing what you said, Doc," Morris replies. "Get a hot mama and be cheerful and ..."
"I didn't say that," the doc interrupts. "I said, 'You've got a heart murmur; be careful."'
TEAM OF THE WEEK
Michael Clarke. "Your body is like a horse," an American athlete once said. "You gotta ride that nag till she drops." Clarke appears to have done exactly that, knocking out one last century for Australia, while holding himself together with fencing wire and band-aids. Out of the game for an indeterminate period of time.
Steve Smith. At the age of 25, became the 45th Test captain of Australia and started off well, with a cracking innings of 133.
Josh Hazlewood. Became Australia's 440th Test cricketer, and did well, taking 5 for 68 in the first innings of India. Test cricketers don't last as long these days. Brad Haddin became 400 in 2008. Michael Bevan was 360 in 1994.
Marsh Brothers. Shaun and Mitchell Marsh, sons of Test cricketer Geoff Marsh. Just the fifth set of siblings to play Test cricket for Australia together.
Dan Carter. The All Black five-eighth has signed a $2 million a year deal with Paris Metro to play there from next December for the next three years. He is already earning at least that much in endorsement deals. This is getting serious.
Stanislas Warwinka. First man outside the "big four" of Nadal, Federer, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray to win a grand slam title since Juan Martin Del Potro at the 2009 US Open, and the first player ever to beat both Nadal and Djokovic to win a major.
Australia at Winter Olympics. To win three medals was a good achievement considering only 26 countries won a medal at Sochi.
Jason Belmonte. The two-handed ten-pin bowler has become the first bowler in almost 50 years to win back-to-back US Masters titles.
Tiger Woods. His score of 78 at Doral, I am unpleasantly pleased to announce, was the worst final-round score of his career, the first time he didn't shoot a birdie in the final round – and the eighth time in 1000 rounds of the PGA he has gone birdie-less. Tiger, Tiger, fading light? Told yers!
Harry Kewell. Perhaps Australia's most accomplished Socceroo of the past 20 years announced his retirement this week.
Ky Hurst. Won a record 10th open surf swimming title at the Australian Surf Life Saving Championships at Scarborough Beach in Perth.
Perth Wildcats. Won the NBL title for a record sixth time. Australian basketball generally, however, seems to be – as we say in the trade – on the bones of its arse.
Mitchell Nicholas. Bowling fast medium pacers for his school side a fortnight ago, the 15-year-old, bowled 2.1 overs, for 2 maidens, and took 6/0 including a triple hat-trick (five wickets in consecutive balls, three bowled and two caught). Rah!
RIP Dylan Tombides. Young Australian soccer player, who broke into the West Ham first-team squad while receiving cancer treatment, died in April. He was just 20. Vale.
RIP Roy Higgins. Nicknamed "The Professor" the famed Melbourne Cup-winning jockey passed away in March, aged 75. Rode Bart Cummings' first Cup winner Light Fingers in 1965 and Red Handed two years later.
RIP Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. Made famous by Bob Dylan's song, the boxer who did two decades in jail for a crime he did not commit, died in April at 76.
WHAT THEY SAID
Look, its just the way boxer Danny Green says it, ok? Even on twitter, on Thursday night: "@BenRobertsSmith hello legend hp u n your Fam Hva ripping xmas." The new Chair of the Australia Day Council replied graciously.
Channel Nine commentator Shane Warne on fast bowler Mitchell Starc, during coverage of the Second Test: "He has to change his body language, it needs to be stronger – he looks a bit soft."
Warne on Thursday: "I never at any stage called Mitchell Starc 'soft'." Joe the Cameraman. He's BAAAAACK!
A little later still, on the subject of his comment on Starc, our Shane channelled Billy Birmingham doing Richie Benaud – "I am just going to have to go with me on this one" – when he said: "I stand by what I said because I agree with it." Glad we got that one cleared up, Shane!
Willie Mason after going DUI, on the way to Knights training, after a big Australia Day: "I'm filthy at myself for making the wrong decision. I didn't even think about being over the limit. If I had, I would have rang one of the boys for a lift. Even when they pulled me over, I thought I'd be right because I'd had a good seven hours sleep." I think that's very, very wrong. Shouldn't it be, I would have RUNG one of the boys?
Channel Seven commentator Jim Courier, on Stan Wawrinka, when Nadal was in obvious pain during the second set of the Australian Open Final: "You've gotta be a cold killer out there ... When you get the champ on the ropes, you've gotta knock him out." Wawrinka did.
Piers Morgan tweets after meeting Ian Chappell: "Just met Ian Chappell for 1st time. 'Hi, Mr Chappell, I'm Piers Morgan,' I said. 'Nah mate, you're a dickhead,' he replied. Meeting over!"
Boris Nemtsov, who was a deputy PM under Boris Yeltsin, and is a leading critic of Russia's Winter Games, which have cost $52 billion to put on, three times as much as the London Olympics: ''This is a festival of corruption, [that should have cost no more than £16 billion]. The remainder consists of embezzlement and kickbacks." Exactly. For that kind of money, you'd reckon Sepp Blatter might be able to arrange you putting on the Winter Games in Qatar ... and I wouldn't be at all surprised.
The late, great Robin Williams, doing an impromptu stand-up routine at Sydney's Sugarmill Hotel in 2010: "And Australian Rules ... where did that come from? Is it that we live so f--ing far from anywhere, we can just make shit up!?"
Australia's 18-year-old speed skater Deanna Lockett at the Winter Olympics: "I think in the 1500 metres I was pretty unlucky and my race was not very good but God was fair and he gave me a better opportunity in the 1000." If you need me, I will be in my trailer having a little lie-down.
Collingwood captain Scott Pendlebury highlighted the nickname problem we have with GenY: "One of the things I spoke to Taylor about when he first got here was that I expect him to be pushing guys like myself, Beamsy, Bally, Swanny, push us out of the midfield, take our spots, because that is going to make us better."
Kurtley Beale on being back with the Waratahs: "I used to worry about what everyone else thought of me. And that's just wrong. So now I just worry about Kurtley and getting myself right." I know. But let's move on.
