[caption id="attachment_35067" align="aligncenter" width="862"] Source: Winter in Australia: Football in the Richmond Paddock (1866) is the earliest known image of a football match in Melbourne.(Supplied: State Library of Victoria (Robert Stewart 1866))[/caption] Here's a fine...

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With Neville having died last week, I'm reposting this to the front page on the dayof his funeral which is being held at Olympic Park where a statue of Peter Norman standing on the dais stands. NG We were thrilled at midnight last night to discover that Neville Sillitoe receiv...

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Sometimes, it feels like 1910 all over again. Then, a confident Germany was the up-and-coming industrial power house, fearing an even more up-and-coming Russia, with the UK and France desperately holding on to their colonial empires. Now, a confident China is the up-and-coming...

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Let me indulge, purely for entertainment value, in some fan-speculation on what we will see on-screen after the Long Night is over and the final 6 episodes Of Game of Thrones are run in 2019. Let me first talk about the end-game aspects I think the books and the tv-series seem...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJubuKDN7Fk Noticing my checking of vids of Wimbledon, Youtube has been serving up far too many excerpts of tennis for my own good but I've got a bit of a fascination with how the game has changed. Anyway, this is as good footage as I've seen of...

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https://www.youtube.com/embed/s2Ybgtc7XA4 Last night I came off a series of deadlines and sat in my chair, catching up on a backlog of emails. I also watched David Stratton's series on David Stratton with some Australian Movies worked into it currently on iView (episode 2) whi...

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I wrote these words just before we nearly threw away the 2010 Premiership. [I]t’s hard to figure out what exactly the plan is up forward. In the case of virtually any other club, if a mid-fielder gets the ball and their side has control, there’ll be a dangerous lead up forward...

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It's well past time to reconsider our communal attitude towards professional sport. We're subjected almost daily to scandals about drug cheating, gross and usually drunken behaviour by sports people, rorted salary caps and match-fixing by players colluding with bookmakers and...

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[caption id="attachment_27688" align="aligncenter" width="865"] The diagram is here [/caption]

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I met Adam Goodes very briefly in a restaurant in Randwick in 2000. He was then not well known but my sports-mad son Oliver noticed him and pestered me to let him request an autograph. I eventually relented and, when he trotted over, I signalled to Adam my apology at interrupt...

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Awareness Reduces Racial Bias by Devin G. Pope, Joseph Price, Justin Wolfers - #19765 (LS PE) Abstract: Can raising awareness of racial bias subsequently reduce that bias? We address this question by exploiting the widespread media attention highlighting racial bias among prof...

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VIDEO: Goodes gutted by girl’s name-calling In the absence of Jacques intervention, Wordpress's coding interferes with my ability to 'embed' this video on Troppo but I recommend it. Funny how my team and those around it can be depended on to play the role of baddie - though of...

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Well it's off to the footy tonight. Wish me (and outsider Collingwood) luck. Do we have a chance against the mighty Hawks? Not much. Why? Let me count the ways! We seem to have been down on form lately - but that might turn round in a final. We are surprisingly low on skill. W...

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I've always liked badminton - to play and to watch, though I do almost none of either . . . Strange. http://youtu.be/0kTxTWwkY6k

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My son came home from last night's and this morning's hockey matches with a rainbow coloured band round his wrist with which he was playing on which were printed the words "Fair go, sport!" This is a pilot campaign launched last year by Sports Minister Mark Arbib and it's some...

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[caption id="attachment_19655" align="alignright" class="pull alignright" width="262" caption="Swimmer Simon Cowley"] [/caption] There's been lots of media coverage of the washup of swimmer Nick D'Arcy's bashing of fellow swimmer Simon Cowley in a bar some 4 years ago. Underst...

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I remember being at a wedding reception talking to someone who was 70 odd. I asked them whether in their day it was normal for the bride and groom to put the tip of the knife in the cake and then beam at the cameras for two or three minutes - celebrities on their special day....

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One of the less significant but more entertaining aspects of yesterday's parliamentary antics surrounding passage of the carbon price legislation was Nationals Senator Ron Boswell's sledge of former colleague Tony Windsor: Nationals Senator Ron Boswell branded Mr Windsor "the...

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Well my track record isn't too flash. I predicted a Collingwood win last year for the first final - and they controlled the game and used their control to kick points rather than goals and then let the Sainters back in. Then I predicted a Sainters win in the replay, more out o...

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The two finals for the oval ball codes do not just share a weekend this year. Two of the finalists - Collingwood in the AFL and Manly in the NRL - have the undisputed status of being "the team everyone likes to hate" in their respective leagues. Yet they are far from similar c...

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I grew up playing rugby union and rugby league in northern beaches Sydney. But you couldn't call rugby (union) Australia's national game, especially after tonight's depressing tryless loss by the Wallabies to Ireland. A top class rugby game exhibits all the skills, as we saw i...

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Since a recent visit to San Francisco catching up with a cousin of mine I'd last met forty years ago, I've been receiving an email once a week. It is written by Raymond (using a French pronunciation of the word long before Stephen Colbert took to this trick). It is sent to any...

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Peter Roebuck, the Fairfax cricket writer, has joined Mike Atherton in suggesting a boycott of Sri Lanka . For England that means next year; for Australia, next month. It's good to see that someone outside the cloisters of human rights activism is prepared to make a stand agai...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X454D3Fzwso I've spoken about it previously, but I've just found the treasure trove above of Farnarkeling reports from the Gillies Report. The form of comedy is so pure that the final song is a bit of a pity - as good as it is - compared with the...

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After a year of reading about relative salaries in different sports, salary cap breaches, player unrest and defections in the NSW press, I only just learned that the salary cap in the AFL is $7950000 compared to the NRL's $4100000. This set a little bell off in my head. This m...

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Well whether they win or not the 'Colliwobbles' come from another time, long, long ago in the late sixties and early seventies when the Collies used to finish first and then not win, either through some bad luck (64, 66, 70) or through peaking a bit early or going into the fin...

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Or two. Well folks, here's my report from the Preliminary Final hot from comments on my last post; Dr Peach will commentate for food, or at least for tickets to the Grand Final. It was a crushing win. The Pies took the game to a new place as they say. On the other hand one cou...

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Well that's the question for us long suffering Collingwood supporters. Who will we maul, and will it be ourselves. For the uninitiated Collingwood finished at the top of the ladder at the end of home and away matches for the first time since . . . well I've read it somewhere,...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTl3U6aSd2w&feature=player_embedded

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In a delightful doco, "In the Hands of the Gods", Diego's injunction is to "Love the ball, love the game". I love the sentiment and its simplicity. And I love the fact that he can still say it after all the game has brought him, and wrought upon him. Now on the sidelines, he i...

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This is how you do it! From the Master. Courtesy of You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGTOGG4o_eU&NR=1

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I got this correspondence in my email today - last year we got a family membership to the Colliwobbles Football Club and enjoy going to most matches. I always email the words of our coach Mick Malthouse explaining the game on Saturday in hindsight on Mondays onto my son and so...

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At John P. Boerschig Ranches , they 'do have an organized Black Buck hunting package. This hunt is available at our Brackettville Ranch, which has excellent accommodations with all the comforts of home.' Is it ethical to hunt feral pigs for fun? James Valentine thinks so. He d...

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Well the previous puzzle seems to have intrigued a few people. This one is dead difficult (for people of fair average stupidity such as myself anyway). Black plays two important moves. The first is the one I guessed. The second I wouldn't have guessed in a million years, but o...

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White to play and win. A very natty move.

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A nice morning with the Age yielded two good op eds which I link to here in case you're interested. I'm thrilled the cruel and unusual way we had of welcoming boat people has been ended by the new Minister for Immigration who, though I've not been watching closely, seems to sa...

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One of the most important things that I learned at the summit was in a conversation on the Saturday night dinner. I was in the 'productivity' stream but snuck off to the economics dinner where I encountered a businessman who had barracked for the West Coast Eagles. Collingwood...

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Well, Gideon Haigh may be the embodiment of "self-loathing leftism", but at least he's been known to buckle on the pads - photo by Rae Allen on Flickr ...goes to Gideon Haigh. Last Sunday was the first episode of Outsiders on ABC and of course the first topic of discussion was...

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As you can see from the video above, there was no love lost between probable chess cheat Veselin Topalov and his nemisis in a recent world championship battle, Vladimir Kramnik. Anyway, though in previous comps Topalov looks like he's managed to pick up the odd surreptitious s...

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The most amazing chess player there ever was has just died. The idea of some link between madness and genius is probably a bit hackneyed, and in chess, I can't think of any other geniuses who were that crazy mad, but we sure got a doozy in Bobby. It's surprising more chess cha...

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Let's start by admiting that a black man being banned for three matches for calling a dark brown Australian man a monkey is pretty peculiar. Next will be Ricky Ponting being banned for calling an English player a pommy bastard. Couldn't John Howard, cricket tragic and implacab...

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I was pretty impressed with this. From a real game at the highest level, between a world Champion who is white. It's his move. What should he do? He did the wrong thing. Find out what he did below the fold. Then work out how you can beat him.

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Jen's brother Stuart is a lifelong Hawthorn supporter. His wife Jo is an equally passionate Collingwood fan (there's no accounting for taste). Jo is 9 months pregnant with twins. They were due almost exactly today, but they hadn't turned so Jo was booked in for a caesarean nex...

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I'm not a soccer fanatic. But it's a nice game. In my limited experience, Ronaldinho is the most exciting player I've seen. Someone described this to me over coffee today and it wasn't hard to find on YouTube. Enjoy. And just since I saw it, there are some nice ones in the sec...

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Just following up on yesterday's post I managed to secure AFL tickets to Saturday's final between Collingwood and the Swannies, or - as Tandberg called them in one cartoon featuring Ita Butrose as one of their main supporters - the Thidney Thwans. Displaying some of the proble...

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When I was a kid I was a master at getting into the MCG - squeezing through gaps left between those revolving door exits and the walls, wandering in when no-one was looking. These days on the right side of the law it's not much easier. Each week that Collingwood play in Melbou...

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Vishy Anand - who has recently become the highest rated player in the world - just ahead of Kramnik and Topalov (the latter's prowess may be based on cheating) just won this game as white. See if you can see how he forced a win in this position. Over the fold is a further fact...

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I took Alexander (my son) to the Australian Chess Championships being held in Canberra the other day. There on the top boards were four Grandmasters playing (I think Australia only has two - and both were there - Ian Rogers and Darryl Johansen.) Now I wouldn't be telling Tropp...

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Kramnik will take on Deep Fritz starting tonight in a six match game. I expect he's got very little chance - especially the way he played against Topalov. He played better than Topalov and Topalov is a great player, but . . . Topalov didn't play that well against him (except i...

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All those jokes about the Thorpedo's sexuality are just so tacky and predictable, n'est-ce pas? For my money the best take on the Thorpie retirement soap opera was from Skeletor over at Spin Starts Here : Apparently Kim Beazley has passed on his commiserations to the Tasmanian...

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Well boy anyway. It's the 13 year old . . . Well here's another clue - the whole picture. It's the most prodigious chess player that ever lived - the amazing and now pretty much certifiable R. J. Fischer. This picture was taken in 1957, the year Bobby burst onto the internatio...

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I promised myself I'd post a couple of very cute chess puzzles on Troppo when I saw them. Now after the chess fest of Kramnik's great victory (he can't have made too many trips to the dunny when he was playing rapid chess with Topalov which he won), and after a long day at a b...

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Apologies for not keeping you all up to date on the Great Match. My excuse - well I got less excited because Kramnik dug himself out of the hole he was in. He's won 3 games to Topalov's 2 over the board. But right now as I type there is a play-off because (if you recall from t...

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So it happened again. No Melbourne team in the grand final. In fact, none of the top four teams in the AFL competition were from Melbourne. We will go through the motions of pretending that grand final week still means something. And at 5.30 on Saturday there will be a quiet e...

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Those many of you who don't follow chess will not know that the first game in a unification bout for the World Anyweight Champion of Chess took place last night - our time. The players? Topalov whose extraordinary swashbuckling style - never mind that rooks are supposed to be...

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I once heard the late Lin Onus a teriffic aboriginal artist give a lecture to somewhere like the press club. He told a story of hearing his son singing the national anthem, which his son had picked up orally, to write out the words. They were truly hilarious when compared with...

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Yes folks! Guusball is over and back to the real thing. Melbourne hosts the third State of Origin with the series at one game a piece. Will we be marvelling the mighty magic of the Maroons? Or will be saying bravo as the Blues return to their belligerent best? The beer is cold...

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I don't mind the odd cleansing ale but it seems that the result of the annual Rugby League Week players poll revealed a culture of binge drinking . And with perfect timing Parra's Tim Smith is ejected from a hotel after an altercation with cricket star Micheal Clarke and the D...

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A bit of an experiment as I'm going to live blog the second State of Origin game. Can Queensland square the series and resurrect origin? Or while the mighty Blues achieve another series win? Settle in with a adult beverage of your choice and enjoy the ride over the fold. Pre g...

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'Unbelievable Win for the Socceroos' was how Michael Lynch of the SMH expressed it, and unbelievable was the exact word on my lips too when Tim Cahill's shot crashed off the post and back into the net, making the score 2-1. We couldn't find the game on any of our 35 TV chanels...

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Round 14 sees the top eight starting to firm up and makes a good time to give a mid season report card on all clubs and even go out on a limb with the likely grand finalists. If the first 14 rounds are a guide, to make such a prediction this far out is fraught with danger but...

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What a week. In terms of footy played round 12 had some great games and two golden point results. As for the players, one launched a spray at his team mates via the media, another was caught out after an on field incident was ignored by everyone else and one player ended up 'b...

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What a game! The amazing thing about State of Origin football is that so often lives up to the hype. NSW won 17-16 over QLD but with the Maroons all at sea during the first half you could have been forgiven thinking the 2nd was going to blow open and NSW romp home. The NSW for...

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Wendell. No, it's not a mug shot though it might as well be Yes, I know Wendell Sailor is a brainless dickhead , having apparently been caught with coke in his bloodstream after previously running foul of ARU rules on more than one occasion for alcohol-related behavioural infr...

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Mick Cronin. An Eels and Country Legend. No, we are not related Over the fold some thoughts on the bond between a person and their football club, on the importance of tonight's City v Country game and a pointer to a good summary of the Gasnier debacle. A Supporter's Lament The...

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Another top-notch article in the Age by Caroline Wilson looks at how the Brisbane Lions board was told in 2002 that the team was capable of four premierships in a row, but if they did try for it, there would be a long term price to be paid. The board took the short term option...

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Andrew Johns tackles Benjie Marshall in last night's test It may not have been the result I wanted last Sunday but the Eels versus Sea Eagles was indeed the game of the season so far. There is something magic about watching league at the SCG recalling the great years of the 70...

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It may not seem that long ago that John Aloisi planted that penalty in the top-right corner of the net to send the Socceroos through to their first World Cup finals in thirty-two years. And with the kick-off of the World Cup in Germany now only six weeks away, how much can we...

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The sound of one hand clapping after Freo-St Kilda farcical finish Ken has asked me to resume my post on Club Troppo, as post-modernist AFL curmudgeon in residence. Since I find blathering on about football almost irresistible, and my cat is tired of hearing my views, I've dec...

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Eel gets crushed but team wins game Howdy Troppo Readers! Ken has kindly asked me to come on board and be Troppo's NRL columnist. Some of you may know me as a one-eyed (or even blind) Parramatta Eels fan. But have no fear. I will not allow my love of the Eels in any way to lea...

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I'm not mucy of an afficionado of sports journalism, but Brian Bahnisch sent me this write up of the big match and David Williamson had a quite nice piece speculating on why Roger cried.

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I like sport, but I don't think you'll get many sport posts out of me. But in my opinion we're being uniquely ourselves in the way we're losing the ashes. Good on the Poms for playing so well, particularly their bowlers. And it's been amazing to watch Warnie. Warnie's never lo...

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(Note: for reasons unknown to me, Wordpress has filed this as a contribution of Tony Harris. It is in fact by Rafe Champion. NG) One of my most interesting writing projects was to work with Ruth Park on a historical biography of the boxer and sporting icon Les Darcy. This invo...

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This is reminiscent of the time a Melbourne company offered stoves in VFL club colours. The marketing ploy did not suceed, presumably due to the regretable prevalence of mixed marriages and other forms of social mixing between the tribes. "Fans of soccer club Reading can now t...

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Interesting problem halts games in the Nigerian football league. "Away teams rarely win games in the Nigerian league while many teams usually rely on securing points through protests to the league's disciplinary committee."

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My team Collingwood has had an interesting involvement the modern social history of racism. At around the time of Pauline Hanson I used to argue that, though all the focus was on Pauline's contribution to making Australia more racist, we were in fact becoming dramatically less...

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Well, the SMH is playing host again to a Masson family piece! This time, it's actually a Masson-Leach piece, our youngest son, 15 year old Bevis, writing an opinion piece about the joys of skateboarding , free of the controls of well-meaning programs like the government-funded...

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