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Warnie …. WTF?
Let this be a lesson to any 40 y.o.+ blokes out there contemplating getting all slimmed down just so they can pick up hot chicks (or older, ‘Cougar’ style ones like Liz Hurley).
DO NOT (under any circumstances) sign up to St Kilda AFL footballer Steven Baker’s diet system, like former Test Cricket great Shane Warne has.
Baker said Warne couldn’t get enough of the organic weight loss drink, TaiSlim, since he convinced him to try it.
“I signed him up about three or four months ago on the diet system,” Baker said. “He loves the stuff, he’s addicted.”
He sure is. Have a look – how would you like to go from THIS:
The, um, solid Shane Warne we all 'love'.
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TO THIS ? :
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All that's left are the man boobs.
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F*ck me drunk, that can’t be Warnie, what was he thinking? And how deluded is he?
Well, we know what he was thinking … and he said it:
“I have always taken pride in my appearance …. (and) I’m proud of how I look and worked my butt off for four months,” Warne said.
Right. That might explain the hair transplants and Botox too. Just grow old gracefully mate (sorry, I realise that’s not possible).
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Is AFL sucking the life out of our international sporting prospects????
Aussie!
Aussie!
Oi!
Oi!
OI !!!!
Aussie!
Aussie!
Oi!
Oi!
OI !!!!
Personally I think that any activity that involves running and jumping in pursuit of a misshapen ball is rather pointless but if it entertains the people then isn’t that point enough? I know that those of my readers who are passionate about AFL footy are not going to like this piece but the article in today’s Oz suggesting that this countries sporting decline of late might just all be the fault of the AFL may be onto something.
Which brings me back to Australian rules. Our most dominant winter code boasts about 600,000 players and, at the elite level, 17 teams in a national competition. There are two key observations to make about AFL in the context of Australia’s declining sporting fortunes. First, it is a provincial sport without a global presence; a black hole. Second, it attracts many of Australia’s finest athletes; rare talents who would be well suited to sports in which Australia competes internationally. As things stand, perhaps our finest athletic talent is lost to the international stage.
To make this point in a more graphic way one need only take a low-ranking AFL side such as my own team, Richmond, and dismember it.
About five of Richmond’s tallest and most athletic players would, if appropriately re-skilled, dominate the Wallaby lineout or – to use a case more pertinent to current national anxieties – bolster Australia’s fast bowling stocks. They are all of Chris Tremlett-like proportions. There lies our next Glenn McGrath.
It has not always been so – remember Dermot Brereton? – but today’s AFL player is conditioned in the style of a middle-distance runner. He carries less bulk than earlier generations, but has more stamina. Re-condition him for strength and speed and he could walk into any NRL side. But a much broader perspective is needed, for these athletes are talent lost to the Socceroos, which failed to advance beyond the group stage in South Africa, to the Olympic team (track, field and swimming) and to tennis.
Luke Slattery seems to be suggesting that the solution to our sporting woes (don’t mention The Ashes if you are true blue Aussie 😦 ) is to ban “the footy ” so that our best and brightest at running jumping and chasing balls can be redirected into other more internationally popular sports and Australia can once again acquire greatness on the fields of foreign lands. Gee and here was me thinking that sport was supposed to be for fun and fitness rather than a proxy battle for international dominance…
Its still just different variations of the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable and does it really matter what sort of rituals any group of individuals perform as they chase it???….
Cheers Comrades
All we want for Christmas is for the cricket selectors to …
I am not normally a bandwagon jumper-on but there are always exceptions. The Aussie cricket team is shite. Ponting is a shite captain and unless there is a miracle next week in the 3rd Test in Perth, the English cricket team will take a 2-0 lead in the 5-match Test series meaning we can’t get the Ashes back that they took from us in England last year.
Ponting has lost the Ashes twice (in England) and won them once (in Oz). To lose them on home soil would be a disaster. A national disgrace. And bloody embarrassing. The only reason we beat the Poms 3 years ago in a 5-0 whitewash was … Shane Warne. He retired after that at age 38. Okay hes 41 now but he can still bowl. Better than anyone!
Its too late to include him in next weeks squad but Boxing Day at “The G”was just made for Shane Warne so bring him back for the 4th & 5th Tests in Melbourne & Sydney and at least we might salvage a draw in the series. And some bloody national pride!
I agree with former Test bowler Brett Lee that bringing back Warne is more than justified given the current state of play and lack of leadership:
“It’s not just what he can do as a bowler, it’s what he’d do to their batsmen’s minds. It is the mental side as well. Can you imagine the English cricket team having to deal with the idea that the great Shane Warne, the bloke who terrorised them for 15 years, was going to return in Melbourne or Sydney? Shane Warne is a unique sort of guy in that he seems to write his own scripts. The Boxing Day Test at the MCG is tailor-made for his return, I reckon.”
Yeah, bring back Warnie only this time … make him the captain.
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The Herald Sun asks the big question:
And I answer it:
Who the bloody hell cares?
Not Cricket
Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh, pictured today outside an Adelaide court, has been cleared of racial vilification.
Indian offspinner Harbhajan Singh has been cleared of racially abusing Australia’s Andrew Symonds, with the charge dropped at an International Cricket Council (ICC) appeal hearing today.
Harbhajan instead pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of using abusive language, prompting a financial penalty but no suspension.
The result means India has withdrawn a pledge to abandon its tour of Australia if Harbhajan was found guilty of racial vilification.
Harbhajan allegedly called Australian allrounder Symonds a “monkey” during the second Test in Sydney earlier this month.
He was outed for three Tests by ICC match referee Mike Procter, but the ban was suspended until an appeal hearing was held in Adelaide today.
I don’t know about anyone else but this smells well dodgy to me and has the distinctive aroma of a political fix rather than a true determination of what was said and if those words were in fact “racial vilification”. The thing that should have seen the suspension upheld is not if the taunts were about Andrew Symonds’ racial background but the fact that any taunts were uttered at all. Call me old fashioned but I happen to think that one should behave like a gentleman when you walk out onto the pitch to play a test match representing your country. Clearly Harbhajan has not behaved like a gentleman and we have to ask is a recompense in mere money enough?
Cheers Comrades
😉
Blog of the month nominations/0pen thread
It is nearly June and I want to find a blog that is worthy of being my blog of the month so I thought that I would ask you, my dear readers, for nominations. The blog can have any topic or focus as long as it is interesting and well written. I will even consider blogs with leftist political leanings if they are good enough.
Failing any ideas for blog of the month please feel free to comment on any topic that takes your fancy, except Moi.
I have a very busy day ahead what with Gym classes for daughter number one, a visit to the library, a session on the bench grinder to make some suspension components for my sports car and playing genial host for a musical afternoon; it is going to be all go here today.
Cheers
😉
Its about bloody time!!
There does seem to be an awful lot of cricket these days with matches being played and televised practically all year round. I have never been that much of a fan beyond finding some vicarious pleasure when the Aussies are doing well (as usual) and just a little despair that the English team just do not seem to be able to get it together no matter how hard they try.
When watching Jon Howard on “The Insiders” announce that the government would not allow the Aussie team to play in Zimbabwe I could not stop “Its about bloody time!!” to escape my lips. I vividly remember the ban on sporting contact with South Africa over the Apartied and when you compare the regime in south Africa with Robert Mugabe there is no doubt which would come out as the least pernicious. That the world’s nations, including Australia, have continued to look the other way while this brutal and murderous regime has reduced what was the bread basket of east Africa to penury and starvation is the shame of our age.
But in the post cold war political climate it is hardly surprising that the nations of “the west” have had no appetite for using military force to remove this disgusting despot. The minions of the left have been willing to actively support Mugabe because he led a “Marxist” “liberation” party against minority white rule in Rhodesia. The trouble is that instead of a socialist utopia Mugabe has created a dystopian hell that may well never be able to feed its own people ever again. Where the rates of HIV infection are amongst the highest in Africa where there is famine and where Human rights is a vague concept that will never be practically experienced by the people. If ever there was an example of the bankruptcy of Marxist ideology it is to be found in that rather sad part of east Africa.
I thought that the Aussie team should never have played the last tour there and now when Mugabe has become even more overtly brutal as despotic under no circumstances should our cricket team play Zimbabwe at any venue or at any time before that evil man and his despicable regime has been forever expunged from the face of Africa.
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 