Sorry to both my readers but I forgot to blog for the past six months!

Go the Abs, go the All Whites.

Interesting article on the Daily Telegraph site about the Kumuls making a play for the NRL.

The PNG Government is behind this bid in a big way:

PNG Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare has also pledged $10 million to help build a new stadium in Port Moresby and a further $250,000 to assist the PNG bid team, headed by Gold Coast chairman and veteran league official Paul Broughton.

It’s true to say that there are plenty of competing bids from within Australia – Central Coast, Central Queensland and a second Brisbane side, not to mention outposts such as Adelaide and Perth.  Also not to mention a second NZ team but more on that later.

The usual mantra WIIFM applies.

As far as the NRL is concerned, the answer could well be “plenty”:

PNG Minister for Sport Philemon Embel wrote to Gallop saying: “The passion of six million PNG people for rugby league is undisputed. Unlike the Australian-based possible expansion teams, a PNG team will increase revenue to the clubs.

“The New Zealand Warriors increase revenue to the NRL by at least $10 million a year. PNG would do the same.”

This last point is something that our retard … oops, retro friends across the ditch forget when they call for the Warriors to be kicked out of “their” National League.

It’s not just a case of ditching the Warriors (boom boom) but losing ANOTHER team – the Warriors pay their way along with another team.  Or should that be we pay, largely through Sky.

I can’t see the Kumuls flying soon but it certainly would add another dimension to the NRL plus yet another weak team that the Warriors can lose to.

Not that many sleeps to go until the real rugby season starts.

Q:  What’s the difference between a car and a golf ball?

A: Tiger can drive the golf ball at least 350 yards.

Q:  What were Tiger Woods and his wife doing out at 2.30 in the morning?

A:  They went clubbing.

Tiger Woods crashed into a fire hydrant and a tree. He couldn’t decide between a wood and an iron.

Tiger been dropped from the Ryder Cup team as his terrible record at being beaten by the Europeans continues.

News travels fast. The Chinese are already making a movie about Tiger Woods’ crash. They are calling it, ” Scratching Swede, Lying Tiger.

What do Tiger Woods and baby seals have in common?? They’re both clubbed by Norwegians !

Phil Mickelson contacted Tiger’s wife to pick up some tips on how to beat Tiger.

Bugger global warming, world peace, or the financial meltdown in Dubai, the world is agog with news about Tiger and his personal affairs (pun very much intended).

The Granny Herald had the following headline:

Golf: Tiger pulls out of tournament

Without wishing to lower discussion here (below the normal basement level), but it appears to me that the problem appears to be that Tiger should have pulled out much much earlier than he did!

Golfus interruptus?

Here’s a question.

If Tiger’s playing around (on his wife), does Steve Williams still handle his number one wood?

The guy’s a complete plonker.

Either that or a comedian like Rhys Darby who specialises in being funny by not being funny if you get what I mean.

His latest epistle is Ten Things We’ve Learnt From the Autumn Tests.

The funny thing is that he continues to deny that he’s got the game he’s always wanted.

Jones usually bleating about the ABs just looks plain silly after the ABs whupped the Froggies:

Even dynamic New Zealand were often pedestrian.

Some footpaths then.

Still, the same old same old:

6 New Zealand do not look the World Cup winners in waiting

They may have thrashed a hopeless French team in Marseilles last night but with less then two years to go before the Rugby World Cup, there is no guarantee New Zealand will break what would then be a 24-year drought with no world title. Their results are reasonable but with so many journeymen, it seems likely they will win many games before RWC 2011 and again be overtaken in the closing laps. Graham Henry must be the coach of the autumn. Anyone who can draw a performance from that crew must be a genius.

No one down here is saying that it is a vintage AB team.  Yet such a poor AB team (as stated by Jones) is still good enough to beat all their Northern opponents without letting in a single try.  Two years in row.

And Matt Giteau beats Dan Carter to the first five position for the team of the autumn.

Hey … someone’s got to spruik it

Read about it here.

I’m on a course today.

A race course.

Boom boom.

Hoping to have a Classic Day

Anyway, need a quick and dirty (as in fast not dirty ho) post so here we go – the ten most embarrassing moments in sport courtesy of the Granny Herald.

You can read them yourself you lazy rick-with-a-silent-p but my favourite is this one:

8. How about major-league baseball outfielder Milton Bradley of the Chicago Cubs who caught a fly ball at Wrigley field back in June and did what players traditionally do after the third “out” of the inning – he tossed the ball to a grateful fan in the stands. Only trouble was – Bradley had lost track of the number of outs and it was actually only TWO down – his gaffe allowed a couple of Minnesota baserunners to stroll around the bases. The crowd wasn’t impressed.

Hopefully, I enjoyed my course and still have some money left to buy fish and chips on the way home!

As Rhys Darby is wont to say … typical.

The Wallabies start playing like the proverbial and what do they do?

Take it like men?  Or even take it like Australians?

Nope, blame everyone else.

The Aussies are now blaming NZ and Pomgolia for the shocking form of the Wobblies.

Eddie Jones:

”I think we’ve lost that instinctive way we play, and we stand wide and we’re lateral and we play like a New Zealand side,” Jones told Sky Sports Radio. ”Robbie has a way of coaching, and I think he’s a very successful coach, but I don’t think his style of attack suits the Australian players and that’s something he’s going to learn over the next period of time.

Here’s a tip for you Eddie.  Very successful coaches win games which is why they’re very successful.

”I think [Deans is] a very good coach; he does need to change his methods a little bit, the Australian players are different to New Zealand players. New Zealand players have generally been the best in world rugby because they have been physically stronger and faster than anyone else.”

Yep, Aussie players are different from NZ players.  They say “mate” a lot and wear an awful green and gold.

”Australian sides traditionally, while physically we go OK, our point of difference has been that we’ve been tactically and strategically a little better than other teams. I think at the moment we’ve lost that a little bit.”

So you’re saying our players are thick?  You might have a point but come to think of it, ours are scoring more points than yours and that’s all that matters.

Anyway, it’s all the fault of the refs, the rules, the Poms.  Anything but the Aussie players.

It cuts me up seeing Australia playing so badly.

Oh dear, nevermind, let’s just hope the Taffies do it to them too!

The first cricket test started yesterday in Dunedin.

Yep, a test match in Dunedin in November.  Suppose we should look on the positive side … at least it didn’t snow.

The test raised a couple of interesting points related to the toss.

For a start, the game is technically a home game for the Pakis so Daniel Vettori as the “visiting” captain called the coin toss.  Strange that.

Which of course raises a completely separate issue about the importance of the toss and “home” advantage.

Listening to Mark on Radio Sport, he argued that the home team should get to call the shots – no toss, just choose.

I think he’s half right.  In many cases, there’s too much attached to the toss that there needs to be a real incentive to make sure teams don’t doctor the pitch.

By giving the AWAY team the right to choose, any attempt to doctor a pitch is almost certain to fail.

In baseball the visiting team always bats first, according to Wikipedia.

An inning is broken up into two halves in which the away team bats in the top (first) half, and the home team bats in the bottom (second) half. In baseball, the defense always has the ball — a fact that differentiates it from most other team sports.

(I left the last sentence in only because I’m a trainspotter – still an interesting point!)

Anyway, that’s sorted.  Let’s get rid of the toss and give the away team the choice.

Now that’s choice!