Imagine your worst nightmare.
Continue readingScoreless at East Fremantle by Les Everett
The East Fremantle Oval scoreboard has gone. Victim of the long overdue redevelopment of the oval Old East and the Sharks have called home since 1953.
Continue readingTime for Freo to sober up by Les Everett
Some people only drink to celebrate so the sobering observations offered here won’t be needed for that kind of Fremantle fan.
Continue readingTrue Evil On Display As Nazis Plot Mass Murder by Richard Jones
A look at The Conference
A movie based entirely about a meeting between 15 men and a lone female secretary shouldn’t promise anything out of the ordinary.
But in mid-January 1942, 15 Germans – particularly top military, SS, Nazi party and Gestapo officers – and also with half-a-dozen top civilian departmental heads there as well – meet to discuss how they were going to dispose of a large proportion of Europe’s Jews.
Continue readingThe spectacle of war from the German infantry side by Richard Jones
A look at All Quiet On the Western Front
When you look back at war films you’ve seen not too many are told from the enemy viewpoint.
Tora Tora Tora devotes a fair bit of time to the Japanese pilots and air crews responsible for the surprise 1941 bombing attack on the US fleet stationed at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.
But it’s only partially about the Japanese military.
In director and co-writer Edward Berger’s World War 1 film I’m reviewing here everything is based around some of the young men in German infantry battalions stationed on the French front lines.
Continue readingBattle in the yard by Song List Rat
Every city has its allegorical coliseum. A place where man and beast can do battle for the entertainment of the masses.
Continue readingFontaínes for the eons by Song List Rat
When stags appear on mountains high
With flanks the colour of tawny brown
And a badger bold bids you good morn
A pint of plain is your only man
And so the words of Brian O’Nolan would came to pass when Fontaínes D.C. brought their mythical Irish stag Skinty Fia to Australia.
Originally booked to tour Australia in 2020 with debut album Dogrel before cancelling and then cancelling some more. Tonight’s the night they deliver on their promise. Only now they have grown into a Finn MacCoolesque rock behemoth. With not one but three albums in their belly.
Continue readingPlaying for the jumper by Vin Maskell
The Footy Jumper Book, by Tim Rath and Andrew Gigacz, has been published by Sporting Nation.
The hardback book features 320 vintage Australian Rules jumpers, from the 1890s to the early 2000s.
I was lucky enough to have a jumper of mine selected for inclusion. It appears in a section called Tricks of the Trade, about how footy clubs would cut corners to maintain the longevity of a jumper. In my case, the jumper had two numbers: 31 and, underneath it, 4.
Continue readingMaryborough-Castlemaine FNL opts for Good Friday start and takes stand against sports betting sponsorship by Richard Jones
The Maryborough-Castlemaine Football and Netball League is the only one of five central Victorian leagues to embrace Easter footy and netball this year. A Good Friday clash on 7 April between Maldon and Dunolly, brought forward from round two, will be the MCDFL’s stand-alone season opener for 2023. The 14-club league was the first in north-central Victoria to formally announce its 2023 fixture.
Cricket (pitches) on the radio by Les Everett
• The pitch at Boilup between Kojonup and Collie. Photo by Les Everett
Last week I spent a few minutes in the ABC Perth studio with Breakfast presenter Ivo Da Silva talking, of course, about abandoned cricket pitches.
A similar chat in October on ABC Goldfields-Esperance led to some great finds around Kalgoorlie, Boulder, Leonora and Coolgardie. This time the audience was statewide and as I listened to flood and fire warnings on the drive to East Perth I realised many would have other things on their minds.
Still, as with each of the radio (and TV and newspaper and social media) spots I’ve done while ‘working’ on this project the response was immediate and wide-ranging.
This time, however, the tips received might have reinforced the point that there are lots of unused cricket pitches in WA – and I’ve seen most of them.
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australianrules.com.au 