I’m a follower of Fremantle in the AFL and East Perth in the WAFL.
Unlike others with an interest in the Dockers and the WAFL I have, over the years, been impressed with Australian football coverage in The West Australian newspaper.
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It was appropriate half way through the AFL’s highly successful Gather Round in Adelaide that I finished a book about a great of South Australian football. An outlaw. An under recognised footballer Jack Dyer said was the most talented he ever saw.
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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.
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Some people only drink to celebrate so the sobering observations offered here won’t be needed for that kind of Fremantle fan.
Continue readingA 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 readingA 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.
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Every city has its allegorical coliseum. A place where man and beast can do battle for the entertainment of the masses.
Continue readingWhen 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.
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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 readingTeacher Education, Sport, Australian Rules Football,
Every scoreboard tells a story
With the first dog chosen in the AFL Canine Draft
escape to the Vasse idyll
australianrules.com.au 