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.
• 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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All five central Victorian football and netball leagues have released their fixtures for the 2023 season.
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As a teenager I was a late developer. I had pubic hair for teeth and teeth for pubic hair.
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Florence Shaw wears sensible shoes. Luckily the lead singer of UK band Dry Cleaning doesn’t sing sensible lyrics. On this hot Perth Friday night Florence’s skull metaphorically opens up and spews out her lyrics while she drinks Dingo lager from a can.
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That off stump
That front foot
That short boundary
That first innings
That slower ball
Continue readingA look at Armageddon Time (R)
The Eighties seem like a fair way back now, but for many of us they were our prime years in family life and the work environment.
Here, we’ve got a sixth-grader Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) who is in his final few weeks of primary school in Queens, New York. It’s 1980. Paul befriends an African American classmate Johnny (Jaylin Webb) and the pair play street games and throw a few hoops on the local basketball courts.
Continue readingMrs Harris Goes To Paris (PG)
Ada Harris is a Cockney cleaning woman in 1950s London whose life is slowly slipping away down the drainpipe. There’s not much joy in the war widow’s life although she does enjoy a few after-work beers with her fellow cleaner Vi Butterfield (Ellen Thomas). Not all of her employers are great with Ada’s payments, though. Lady Dant (Anna Chancellor) is a mean-spirited upstart who has weekly losses of memory about where Ada’s pay might be lurking.
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In 1993, when I was researching for my book Gravel Rash, Boulder Football Club identity Max Viskovich took me to visit Pom Holland. The story didn’t make it into the book. Probably should have. Here it is.
Arthur ” Pom ” Holland sat at the kitchen table in his humble little Boulder house. The late afternoon sun shining through a window lit up the right side of his face. He’d been a handsome bloke in his younger days, you could see that. Now he was approaching 90-years-of-age and a bit unsteady on his feet.
He used to like a beer but he refused the one we offered him. “Haven’t had a beer in 12 months,” he told us, “don’t even feel like it any more.”
Arthur was born in Yorkshire, he was 13 when his family moved to Australia in 1916. He spent a short time at the Boulder Primary School and there picked up the nickname that was to stick. “Don’t write about Arthur,” he said, “or half the people who know me wouldn’t know who you were talking about.”
Pom was not a great footballer but he can lay claim to a proud and possibly unique record; he was captain of the Kurrawang football club’s first premiership team, he captained the first Moonta Turks premiership team in 1925 and when Boulder City B grade won the premiership in 1931 he was again captain. He is a life member of the Boulder City Football Club and in 1963 was awarded life membership of the GNFL.
Teacher 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 