Cricket is over for another year. There may be games left to play in sunnier climes, but here it is done. And not too soon either. I have tried to become a fan of the sport at the seemingly irrational insistence of you, the readers. But really all I can manage is a passing interest. It's the same level of involvement that I have with baseball, except in baseball the uniforms are cooler.
And anyway it's netball season!
That's right, sneaking into your sports news somewhere after the piece about the Rally of Portugal (isn't that Sebastien Loeb something else?) come results from the ANZ Championship. Also known as the netball competition where the Bay of Plenty Magic come to your town and fuck over your team.
It's also a competition where you get actual, honest to goodness, statistics from each game! And can I say, so much for the "we're much fitter and the contest will be closer" from the Mystics.
Personally I'm picking a Magic/Swifts final with the Magic on top this time.
Sadly I live in the home of the Pulse, a team that was touch-and-go for even fielding a team at all this year. It's also sad to go to their home page and see a picture of Sonia Mkoloma, the international star who no longer plays for the team.
I'll also make sure I get along to an actual game this year rather than just catching them on TV.
Also speaking of netball I found this very cool old snap of the Marist Netball team via the Uni-watch blog. After sharing it on Twitter the National Library posted this image as part of their tbreaktweets. According to the NLNZ tweet "there are 6 sports in the world that are played with a net but no ball, and this is one of them". I figure one has to be ice hockey, any guesses for the other four?
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Now for some sad news, Shawn MacKay – current player for the Brumbies and former Australian men's sevens captain and coach of the women's team who won the world cup – died in Durban yesterday.
MacKay suffered a cervical spinal fracture and dislocation, a broken leg and multiple facial fractures after being hit by a car in the early hours of last Sunday in Durban, where he had made his second Super 14 appearance for the Brumbies against the Sharks.
The 26-year-old forward passed away in the early hours of Monday after his condition worsened due to a blood infection contracted as a result of the multiple injuries suffered in the accident.
MacKay was obviously an influential figure in Sevens and clearly he was a good coach too, so it's no stretch to say that Australian rugby as a whole has lost someone very important.
Though I would quite like the sports media (who perhaps only know how to write game results) to stop using macho-bullshit terms to describe his teammates (gutted, shattered, etc).
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On to other things…
Das Wunderkind Lewis Hamilton lied to stewards at the Australian Grand Prix and was disqualified. So he did what every over-hyped sportsperson does: he threw a tantrum.
Through his father, Hamilton informed FIA President and orgy lover Max Mosley that he was thinking of quitting not just McLaren but F1 completely (perhaps to play rugby in France). Could this also be because suddenly Hamilton isn't driving the fastest car on the track, making him look like an average driver. No better than Jenson Button (who, by the way, is also a cock, just saying).
I'm not going to say that Hamilton is the only guilty party here, but I don't believe his innocence either. They cheated, they got caught, next race please.
Lastly, am I the only one to giggle at this headline?