Well it’s the 10th of August, and I’ll start with my anniversary of the day from 1989, when the 5th Ashes Test began at Trent Bridge with Australia having already won back the urn 3-0 with 2 Tests to play, and after seeing the wicket, Allan Border won the toss and elected to bat against the inexperienced two-pronged attack of Devon Malcolm (on debut) and Angus Fraser…

As it turned out, AB didn’t even get to bat on the opening day, as openers Mark ‘Tubby’ Taylor and Geoff ‘Swampy’ Marsh batted through the entire day’s play, without any rain delays, and made it through to stumps at 0/301 – Swampy on 125*, and Tubby on 141*.

It was the first time in the history of Test cricket in England that a wicket hadn’t fallen on the opening day of a Test match.

It was also the debut for future England captain Michael Atherton, and Australia, once described as one of the worst sides to ever tour England, eventually declared on 6/602 with Taylor scoring 219, before bowling England out for 255, enforcing the follow-on, before bowling the hosts out again for 167 to win by an innings and 180 runs.

Thanks to the hailstorms that hit Perth at lunchtime, we’ve now got a Pool, a Spa, and a Waterfall feature at home

Also got a few hail stones the size of a child’s tears:

And you wouldn’t believe it, by 4pm I was somehow able to get a game of bowls under my belt.

The Luc Longley edition of Australian Story was actually damn good at telling the side of Longley that The Last Dance never did

I’d like to think the reason the whole two part series works well is that the three biggest parts of the ’90s Chicago Bulls team took part and wanted to give a man his due – Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson all feature prominently, and you can throw in Steve Kerr even though he was just a depth player, although obviously it was hard to track down Dennis Rodman, considering he lives on another planet to everyone else.

Another small detail I got a laugh out of was that during those Bulls years, Longley used ‘Norman Gunston’ as an alias to check in to hotels.

Now for the few of you who have never heard of Norman Gunston, I’ll just say he was a poorly prepared TV host who looked a bit like Australian comedian Garry McDonald, and among many things is remembered for interviewing everyone from Cheech & Chong, Sally Struthers, Paul & Linda McCartney to Mohammed Ali, and on November 11, 1975, he wound up on the footsteps of Parliament House in Canberra, as Gough Whitlam was memorably dismissed as Prime Minister, creating one of the most unintentionally funny comedic routines ever seen:

Given it’s Census night tonight, it’s time to reminisce on 20 years since the Jedi Census phenomenon

As the story goes, the starting point was the 2001 UK Census held on April 29, when the question of a respondent’s religion was introduced onto the main response sheet for the first time in 150 years, and naturally, 390,127 people in England and Wales listed some form of ‘Jedi’ as their religion, which by pure numbers made the Jedi Order/Jediism the 4th-biggest religion in the UK, ahead of established faiths like Sikhism, Buddhism and Judaism.

Naturally when the Australian census arrived on August 7, some cheeky buggers fired up a movement on the internet to do the same thing, and the end result was some 70,509 Australians declared themselves as some form of a Jedi, a number that had only fallen to 64,390 in the last census, despite Darth Sidious executing Order 66 in 2005.

Sadly it appears the Australian Government decided to execute Order 66 themselves on our Jedi population, or indeed anyone attempting to declare themselves as any kind of Force wielder, because the Australian Bureau of Statistics can issue fines of up to $2200 for deliberately lying or joking on your Census form.

Well, given the Australian Government’s history of discrimination against minorities, this is par for the course.

Just like a lot of B-Grade people I don’t pay attention to, the Australian cricket team should create a video thanking our Olympians, who have successfully distracted us from the fact that Bangladesh just completely and utterly packed their heads in during that T20 Series that nobody saw

Then again, I’d also make this point:

Think about how many ads you’ve already seen for The Ashes. despite the fact it won’t start until the end of November.

Now think about how many ads you’ve seen for the upcoming Twenty20 World Cup, which is just over 2 months away.

That’s what this country’s attitude is to T20 cricket, for better or worse, although based on that series outcome, it’s mostly worse.

Who wore their facemask incorrectly better

Health Minister Greg Hunt, demonstrating that you can’t catch Coronavirus if you can’t see it

Adam Simpson, demonstrating the best way to watch the West Coast Eagles

Or the big lanky character that is Essendon ruckman Sam Draper, who used his mask to picture the amount of finals wins Essendon have had since September of 2004

Patty Mills leading the Boomers in a performance of Down Under while everyone was on the beers celebrating the Bronze medal

I reckon the Rugby Sevens crew should take note on how to properly organise a traditional Australian piss-up:

Do you know what we call that in Australia?

Wednesday.

After sitting down and going through the arseload of great Australian moments of the Tokyo Olympics, from the likes of Ariarne Titmus, Emma McKeon & Peter Bol, to Logan Martin effortlessly winning the BMX Freestyle, Cedric Dubler willing Ash Moloney on in the Decathlon, and Kieran Palmer’s near perfect skateboarding run, I still find myself going back to Jessica Fox in the C-1 Canoe Slalom Final

For me, considering everything that had built up to that Final run on the opening Thursday, the former Silver Fox produced the most complete performance by an Australian to win a Gold Medal since Matthew Mitcham’s godly final dive in the 10m Platform Final at Beijing in 2008, when he needed to score a near-perfect 107.30 to win Gold with a dive involving two and a half somersault with two and a half twists in the pike position, and produced an Olympic record score of 112.30 that stood until Yang Jian’s dive in the 10 Metre Platform this past Saturday.

The set of circumstances for Fox:

• By far Australia’s best paddler in human history having her 4th attempt at winning an Olympic Gold Medal after the set of Silver & Bronze medals in the K-1 Finals at London, Rio, plus the third medal that arrived 2 days prior.
• Having to mentally deal with the crushing memory of losing the Gold Medal in said K1 Final two days earlier, despite being the fastest paddler, after buggering up the penultimate gate and subsequently copping a second 2 second penalty, which also cost her a Silver Medal by one-tenth of a second.
• She used a condom for non-sexual purposes to repair her boat, a rare instance of someone from France actually using a condom
• Comes back for the C-1 in no time at all and goes fastest in the Semi Final by several seconds to once again be the last paddler out for the Final.
• Watches as nobody, including World Champion Andrea Herzog, gets within 2.5 seconds of Mallory Franklin’s superb time of 108.68, even after Franklin hit a gate in her run, just to further heap the pressure on, and it showed when she went for a nervous chunder 20 minutes before she had to go in the water.
• And despite all of that, with her dad Richard ‘The Iceman’ Fox providing the color commentary for Channel 7, Fox overcomes 9 years of near misses and produces one of the best performances in Australian Olympic history with the fastest time of the entire C-1 competition – 105.04, to win by a lazy 3.6 seconds.

For me, the most impressive part was that after hitting 4 gates in the Heats, Fox didn’t make a single error in either the Semi Final or the Final.

It was magical and if there only there was some kind of song about a Fox to celebrate it.

On that note, I really don’t care if people complain that Keegan Palmer is pretty much a Californian with one Australian parent who only spent a relatively minor portion of his life in Queensland

Did we complain about the fact that Dale Begg-Smith, who won a Gold and a Silver Medal at the Turin and Vancouver Winter Olympics, is a full-blooded Canadian, and the only reason he moved to Australia five years before Turin was because his own coaches in Canada told him he was spending too much time with his business instead of training?

No we didn’t, BECAUSE HE WON A BLOODY GOLD MEDAL FOR AUSTRALIA, SO HE’S A FRIKKIN’ LEGEND.

And I can’t judge Keegan, because I still greatly enjoy Greg Norman, despite the fact that The Shark’s accent can’t decide if he’s pretty much an American who’s lived in the United States for several decades, or if he’s still an Australian at heart.

In light of the ICC starting their push for Cricket at the 2028 Los Angeles, plus Netball Australia starting the push to get Netball in for Brisbane/SEQ 2032, I think there’s one sport we should all be pushing for

You don’t even need to guess….

Lawn Bowls.

Think about it:

• We’re one of the biggest lawn bowling nations on the earth
• The Commonwealth nations will be inclined to get around it given it’s a core Commonwealth Games sport
• The authorities and organising committees don’t even need to build a new venue because the Gold Coast has Broadbeach, which has hosted every major bowling event under the sun and could easily cover The Games.
• And, you can say with absolute certainty that an Australian player and/or team would find a way to win any one of the Men’s Singles/Pairs/Triples/Fours or the Women’s Singles/Pairs/Triples/Fours.

It’s foolproof!

Well done on a great career to Anthony Don

If only there was a logo for him….

Game I of the Bledisloe Cup was the most atypical Bledisloe Cup game I’ve ever seen

The Wallabies start well, create a couple of chances, botch them, subsequently lose confidence, the All Blacks score a few tries and pretty much put the game away when it’s there to be won, then the Wallabies start playing well in the last 20 minutes when they’ve got no hope of winning and put a bit of respectability on the scoreboard.

And the best part is, you can pretty much pencil the same thing in for this Saturday.

Bruce Springsteen’s daughter Jessica won a Silver Medal in the Equestrian Team Jumping Final

I wonder how many jokes she copped about not taking up track & field as a youngster, because you’d have thought with a name like Springsteen, she’d have been Born To Run.

What we didn’t see at The Closing Ceremony