Well it’s the last day of the Southern Hemisphere winter, the last day of the Northern Hemisphere summer, although in Scotland it doesn’t matter much since it’s winter 11 months of the year, and of course, today is the somber anniversary of Di and Dodi not wearing seat belts in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel….

While it’s also 53 years since Sir Garfield Sobers became the first player in the history of first-class cricket to hit 6 sixes in an over, in a County match for Nottinghamshire against Glamorgan at St Helen’s in Swansea, with the unfortunate bowler being Malcolm Nash, a moment in cricketing history that was thankfully caught on television:

The Perth AFL Grand Final is all set to go in 3 weeks, until we have a snap lockdown and it gets moved to Adelaide

Putting the game aside, since we’ve got 2 weeks to figure out who’ll be playing Port Adelaide on September 25, it seems like a certainty that the AFL and the WA Government want to book some local entertainment for the pre-game, and there’s a whole heap of options, the first two being Tame Impala and Birds of Tokyo.

But let me tell you, if the AFL don’t book Eskimo Joe and have them performing Black Fingernails, Red Wine, THEN THERE WILL BE RIOTS ACROSS PERTH.

Even the ARL Commission knew they had to get Eskimo Joe for the State of Origin game back in 2019, so surely Gillon and the boys club will come through with a fat bag of cash.

Fact Check: Toby Greene’s tribunal hearing took longer than the record-breaking Belgian Grand Prix

The Toby hearing started at 9am AEST, and he was given 3 weeks at 1:16pm AEST, for a total of 4 hours and 16 minutes.

The Belgian Grand Prix event timer officially began at 3pm, had two formation laps at 3:25pm before it was red flagged until 6:17pm, when the cars went back out for 2 laps behind the Safety Car before the race was Red Flagged again, with the result being declared at 6:45pm, for a total of 3 hours and 45 minutes, or 3 hours 20 minutes if you count it from when the first formation lap was.

A summary of Toby Greene’s tribunal defence, which I thought was quite sound

Ahead of this weekend’s Bledisloe Cup test on Father’s Day in Perth, I think they should add a special 4th Bledisloe Test for the end of the year between Australia and New Zealand

Instead of deciding it in a pissy little game of rugby, the winner will be the country that gets to 80% fully vaccinated first:

Hell, who am I kidding, Australia would lose that battle to the Kiwis as well.

For those of you who don’t look at Essendon’s website, their motto for the Finals was “They Don’t Fear” with the Fear struck out to resemble the Red sash symbolically removing fear

It’s actually quite a clever bit of marketing:

However, surely after what happened against the Western Bulldogs, it deserves an update:

Will Smith has been awarded the captaincy of Parramatta against Penrith this weekend with Clint Gutherson being rested

I think Brad Arthur impressed with the way he dealt with Brandon Smith on Saturday:

Here’s an interesting detail from Day One of the US Open

Andy Murray kept his wedding ring tied to his shoelaces while he was playing Stefanos Tsitsipas:

The Chris Brown story just keeps on going

And still, like every honest punter, every time he came home, this was probably the conversation:

“Hey honey, how’d you go today?”

“Oh, I broke even.”

I’ll admit, I felt inspired watching Darren Hicks win the C2 time trial with one leg

He won the damn thing by 90 seconds!

Rheed McCracken taking another Silver medal with a popped rib in the T34 at the Paralympics

And still, he’s going to have people asking him if his father is Phil McCracken.

I think I broke my record for most views in a month with 3 days to go in August

This was the old record for August 2019, back when the world was still so innocent and knew nothing of deadly pandemics:

That mark of 3,312 was definitely surpassed on Saturday when I went to check on the figures for the month, and I can only think surpassing it with 3 full days to go in the month was thanks in part to the viewers from Germany and Ecuador, plus the fact that half of Australia is locked down with no place to go:

I think it’s now past 3,600 for August, and we’ll not get anywhere past that.

The retirement of Indian cricketer Stuart Binny

From what I heard from Billy Birmingham, Binny was tired of being left out by the selectors every night, with no one collecting him.

And by the way, saying that Binny has the best bowling figures by an Indian in an ODI is selling him short – He took 6 wickets for 4 runs in 4.4 overs against Bangladesh in 2014 when India were defending a mere 105.

Bangadesh went from 2-44 after 11.3 overs, to being bowled out for 58 in 17.4 overs.

Anyway, enough of my japery, well done Stuart on your career!

A new WAFL record from the weekend, as the Garlic Munchers from West Perth smash a 55 year record…

The Falcons had 9 more scoring shots than East Fremantle…

And they lost by 46 points:

Matt Hill is the most versatile commentator in Australian sport, just ahead of Brenton Speed

Wednesday-Friday – Commentates a heap of sports at the Paralympics for Channel 7, the Murderball among them

Saturday – Calls a Group 1 race meeting at Caulfield

And today, he’s back commentating the cycling at the Paralympics.

To me, Hill is one of the rare breed of commentators that can call horse racing, which is a beast of a job as Darren McAullay once described to me, and has the experience to provide play-by-play sports commentary.

Bruce McAvaney is probably the greatest example of such a commentator, given he called Melbourne Cups for Channel 10 back in the 1980s before calling everything under the sun for so many years, Ray Warren was much the same, and you can throw in Peter Donegan from that same era, and another present day broadcaster in Hill’s mold is Gerard Whateley, given he called the footy and the Melbourne Cup on the ABC (Plus swimming at the Summer Olympics) before he went to SEN, where I think he’s now doing the same thing!

After what happened on Sunday at Spa, this is what Ayrton Senna said after the 1991 Australian Grand Prix was called off after 14 laps due to heavy rain

Sounds pretty familiar to a few comments on the weekend:

It should be said that the context between the two races were completely different:

Spa was just the resumption of the season, while Australia 1991 was the last race of the season, and while Senna had already won the Drivers’ Championship the Constructors’ Championship and the prize money it carried was still up for grabs.