Well it’s the 21st night of September, and speaking of music, Sunday was a major anniversary in the history of popular music….

Because it marked 25 years since the Spice Girls’ debut album Spice was released, although the trick is that it was released in Japan on September 19, when the Spice Girls were doing another promotional tour of the country for Wannabe, but the album wasn’t released in the UK by Virgin Records until November 4, by which time Wannabe and Say You’ll Be There had already hit No.1 on the UK charts, but it didn’t stop much, because it was comfortably the No.1 album at Christmas 1996.

Interestingly enough, although Wannabe easily got to No.1 in Australia and stayed there for 11 weeks at the end of ’96, Spice never got to No.1 on the ARIA Album Charts, where it peaked at No.3 in May of 1997, behind the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet, and Savage Garden’s epic self-titled debut album.

Random fact for the website – The Don McKinnon ‘It Happens’ post from last year has now passed 1,000 all-time views

I guess the moral of the story is that some people really get a kick out of seeing dudes relieve themselves on a playing field.

A bit of history this weekend – Former A-League referee Jarred Gillett will become the first foreign official to referee a Premier League match

One of the unknown parts of the AUKUS treaty is that it also extends into football officiating, although if you define overseas as being from outside Great Britain, Irishman Dermot Gallagher was the first foreign Premier League referee back in the 1990s, but Jarred is definitely the first from outside Europe.

Gillett will be officiating Watford vs Newcastle United on Saturday afternoon at Vicarage Road, although I don’t think this piece of history will be too well received over here in Perth, considering Gillett gave a dodgy penalty against the Perth Glory in the last minute of the 2012 Grand Final, after Besart Berisha tripped over himself and had an air swing at the ball, resulting in a 2-1 win for the Brisbane Roar:

Somewhere in Perth, Mick Soh’s head has exploded seeing that piece of footage again, and if you don’t know who Mick Soh is, you’ve never been to Perth.

Fun fact – Prior to Saturday, the last AFL Grand Final to be played on September 25 was…

The drawn Grand Final in 2010 between St Kilda and Collingwood!

The other fact about September 25 Grand Finals is that BOTH deciders between the Demons and Bulldogs will have been played on the date; 1954 & 2021.

Looking back on that time last week when an anonymous 1895 Chicago Tribune article claimed Tom Wills was possibly a racist who possibly participated in revenge massacres against the Indigenous population

Well, let’s get to work cancelling the guy that’s been dead for 141 years, starting with GWS renaming Tom Wills Oval:

“I turned to the drovers, who were crying like children, and ordered them to gallop to the neighbouring ‘runs’ to spread the news. Before morning thirty good men and true were at the door, among them two native trackers who were friendly to us, who said there was about forty in the gang. If you ever saw men set out to kill it was these. There was ‘death to the devils’ written on every face.

“After eight hours’ galloping we came up with the band about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. What a shout went up as we sighted them! How we galloped down upon them! I cannot tell all that happened, but know we killed all in sight. Just as we thought they were all settled I happened to see a dirty, shrinking, greasy brute with my Zingari jacket on sneaking off. O, the desecration of it! Fancy my Zingari jacket! O, didn’t I gallop after him, and when I got alongside I emptied the whole six barrels of my revolver into him, the brute.

From the ABC

The sad part is wouldn’t be that surprising if Wills did empty a revolver into an Indigenous man, or at the very least supported reprisals, considering his father was the most well-documented victim of the Cullin-la-ringo massacre in 1861, and you have take into account the hundreds of massacres of the Indigenous population that occurred during the Australian frontier wars, many more of which have been buried away by history.

Just another note on that ABC article, this was the title:

“Research discovery suggests AFL pioneer Tom Wills participated in massacres of Indigenous people”

THIS GETS MY GOAT EVERY BLOODY TIME – TOM WILLS DIDN’T PIONEER ‘AFL’, HE PIONEERED AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL.

THE AFL, WHICH WAS RENAMED IN 1990 FROM THE VFL, 110 YEARS AFTER WILLS KILLED HIMSELF, IS THE GODDAMN GOVERNING BODY OF AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL, IT IS NOT THE SPORT ITSELF.

YOU DON’T SEE ME GOING AROUND SYDNEY SAYING DALLY MESSENGER WAS AN NRL PIONEER, DO YOU?

NO, THAT’S BECAUSE I WON’T BE ABLE TO VISIT SYDNEY FOR THE NEXT CENTURY WHILE THE BORDERS ARE SHUT.

GOSH, SOME PEOPLE.

Update from the Women’s ODI in Mackay: Good Grief, Darcie Brown!

She took 4/33 in her second WODI for Australia, at the age of 18, not even 11 months after making her WBBL debut.

The list of demands from the construction workers protesting in Melbourne

How most people see them

NRL journos spend the entire week saying Michael Maguire is going to get the arse from the Wests Tigers…. Tuesday afternoon rolls around, and:

And now let’s cross to a live shot of James Hooper after that piece of news dropped:

The biggest omission from the Schumacher documentary had to be ignoring the 2001-04 title years, although that was probably so the documentary didn’t run for 5 hours

That also meant we were denied the footage of the party following Schumacher’s record 6th title in 2003 at Suzuka, when among many things:

• Michael and Ralf arranged a party in Toyota’s section of the paddock and invited a few mechanics & personnel from Ferrari, Toyota & McLaren, many of whom they’d never met.
• Michael wound up in an unbuttoned Toyota shirt that was owned by then-Toyota driver Olivier Panis with a victory cigar between his lips
• The revellers threw a table and few chairs out of a window and smashed it
• They also knocked over a fridge that Michael would help pick up while a nice lady lit his cigar
• And they also drove a forklift around Suzuka

I am not making any of that up.

And there’s also footage of a shitfaced Schumacher, still in the Toyota shirt, having a chat to Kimi Raikkonen after beating Kimi to the title by 2 points:

Winning 7 World Championships is a great achievement, but being the drunkest person in a conversation with world class drinker Kimi Raikkonen is on another level.

It’s good to see Nike put a bit of character back in the BBL & WBBL kits after the recent years of plain coloured team pyjamas

I suppose it is ironic that Nike of all manufacturers would be signed by CA to bring back a bit of life into BBL team shirts, considering the Swoosh is slightly notorious for using the same plain design template across club football kits, although I suppose we’re dealing with apples and oranges comparing football to T20 cricket.

In addition, every team is now wearing black trousers, which is something only the Perth Scorchers, Sydney Sixers and Sydney Thunder used to do prior to the total switch to team colours in 2019-20, and quite frankly the Scorchers kits always looked great with black pants… it just works with the orange shirts perfectly:

It just looks like the kit of a team getting set to defend 120.

The last hurrah of Dennis Cometti Pt.II

He already retired from TV commentary with Channel 7 at the end of 2016 and moved onto Southern Cross Austereo in Perth (Mix 94.5 followed by the rebranded Triple M Perth), but this weekend’s AFL Grand Final will be Dennis Cometti’s last centimeter perfect call of an AFL game, and you couldn’t think of a more perfect way for Den to go out….

The first AFL Grand Final in Perth, at the ground where the media centre is named in his honour, and he gets to bow out, just as he did in 2016, by calling his beloved Doggies in a Grand Final!

The percentage of players polling Brownlow votes has plummeted, especially since 2010:

Sure you can point to the arrival of Gold Coast and GWS and the subsequent wider distribution of top end players, which but the percentage was clearly spiralling downhill even before the two expansion teams entered the league, as more and more midfielders began pilfering votes from those pitiful defenders and forwards thanks to the dreaded unconscious bias that pollsters across all major player awards, not just the umpires voting on the Brownlow, have towards midfielders.

Now let’s cross to Jack Riewoldt for his thoughts on the matter:

Thanks Jackie, enjoy the brew.

Looks like the TMO missed an eye gouge by Springbok Vincent Koch on Quade Cooper on Saturday night

Cooper may have been the one bleeding, but after the 80 minutes were up, it was the Springboks who got an almighty punch in the nose from the Wallabies:

Odd fact – In the MotoGP double header at Aragon and Misano, all 3 classes had the same winners:

Aragon: Dennis Foggia in Moto3, Raul Fernandez in Moto2, Pecco Bagnaia in MotoGP

Misano: Dennis Foggia in Moto3, Raul Fernandez in Moto2, Pecco Bagnaia in MotoGP

And finally, I spotted what I think might be the only British racing green Triumph TR6 west of Bordertown

What a sturdy little machine she is.