After a morning and afternoon of heavy rain and thunder, I’m pleased to announce the opening of Salter Point Rapids

A lovely downhill run all the way from the Welwyn Roundabout to the traffic island/park, before you go back uphill towards Mount Henry… A great challenge on a par with any Olympic course:

Unfortunately it was closed within 20 minutes due to a sudden drop in water levels.

Random fact for the Cox Plate on Saturday that is somewhat believable

If my maths are correct, the Irishman from Ireland State Of Rest, horse No.8 jumping out of Barrier 8 for Joseph O’Brien, will be the first European-trained horse to appear in a race in Melbourne during the Spring Carnival.

Obviously it’s due to our international border, which also meant there were no international trained runners in the Caulfield Cup for the first time since 2004, but still….

IT’S COX PLATE DAY.

Today’s Women’s Big Bash League headline: Priest Exorcises Stars

Ever changing band line-ups, band members marrying each other then splitting up…. when you think about it, The Wiggles are basically a children’s Fleetwood Mac

I say this because Emma’s stint as the Yellow Wiggle is up after 9 years, and I think there’s a case that The Wiggles are basically a Tusk cover short of Fleetwood Mac.

The original band member that serves as the core of the group = Mick Fleetwood and Anthony Field, aka the Blue Wiggle

Band members marrying each other and splitting up = Christine and John McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham, Emma The Yellow Wiggle and Lachlan The Purple Wiggle

Drug problems = Every member of Fleetwood Mac, and well, Jeff was asleep a lot.

See?

Foolproof.

So let’s see what happened in the AFL and AFLW yesterday

Adelaide Crow Debi Varnhagen, who played in both of Adelaide’s 2017 and 2019 premierships, and is herself an ICU nurse (Not for long), refused a COVID-19 vaccination.

After that, a Richmond AFLW player tested positive for COVID-19.

After that, on Channel 9’s nightly news, Tom McDonald, who played in a premiership not even 3 weeks ago, called vaccine mandates ethically wrong.

Ah, footballers – You have to adhere to things like crackdowns on alcohol and drugs, minimum fitness levels, standards of conduct, dress codes, diet restrictions, but being forced to take a vaccine to reduce the chances of spreading a deadly virus is ethically wrong.

Quick, before we actually consider what Tommy said and the fact that he’s had a vaccination and supports vaccinations for health workers, let’s brand him an anti-vaxxer!

The Mercedes going from Petronas to Aramco rumour that was all poppycock

What a choice in fuel that would’ve been for the Mercedes board.

You can apparently go to Saudi Aramco, which is owned by the Saudi Arabian Government, the target of much criticism from hypocritical Western governments about questionable human rights practices, or you can stick with Malaysian Government-owned Petronas, with their alleged involvement in Sudanese war crimes, like Block 5A.

Still, it’s easy to forget that in amidst all these claims of sportswashing, Petronas have been in Formula 1 since the mid-90s when they partnered with Sauber, and it’s easy to forget that in the midst of this run of Petronas-sponsored Mercedes dominance, that the Malaysian company actually sponsored Sauber for LONGER than they did Mercedes.

They were with Sauber, including BMW Sauber, from 1995 until 2009, when BMW split with Sauber and left F1, and they’ve been with Mercedes since 2010.

Still, what does it matter, because it’s all poppycock.

Queen Victoria would be proud of Cameron Norrie for reclaiming India for the Empire, in addition to winning Indian Wells

It reminds me of Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill:

“I claim India for Britain!”

“You can’t claim us, we live here! 500 million of us!”

“Do you have a flag?”

The return of the NBA season is tomorrow, and given we’re Australian, here’s Ben Simmons standing and doing nothing

Fair dinkum, I’ve seen Wayne Bennett happier at press conferences.

Pennants trials at Manning last Thursday

So last Thursday I played in the trials for Pennants, which is now starting next week, which saw us lowlife 5th Division players playing an abridged game of triples, where the leads and seconds bowled 3 bowls, and the skips bowled two bowls.

Through it all, my absolute highlight of the day was when our skip, the Mayor of Manning G.Maples, went in to pay a bill halfway through the game, and his noteworthy absence led to teammate Rick Renton, himself a man of discipline after several years in the Army, absolutely cracking the shits with Maples for the rest of the afternoon, in a game we ended up winning by 2 shots after trailing with 3 ends to go, having led 9-2 earlier on.

In fact, the tension reached the point that Rick went up to Maples after the game, that I remind you we came back AND WON, and said to Graham’s face that if they were selected in the team, then he’d march to the selectors and demand his name be taken off the board.

Ah, what a club we are.

The 1st Season of E.R got added to 7plus

Having greatly enjoyed the series a few years ago, I started watching back on Michael Crichton’s timeless piece of TV during the weekend, and I’m reminded again what an outstanding production that 1st season of ER was, among many of the things that made it so great:

The fact that Doctors were extremely fallible and lost a lot, namely Greene losing that woman in childbirth:

George Clooney as Doug Ross before he was George Clooney:

The Steadicam hallway shots that made the series so compelling:

The relationship between Peter Benton and John Carter, mainly Benton tearing shreds off Carter at every opportunity

One other detail is that in Crichton’s original script for the pilot, Carol Hathaway was brain dead after a successful overdose, which was why she isn’t even mentioned in the second half of the episode, and why Julianna Margulies was only a guest star in the pilot, but her performance proved extremely popular, so Hathaway survived, and Margulies ended up winning an Emmy a year later.

That decision set up the next 5 years.

Another forgotten fact from the opening season is that Anthony Edwards nearly didn’t portray Mark Greene due to being attached to direct a film at the time they were filming the pilot, which was apparently Charlie’s Ghost Story (Starring Edwards and Cheech Marin), given it was released in 1995, the year after E.R first aired.

By sheer fortune, the film was delayed, Edwards portrayed Dr Greene, and quite frankly the series would’ve been crap without him.

Anyway, I’m off to go and rewatch Blizzard.