Well it’s the 16th of November, there’s only 2 weeks to go until the formal start of summer, and my random anniversary for today…

It’s exactly 40 years since Dennis Lille and Javed Miandad nearly belted the crap out of each other in the middle of the WACA during Day 4 of the 1st Test between Australia and Pakistan, which started with DK childishly blocking Javed’s way while he was taking a single, Javed understandably wasn’t happy and responded, then DK kicked Javed, and the Pakistani captain responded by threatening to club Lillee with his bat.

That led to this famous photo, another storied chapter in the WACA’s wild history, showcasing the so-called Gentleman’s Game at it’s absolute finest:

Australia comfortably won the match, and as for the punishment, as if copping a slap on the wrist, Lillee was only fined $120 and suspended for a mere 2 ODIs, missing no part of a Test series that Australia ultimately won 2-1.

These days Lillee would’ve been rightfully suspended for the entire series, and then some.

This happened

A major milestone for the website

I’ve now gone 1000 consecutive days making a post, a streak dating back to February of 2019:

It’s amazing how I can find the time to make a mundane observation about the world of sport, and it makes me think, Lou Gehrig played 2,130 consecutive games for the Yankees, Cal Ripken Jr. broke that unbreakable record and played 2,632 consecutive games for the Orioles….

What are the odds that I can make it another 1632 days making incorrect observations?

3,720 to 1?

My favourite rugbaleeg article of the off-season thus far

From The Australian back on Monday:

“John Asiata would prefer working in construction than getting vaccinated”

“Canterbury recruit John Asiata has told Bulldogs management he would prefer working on a construction site rather than be forced into a Covid vaccination to play rugby league.”

“Unless Canterbury general manager of football, Phil Gould, can this week persuade Asiata into a jab, the new Bulldogs forward faces being sacked before he has even trained at his new club….”

“Bulldogs management has told Asiata he will be dumped by remaining unvaccinated.”

Hang on, Does he not realise that YOU’LL HAVE TO BE DOUBLE VAXXED TO WORK ON A CONSTRUCTION SITE?

The only bricks Johnny will be working with if he doesn’t get the jab are the ones sitting in his head where the brain would usually be.

A big weekend at Manning Memorial

First of all, on Friday night, after 5 months of being capped at $10,000, and having been whittled down to 6 cards, Chase the Ace finally went off, and the lucky bastard to take the cash was one of our great Jack Attack characters – Carmo from the Buffed Helmets!

I kid you not, Carmo walked up, winning ticket in hand, went straight to to the top corner, 5 across on the right, and he plucked out the Ace Of Spades, and everyone was on their feet applauding him.

Fair to say that’s the greatest win in the Buffed Helmets’ 29-year history, better than any indoor cricket premierships they’ve attained, and if it isn’t mentioned in this week’s Captains Comments by Glen or Cheese, then it’ll mean the Buffed Helmets have been abducted and replaced by aliens.

Highlights from soon to be certified Guinness World Record holder Shane Knott’s 30 Hour Challenge

For the unaware, Knotty, an esteemed member of Manning’s Premier League team, was attempting to break the World Record for the longest continuous game of outdoor singles bowls, which was approximately 28 hours if Guinness is to be believed, as part of raising money for the mental health charity Gotcha4Life, which also doubled as a Family Day at Manning.

I can confirm that despite starting in baking 31 degree heat at 10am on Sunday morning, after he originally wanted to start at 6am, Knotty, with help from 27 other competitors, including the likes of Brad Hogg, ‘Lord’ Lee Such, Australian Open singles champion Cody Packer, and Knotty’s wife Natalie, who was by his side the whole time, cracked 30 continuous hours at 4pm on Monday, and the best part was he got the aggregate as well, only dropping 3 games out of 27, which can be attributed to him having a 400-end rollup against some players, who had to come straight in and play.

Although, Shane did give up 2 shots on the last end, so his spot as Skip on Saturday is in question.

Naturally, here’s a few photos I had to take, first of all being the opening bowl at 10 o’clock on Sunday morning, in which Rhett Butler from Sorrento’s Premier League side had the honour of playing with Knotty for the first hour, as a fierce Easterly kicked in meant the toucha count was a bit low during the opening half hour, but eventually they were averaging 20 an hour through to the evening.

Just to explain what was going on over on that other rink in the photo, we had the Semi Finals and Final of the Men’s Triples…. True story, went down to the last bowl, and let’s just say one team, led by Gobby, performed the equivalent of shooting themselves in the foot and blowing 4 toes off.

I’ll leave you to decipher what that means.

Moving on, here’s the God of the Googly Brad Hogg chatting to Channel 10 Perth about the challenge and the T20 World Cup Final on Sunday night – Shane did make an appearance on the nightly news as well, and I’m pretty sure that bulletin from the 14th of November is still on 10Play:

It was good to see Hoggy get around a moment like this, because as you may or may not know, he has had his struggles with mental health in recent years, which is something he’s been pretty open about.

Now on to Hoggy vs Knotty, with a few kids engaging in a high stakes game of cornhole down the side:

This was at 3:25 yesterday afternoon, a full 29 hours in… Have a look at how well Knotty was landing them, despite having the energy of a zombie and having skin that resembled a human cross-bred with a tomato:

I wish I could’ve done that this afternoon with 2 ends to play….

Entering the final hour, Knotty was up against big Sean Mawdsley from Warnbro…. True story, I think the Trevor Chappells played against Sean in the Community Shield at Hilton Park back in April, and Sean being a 1st Division bowler, had to play left handed as the lead…

We still lost by a shot.

And this was the last bowl of the day, at 4:02pm AWST, with Shane and Natalie Knott bringing it home for the last 45 minutes, and bringing up the 500 toucha milestone in the process, the greatest 500 since Brian Lara for Warwickshire in 1994:

And no, several hundred touchas is not something Michael Jackson was accused of.

In all, Knotty and his challengers got up to a grand total of 502 touchas at $2 a touch, so simple math would say that was another $1004 to Gotcha4Life, and if this were Manning Jack Attack on Wednesday night, he wouldn’t have got a single $5 drinks voucher, because I didn’t hear a whistle once in the 10 hours I was watching on.

Once again, a fantastic record-breaking performance that shall be spoken about at Manning Memorial for as long as I’m alive, and if those drunken Irishpeople from Guinness are on the ball, then the Manning Bowling Club will have the following people as members: An Australian Test cricketer & multiple World Cup Winner, a Paralympic Gold Medalist, a Guinness World Record holder…….

And Merv Roberts.

By winning the Brazilian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton, somewhat ironically, has as many career Grand Prix victories as every Brazilian driver combined

The nation of Sir Lewis Hamilton = 101 victories

Brazil as a country = 101 victories

Now to prove it, here’s every Brazilian to win a race:

Ayrton Senna = 41

Nelson Piquet = 23

Emerson Fittipaldi = 14

Felipe Massa = 11

Rubens Barrichello = 11

Jose Carlos Pace = 1

Congratulations Sir Lewis, you have matched the biggest Formula 1 nation in South America, although they might just have you covered for World Titles….

Barely.

Jack Miller’s confirmed cameo appearance in the last round of the Australian Superbike Championship at The Bend from December 3-5

This really is happening:

“I am really excited to be able to have this opportunity and race the final round of Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK). I would love to say a massive thank you to the guys at Ducati for allowing me this opportunity amidst our busy testing schedule. To go and race in front of the Australian fans is a massive privilege and honour. Thank you the team at ASBK and Motorcycling Australia for their support at such short notice. I am also thankful to Ben Henry from DesmoSport Ducati for his help in the organisation. As you can imagine it has not been easy to try and organise everthing from the other side of the world at such short notice, having Ben and Matty Macalpine there to help me organise most things, has been very easy. I am very excited to be able to race in front of the Australian fans at least one time this year, it is going to be fantastic. I look forward to seeing everyone there!”

The most hilarious part of it all is that Ducati didn’t give Jack the race spec Panigale V4 R for free, despite him being a factory MotoGP rider, Jack himself went and bought a spare one from DesmoSport Ducati via Ben Henry.

Here’s my random fact for the Moto2 season

Despite winning 8 races and only losing the title by 4 points to Remy Gardner, Raul Fernandez never led the World Championship after any of the 18 races.

Sam Lowes led after winning the first 2 races, then Gardner grabbed the lead in the third race at Portugal when Lowes crashed out at the first corner, and as it turned out, the closest Raul got to leading first time around was the last lap of Mugello, when he was overtaken by a flying Gardner and lost in a photo finish, meaning instead of dropping the lead, Gardner extended his title lead from 1 point to 6:

After that, Gardner won the next 2 races and ultimately led by as much as 44 points after winning the British GP, before Fernandez rattled off a winning hat-trick of his own, coupled with Gardner suffering his only DNF of the season in Austin, to cut the deficit to just 9 points, before Misano II occurred, when Raul had a big lead during the race and was on top of the live championship standings with Gardner wallowing down in 9th, only for Raul to pinch the brake, lose the front end, and go flying into the Turn 6 gravel trap.

That allowed Gardner to double his lead out to 18 points with 2 races to go, and as we know, Remy won Portugal II/Algarve, leaving him only needing to finish 13th at Valencia, and with Raul winning the race (To no great surprise), Gardner successfully finished 10th in the shortened race and became the first Australian to win a World Championship since Casey Stoner won his second MotoGP title 10 years ago.

So yeah, that crash at Misano was absolutely huge when you think about it in hindsight.

The furphy of Audi buying McLaren

This stemmed from an article on Autocar.co.uk, which generally doesn’t throw major stories out like Willy Wonka chucks out free chocolate, in which they claimed the McLaren Group ownership (Led by the Bahraini sovereign wealth fund) had been presented an offer by the German automotive giant, which was rejected on the first attempt, and if they doubled their offer, then they should accept:

“According to a source, McLaren’s executive chairman Paul Walsh was presented with an offer from Audi and took it to the board, which is majority controlled by the Mumtalakat Holding Company, the sovereign wealth fund of Bahrain. It is said the board rejected the first offer, insisted Audi should double it and an agreement to conclude a deal then followed.”

But the McLaren Group fired back and essentially called it bullshit, without going as for to call it George Carlin style bullshit:

“McLaren Group is aware of a news media report stating it has been sold to Audi. This is wholly inaccurate and McLaren is seeking to have the story removed.”

“McLaren’s technology strategy has always involved ongoing discussions and collaboration with relevant partners and suppliers, including other carmakers, however, there has been no change in the ownership structure of the McLaren Group.”

That would’ve been huge if it did happen, because what people don’t know is that in the food chain, Porsche has majority control of the Volkswagen Group, which owns Bugatti and Audi, which in turn owns the likes of Lamborghini, Skoda, Seat and Ducati.

In fact, if I’ve done this right, the Porsche family obviously own Porsche Automobil Holding SE…. which in turn owns the Volkswagen Audi Group…. which owns the Porsche Motor Company.

Essentially, this could become a serious case of Porsche-ception if Audi ever buy McLaren, in fact, I wonder if the hypothetical sale of McLaren would mean that Porsche, and by extension, owned the Senna trademark, because the McLaren Group have exclusive rights to use the Senna name alongside the Instituto Ayrton Senna.

The Porsche 911 Senna…. Crikey, that makes me want to go out back and have a chunder.

And finally, this is Railway Stakes weekend, so here’s to 10 years since the upheld protest by Luckygray vs He’s Remarkable

Fun fact – Kerrin McEvoy, who rode the despised Kiwi outsider He’s Remarkable, would plead guilty and was suspended for a month for causing the interference that apparently cost Luckygray 2 lengths, denying him the win that would ultimately come via the steward’s room, which led to some people giving the finger to Perth racing, although most of them came back when they did their arses on a random Saturday and needed Pikey to help them out.

In fact, that Railway is one of only two Australian Group 1s to be decided by an upheld protest in the last decade, the other being the 2016 Australian Cup, when Awesome Rock lost the race in the steward’s room to Preferment, and funnily enough, I don’t think Kerrin McEvoy has ridden in a Perth Carnival since this fateful day…

Can’t blame him.