Well friends, there’s only 7 days to go until the summer begins, although it seems the Christmas season has already kicked off, there’s only 2 days until our friends from the US and A endure Thanksgiving, and today’s milestone is the 15th anniversary of the 2006-07 Ashes getting underway, and epitomising the events that would befall the English over the next 6 weeks, Steve Harmison sent the opening delivery to Andrew Flintoff at 2nd slip.

In another cricketing related anniversary, today is the 60th birthday for the one and only Swervin’ Mervyn Hughes!

Get him up here, I wanna boof him, Merv Merv Merv!

Good to see the Australian captain appearing on the updated cover of the upcoming Cricket 22 game

And there’s also Pat Cummins:

Nick Riewoldt finally experiences something resembling a Grand Final victory

Fancy what Rooey could do when Heath Shaw wasn’t sneaking around like a librarian.

FYI, there will be Big Bash fixture changes

After the AAP dropped the story on the midnight newswire, the WACA have let all of us toffs that pay their membership fees know that there’s going to be at least a few changes for the Scorchers prior to Christmas, so here we go, as per Terry ‘Tuck’ Waldron’s letter:

“The Scorchers need your help to make an explosive start to their 2021-22 KFC Big Bash League season by creating the notoriously intimidating home crowd for their opening game on Wednesday 8 December, when they take on the Brisbane Heat.
 
Then they return to #TheFurnace on Monday 20 December in their clash against D’Arcy Short and the Hobart Hurricanes.  
 
Their showdown with the Adelaide Strikers on Saturday 11 December has been moved to the Sydney Showgrounds due to Western Australia’s State Government COVID-19 border restrictions.
 
The Strikers would have played in Melbourne four days earlier and at this stage the State Government’s regulations does not permit access into WA from an ‘extreme risk state’ (which is Victoria’s current status) within that time frame, even if the game is played in a COVID bio-security bubble.“

And yes, they still use #TheFurnace for Scorchers home games at Optus, even though the one true Furnace is the WACA.

Well, the loss of that home game could more or less be offset by the Scorchers women hosting the WBBL Grand Final at Optus Stadium this Saturday

Considering both the knockout finals over the next 2 days are in Adelaide, I think there’s a good chance they’ll be playing the Strikers, who could conceivably get 2 home knockout finals if they knock off the Brisbane Heat tomorrow night, which would then have them playing the Renegades in an effective Preliminary Final.

Still, it is the WBBL, and one of it’s main strengths is that anyone can defeat anyone.

I’ve now mentioned the A-League more times than Fox Sports have since the end of Week 1

Sounds like someone’s a little bit disappointed they lost the TV rights after 16 years.

While all the eyes were on Daniel Sturridge, who wound up appearing for the last 5 minutes, I was too busy marvelling at Bruno Fornaroli producing the goal of the week in the Perth Glory vs Adelaide Strikes game…. just to salvage a point.

It seems that seeing that fan projectile vomiting courtside was enough for the Sacramento Kings to make a coaching change

Well, that guy, whether he was Puke Walton, Pukahontas or Mr Creosote, is now a legend in Sacramento.

Another hilarious fact – The Kings made that strategic announcement at 1pm Eastern US time on Sunday.

If you don’t know, that’s the exact same time the Sunday afternoon slate of NFL games are kicking off.

You can only conclude they didn’t want many people to realise.

Staying on that vomiting incident, here’s a few stats from the post I put up about it on Sunday

I bring this up because I consider it a big deal for a tiny little website like this….

In the last 48 hours, I’ve had 343 views from IP addresses in the the United States, and oddly enough, 60 from Italy, most of them enthralled at the sight of a grown man vomiting courtside in the biggest basketball league in the known universe.

By comparison, during the 31 days of October, I had 204 visitors from the US.

It probably shouldn’t be that surprising, considering it was a post about the NBA, and all up, the count for the Mr Creosote post is currently at 454 views, which would make it my 3rd-best for the year to date, behind the Random Facts for the AFL Preliminary Finals, and the Don McKinnon ‘It Happens’ post from May of 2020, which is just about to crack 1,000 for this year.

Chances are I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but people, no matter what race, religion, colour or language, have a wild fascination for blokes pissing on a footy field.

See, sport brings us all together.

“If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious s***.”

Renault/Alpine helped bring Turbo engines into Formula 1 back in the early 1980s, and now they’ve brought in Flux Capacitors.

Shane van Gisbergen attempting doughnuts after wrapping up the Supercars title on Sunday

Although to be honest, due to the fact that the Sunday race at Eastern Creek got cancelled due to heavy rain, it looks more like a four-wheeled Torvill and Dean.

To be honest, Gizzy should’ve celebrated his title win back in March, because he was so far ahead of everyone that he had it wrapped up after the first 2 rounds.

Jordan Mailata may have watched The Blindside before the Eagles-Saints game

“Where were you taking him?

“To the bus.”

The ATP introducing timed toilet breaks for the 2022 Tour

From the BBC, which oddly filed this story under Cricket:

Players on the ATP Tour will be limited to bathroom breaks of no more than three minutes from the start of next season.

The clock will start when a player reaches the bathroom, with time violations enforced if individuals take too long.

Players will be allowed one bathroom break per match, which can only be taken at the end of a set.

An additional two minute break will be allowed to change clothing.

Stefanos Tsitisipas’ bathroom antics riled Andy Murray at this year’s US Open, but lengthy breaks to clear a player’s mind have been common in the sport for many years.

Surely a more practical solution to this issue of players violating fair play (Hello Mr Tsitsipas) is to put 2 portaloos courtside, so the players, and possibly the officials, can cut down on travel time to the restroom, and if they’ve really got to do a Number 2, the officials and fans in the arena will be able to tell, because the noise, and the smell, will be enough to kill a baby elephant.

Two-wheeled highlight of the weekend… Joel Kelso coming from 30th to win Race 1 of the CEV Repsol Junior Moto3 finale at Valencia

Whatever Joel learned during his midseason Moto3 wildcards prior to the summer break has really paid off, because after DNFing in the first 3 races of the season, he finished in the points in the last 9 races, and won 3 out of the last 7 races of the season at Portimao, Misano and Valencia, the third win coming after he was stuck down in 30th due to technical issues, but in the mixed conditions over 17 laps, the Territorian was absolutely fantastic and won by just over 2 seconds, securing 4th overall in the World Championship after finishing 6th in Race 2.

Fantastic way to end the year for Joel, who will make the full-time jump up into the Moto3 World Championship on a KTM for CIP Green Power in 2022, giving Australia some representation in the lightweight classes with Remy Gardner racing in MotoGP alongside Jack Miller.

And finally, after reading all the sports reports from this weekend and combining them together, I’ve come to the conclusion that Peng Shuai is going to be appointed the new manager of Manchester United

Obviously United did want Zinedine Zidane and Mauricio Pochettino to replace Ole Gunnar Solksjaer, but Peng will have to do.