Well friends it’s Tuesday, the middle of December has come and gone, and my interesting note of the week is that Thursday will mark 10 years since the Big Bash League began, when the Sydney Sixers, who won that inaugural season, took on the Brisbane Heat at the SCG:

On that first weekend, Shane Warne at the age of 42 came out of retirement to play for the Melbourne Stars in a game where David Warner, a week after hitting his first Test century, hit the first ton in Big Bash history to lead the Sydney Thunder to victory:

And on the Sunday, the Adelaide Strikers won by 67 runs against the Melbourne Renegeades, and that Sunday night, the Perth Scorchers played the Hobart Hurricanes at the WACA, in a game that has been forgotten by everyone except the 13,000 people that attended, because the Hurricanes won by 31 runs defending a tame 140, in a game that was dominated by bowlers.

I know at least 13,000 people will remember that day, because myself and The Rocket went to the WACA that Sunday night, and it was a unique experience, because we had no idea what kind of a gimmicky crappy T20 Tournament the Big Bash League would turn into, and it was also at a time when Western Australia hadn’t won a domestic cricket title of any kind for 7 years, so nobody had any expectations the Scorchers would turn into a juggernaut, a feeling that was reinforced when they were nothing short of crap with the bat.

The one thing I really remember from that largely uneventful game was when Paul Collingwood (With an OBE), who was playing for Scorchers as one of their two imports that season alongside Herschelle Gibbs (Who turned out to be a fantastic import), came out to bat in the 2nd Innings, and the PA started blaring out ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever’.

Predictably, a crowd full of West Coast and Fremantle fans started booing themselves hoarse, which is even more predictable when you remember Collingwood knocked off the Eagles in a final that season.

Collingwood wound up making an unspectacular 4 off 13 before being trapped LBW by Ben Laughlin.

Other than that, Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey both played at a time when they were still in the Australian Test side, Ben Hilfenhaus was Player of the Match for the ‘Canes with 2/10 off 4 overs, a week before he made a Test comeback of his own, a young Mitch Marsh top scored with 35 off 35, and Brad Hogg made a comeback at age 40, taking a wicket and getting himself run out first ball going for a crazy second run.

But, as we now know, that night was the start of something great in West Australian sport.

WA’s fixed reopening is set for February 5….

Although based on Mark McGowan’s press conferences, we’ll actually open 40 minutes later than scheduled.

Here’s a photo of something that’s practically worthless

The only problem with the tagline “Every Match, Every Moment, Belongs To Our Members” is that you can’t really divide 2 matches among tens of thousands of people.

The Jack Attack trophy has received an overdue makeover in time for the Grand Final

When I unearthed it from that wall back in April after it had gone missing for 4 years, it looked as plain as an Arnott’s biscuit:

But thanks to Half Price making an overdue trip to the engraver at Waterford, it’s now got a bit of history:

Now that’s a bit of character.

This past week has been all about Australians ruining Englishmen’s hopes of victory

Of course, there was the entirety of the 1st Ashes Test:

And on Sunday night in Abu Dhabi, Michael Masi, the battler from Western Sydney, decided to fudge Article 48.12 of the Sporting Regulations by changing his mind and letting those 5 lapped cars past the Safety Car with 2 laps to go, leaving Lewis Hamilton exposed to a rampaging Max Verstappen on the final lap of the entire Formula 1 season.

Bless us Antipodean arseholes.

Max Verstappen previously said he’d use the No.1 if he won the World Championship, and now he’s confirmed it for 2022

While it may seem a minor detail, it means that 2022 will be the first season in which the No.1 has been used in Formula 1 since 2014, when Sebastian Vettel used it at Red Bull, in what was the first season of personal driver numbers.

As to what happened in the 7 years since, Lewis Hamilton routinely had the champion’s right to use the No.1, but he simply preferred his No.44, probably because he won title after title with it, although he did use it during Practice 1 for the 2018 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix:

And there’s every chance Nico Rosberg would’ve had the right to use the No.1 in 2017, but he retired a week after winning the 2016 championship.

So that also means Red Bull are going to have a Triple Nelson on their cars next year, because they’ll have Verstappen in Car 1, and Sergio Perez in Car 11, but the big positive of that is they’ll save a crapload of money on the livery budget by only having to print a crapload of 1s….

Which is what Larry Perkins figured out back in 1986, when he decided to stick the No.11 on the Perkins Commodore.

The only thing Sergio Perez didn’t do to Lewis on Sunday night was get close enough for a Shake & Bake

The International Space Station flying over Perth on Monday night

The lowly Manning 5th Division Thursday Pennants bowls team pull off the upset of the season

So last Thursday we played Rossmoyne at Manning, and to provide you some context, our bunch of low-flying Manning Eagles were 7th (Out of 10) with just 2 wins out of 6 matches after losing 5-1 at Como (My Awesome Foursome got the point for Manning), and Rossmoyne were unbeaten with a perfect 6 wins out of 6.

As you can see, with 6 points available (1 point per rink + 3 for the aggregate), we could only get as high as 6th if Como were swept at Kardinya, and we pulled off a clean sweep of the unbeaten top team.

One of those two things happened… The other nearly happened.

So starting off, fresh off that breakthrough win against Como, the ‘Daydream Team’ of JT, Nick and Bruce had a new skip in Geoff/Smiley, who used to play with Bruce in a team dubbed the “Dream Team” – That change came after our esteemed skip Michael Alphabet, the Greek from Greece, told the selectors that he was effectively retiring from Thursdays due to scheduling difficulties.

To paraphrase the great man, Michael, I like you, but your schedule is s**t!

Still, against two of the Top 4 players on the Divvy 5 White Player Ladder (Austin & Paul), and with Nick taking 4 ends to realise that we weren’t in the roll-up anymore, Manning led 18-5 after 13 ends, reeling off 7 consecutive ends through the middle of the game…

Only for Rossmoyne to find their range and reel off 4 consecutive ends to cut the score back to 18-13, but two narrow holds to JT in the final 4 ends stifled their momentum, and the Daydream Team would win 20-15, which means I’ve finally won a pennants game at home:

Another 4/5 performance from me as the lead, having comfortably taken the chocolates against Rossy’s lead.

On the middle rink, Rossmoyne held a whopping 14-1 lead after 9 ends, but the Manning foursome led by ‘Not So Fast’ Freddie clawed the final score back to 21-14 in Rossmoyne’s favour, which wound up being crucial to the final aggregate….

Because on the final rink, the Manning team led by Justin dominated most of the day and led 19-11 with an end to play, giving ‘us’ a 6-shot lead in the aggregate, and having lost that huge cushion on the middle rink, Rossmoyne, needing 6 shots to tie, could only hold 3 on the final end, and thus, the upset was complete by a very narrow margin.

53-50 on the aggregate, 5-1 in the points, thank you mother for the rabbits.

The other amazing part of that Thursday was 2nd placed Dalkeith-Nedlands also lost (5-1 At Thornlie) on Thursday, so Rossmoyne stayed on top, with Kardinya now half a point behind….

And as to be expected, Manning is still in 7th.

Australian NFL Update: Cam Johnston now looks like Bill Burr

Hang on, this ad for Rebates is just Gladys Berejiklian disguised as an old man

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Final anniversary for the day: It’s 49 years since Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt became the last men to walk on the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission

As most of you know, I am a fan of coincidences, and those Apollo missions provided us with one of history’s great coincidences.

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, attended Purdue University.

Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, attended Purdue University.

Keeping up this Boilermaker theme, one of the Mercury Seven astronauts Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom, who was later the command pilot for the ill-fated Apollo 1, attended Purdue University.