Well folks, today is International Women’s Day, and I think I did my bit to assist womankind…

By helping lead the Manning Women’s 4th Division Red team to one last win on our rink against Thornlie at Thornlie in the last game of the season, and it was a superb 17-13 comeback victory after trailing 1-8 after 6 ends, only to grind away and eventually break the back of the Ravens following 10 consecutive ends of 1 shot, which ended when we held a 3 and retook the lead for good with 5 ends to go.

Quoth The Raven, Nevermore.

In what will almost certainly be the final time I feature on a Tuesday, my rink of Ilona, Derry and Alison finished the year with a hat-trick of wins, but the only problem was Thornlie smashed us 31-13 on the other rink to win 44-30 overall…

BUT, most importantly of all, that point for the win officially confirmed Manning dodged the 4 Red wooden spoon (Como got it instead), so it was basically Mission Accomplished, George W. Bush style.

So if you haven’t even thought about where my Tuesday reports went over the last month, it’s because I simply didn’t have time to write them due to having to fill-in for the last couple of games for the Tuesday Ladies….

Which will probably be the only 5 games I ever play in Tuesday pennants, and for the record, the rink I was on won 4 of them, and the only time we lost was to a Bull Creek team that had more heat-related draws than defeats..

I still cannot believe that the NRL season starts on Thursday and the AFL season starts next week

Heck, between being neck deep selling Great Northern stubbies in Country Week, all the games of Pennants and having to run Jack Attack, I didn’t even realise until Monday evening that the much belated 2021 NRLW season had started, and that it was Round bloody 2 already.

Although, I did notice St George’s Madison Bartlett got nabbed for biting an Eels player….

Apparently she’s a big fan of Winona Ryder:

Random fact: Today was my first time bowling at Thornlie since the 2018 Community Shield

That was way back in April of 2018, when it was myself, Half Price, the creature known as Merv Roberts, and John ‘Duff’ Duffy representing the old Team Hope in the first Manning Jack Attack foray into the WA Bowls Community Shield, which was where we discovered someone had named their team the ‘Trevor Chappells’, and we laughed so much that we later saved it for future use at Manning.

Anyway, here’s were one of the few surviving photos I have from the 2018 visit – Duff bowling down to Merv on the dodgy old B green, which I recall had an unusual rise in the middle, reminiscent to the slope in the pitch at Lord’s:

In the time since that fateful sun and grog-filled day, in which Duff’s Nissan had a sleepover on No Hope Avenue, Thornlie have knocked down the quaint clubhouse on Ravenhill Road (Which is how they got the Ravens nickname), with the new clubroom being inside the Thornlie Park Centre, next door to the Tennis Club, and they’ve re-laid all three remaining greens, which are now all pretty top notch Synthetic greens:

You know, I thought I was a certainty to be back at Thornlie on Thursday, because the 5 White team, stuck down in 9th, are playing their last game of the season against the Ravens in a bid to stave off relegation to Division 6….

But that didn’t happen, because I discovered I’d jumped straight from 5th Division to leading in 3rd Division for the first time!

Fair dinkum, one week I’m in 5th Division, then I’m up to 4th, then I’m back to 5th, then I’m back up to 4th, then I’m back down to 5th, and now I’m held in such high regard that they rocketed me back up to 3rd in a huge show of confidence.

It’s a wonder I haven’t developed symptoms of vertigo from all this yo-yoing.

A current shot of Imam ul-Haq after scoring twin tons in Rawalpindi

Because on that concrete slab of a pitch, he’s the ROAD WARRIOR:

What a coincidence, Mad Max and Imam are both effective at inflicting punishment on Australians.

This is what 7 thousandths of a second looks like

Johann Zarco beating compatriot Fabio Quartararo for 8th place in a drag race to the finish line in Qatar…

That was the only moment Zarco was ahead of the World Champion for the entire race.

Prior to Sunday, the last time Gresini Racing won a MotoGP Grand Prix was the 2006 Portuguese Grand Prix

If you don’t know, that race at Estoril was one of the most eventful races of the MotoGP era, because it was the day Dani Pedrosa torpedoed Repsol Honda teammate Nicky Hayden and seemingly ruined Nicky’s title dreams with just the season finale to come, as Valentino Rossi was up fighting for the lead and destined to have a huge shot at his 6th consecutive title.

As it turned out, Toni Elias on the Fortuna Gresini Honda came from 3rd starting the final lap and somehow defeated Rossi’s Yamaha on the line by an official margin of 2-thousandths of a second, the equal-smallest winning margin in the history of Premier Class racing, which turned out to be Elias’ only MotoGP victory, before he dropped back to Moto2 and won the title in 2010.

Elias’ win was the last time a non-factory team won a MotoGP race until Jack Miller won the 2016 Dutch TT for Marc VDS, while those lost 5 points proved crucial, as Rossi ultimately lost the 2006 title to Hayden by 5 points after a fall at Valencia that consigned him to 13th, while Hayden finished 3rd.

Had Vale won the race at Estoril, he would’ve won his sixth consecutive title on the race wins countback 6-2.

Gresini spent a further 8 seasons with Honda but never won another race, although they did score a heap of podiums, then they became Aprilia’s factory team for 7 seasons before signing on with Ducati after Fausto’s death last year, and immediately, the first race of the all-Italian partnership results Enea Bastianini starting on the front row and winning the Qatar Grand Prix on a year-old Ducati.

These were the Australian sporting greats we lost in the space of 8 days:

February 24: John Landy, the second man in history to crack the 4-minute mile behind rival Roger Bannister, former 1500m and mile World Record holder, Olympic bronze medalist in 1500m (Melbourne 1956) and former Governor of Victoria.

February 26: Ingor Renner, 4-time World Gliding Champion, 1987 inductee to the Australian Sporting Hall of Fame.

March 3: Dean Woods, 4-time Olympic medalist, 1984 Olympic Gold Medalist at the age of 18 in the Team Pursuit as part of ‘Charlie’s Angles’

March 4: Rod ‘Bacchus’ Marsh and Shane Keith Warne, who need no further introduction.

A quirk of fate about the date of Warnie’s death

March 4 is the birthday of his long-time bunny/rival Daryll Cullinan.

Wasn’t it fitting that a leg spinner named King guided Australia to victory against England the very next day

Alanna King with 3/34 against England in the Women’s World Cup.

Finally, the RANDOM NRL PICKS WILL BE BACK TOMORROW

We had a highly successful 2021, and I see no reason to drop them for 2022, so, as they say in the classics….

WATCH THIS SPACE.