So it’s the last Tuesday of September, and staying on the subject of Grand Finals, today marks 25 years since the Adelaide Crows won their maiden AFL premiership against St Kilda, becoming the first team in league history to win four consecutive finals to win the premiership, with the game best remembered for Malcolm Blight’s move of Darren Jarman to full-forward in the final quarter, and Jarman memorably destroyed the Saints’ dreams of a second premiership by kicking 5 goals in the last term, which turned a reasonably close game into a comfortable 31-point win for the Crows.

In all, Jarman kicked 6 goals in the 2nd Half… so did St Kikda.

Jarman became an all-time hero in South Australia, Andrew McLeod won the Norm Smith Medal, but another outstanding performance that day was Shane Ellen kicking 5 goals for the Crows, a wild return considering he hadn’t kicked a goal in 1997, had only kicked 3 goals in his previous 38 games, and finished his career with only 16 goals.

So that set up this great coincidence:

September 1997: Pat Rafter won the US Open, Robert Harvey won the Brownlow, Adelaide won the Grand Final, and Andrew McLeod won the Norm Smith Medal.

September 1998: Pat Rafter won the US Open, Robert Harvey won the Brownlow, Adelaide won the Grand Final, and Andrew McLeod won the Norm Smith Medal.

Speaking of Grand Finals, I’ve got a 25th anniversary special for one of the best rugby league Grand Finals ever played tomorrow…

Remember: Daylight Savings starts in NSW, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT on Sunday

As for the other states who actually live in the 21st Century, you’ll be sleeping in as per usual on Sunday morning.

As for the end date, it’ll be in exactly 6 months – April 2, 2023.

I was quite alarmed when my meat last night looked like a deformed version of the Australian mainland

I think the cucumbers are meant to be Papua New Guinea, and the mushrooms must be Indonesia

For the record, I ate Victoria first.

The people who hacked Optus and demanded a $1,000,000 ransom are complete nonsenses who deserve all the crap they’ve got coming

Why the hell would you demand ONLY $1,000,000 for one of the biggest data breaches this country has ever seen?

If you’re going to hold that much data, surely you’d be demanding something that’s much more threatening than a pissy little million dollars..

You know who would demand more?

DR EVIL.

When you go wide in the last two legs of the quaddie with your mates, only to find out you’re gone after the 1st Leg

I still have no idea how this happened

One of these teams is full of promise and has a bright future, the other is Hawthorn.

The last time Geelong lost a game, Scott Morrison was the Prime Minister

May 14, which will also sadly be remembered as the day Andrew Symonds died, was when Geelong led St Kilda by 22 points in the 3rd Quarter at Marvel Stadium, only to lose by 10 points thanks to Paddy Ryder deciding to destroy all in his path.

At that time, Geelong were 5-4 and 4 games off Melbourne on top of the ladder, the Federal Election was 7 days away, Boris Johnson was 2 months away from resigning as British PM, Vangelis was still alive, and Monkeypox was 8 days old and hadn’t reached 100 cases worldwide.

The last two teams to win their last 16 games of an AFL season (Including the Grand Final) have both featured Chris Scott

Of course, 16 consecutive wins is the longest winning run to END a season in league history.

The 2001 Brisbane Lions won their last 13 games of the home & away season, then comfortably won all 3 finals to claim their maiden premiership in the first leg of the threepeat, with Scott playing off half-back while his twin brother Brad roamed around the middle.

And the 2022 Geelong Cats have/had Scott as their head coach, winning their last 13 games of the home & away season followed by all 3 finals, the last 2 in a canter, although the major difference between 2001 and 2022 is that Geelong won the minor premiership to go with the premiership, whereas the Lions missed out on the minor premiership on percentage to Essendon, before giving them a dry licking in the Grand Final.

Still, if you want a reference, the 2022 Cats are only the third team in history to win their last 16 games of the season.

I mentioned the 2001 Lions, but the first team to win their last 16 games of a season was the almighty Carlton team of 1995, who became the first team in history to win 20 games in a home & away season before going on to win all 3 finals, finishing with a then-record 23 wins from 25 games, a record only bettered by the 2000 Essendon team who went 24-1.

In a bid to gain a bit of good karma for Sunday’s NRL Grand Final, the Parramatta Eels have asked the Ablett family if they can also run out on the ground carrying Levi Ablett

No reason, I just wanted to see that photo again.

Geelong rocking up for Mad Monday in the Retirement Village minivan

It’s a good thing they didn’t have Mad Monday at Geelong Cement Bowling Club, because judging by Patrick Dangerfield’s Geelong Cement get-up, he’d have been asked to play a pennant game.

And it appears Geelong Cement Bowling Club know about it:

Actually, looking at those flat caps, the Cats have earned a new nickname…

CREAKY BLINDERS.

Highlights from the Manning Men’s 2 Bowl Singles

After the AFL Grand Final was run and won, a cool Sunday morning saw the biggest sporting event of the weekend on the Australian mainland, with the commencement of the Manning Bowling Club Men’s 2 Bowl Singles, featuring a decent field of 36 bowlers, which was cut down to 34 after 2 un-named players forgot it was on and spent Saturday evening on their respective farms.

Now, for those of you who weren’t wondering, the primary difference between standard 4 bowl singles and 2 bowl singles is that 2 bowls is primarily focused on draw bowling, which means the players that predominantly play as leads in pennants tend to come out on top thanks to a lack of driving, and if you can’t get any worse than second shot in 2 bowls, you’ll find yourself up the creek very quickly.

As for the scoring, the sectionals were first to 15 and the semi-finals + Final were first to 18, and when it came to the sectionals, 6 groups were sent to the putrid confines of B Green, while 6 groups got to play on the Lord’s Carpet that is the Synthetic, and for the third consecutive singles tournament at Manning, yours truly was drawn against Keith Godfrey, the man who sharpens his elbows with an angle grinder, who also happens to be a 2-time winner of the event, so I was up against it to win the section.

For context, this time last year I played Keith in the 2 bowls and lost 15-3, but this time around it was a much more even affair, with Keith pulling out every trick in the book to lead 11-6 after scrounging out 10 holds of 1 shot, but yours truly hadn’t heard the bell and held the next 4 shots to cut it back to 10-11 with Bill Conti’s Rocky music playing in his head, but a decisive moment was when I was holding 2 and Godfrey dropped one dead on the jack to make it 12-10, and the game ended with Godfrey winning 15-11.

Next up I played 5th Division lead Adrian (Who I’d played with several times last season and enjoyed plenty of wins), and with the major advantage of playing 1st Up and ready to set a furious pace, I was up 10-0 within 20 minutes, then had to stave off a spirited comeback from Adrian after holding game on 3 separate occasions to eventually win 15-11, which meant I couldn’t go through regardless of the result of the final game due to shot variance, but Godfrey defeated Adrian 15-12 and made sure variance never came into it, although our section turned out to be a dud form reference, because Godfrey was belted 15-7 by Phil Gillespie in a replay of the 2002-03 final.

As the afternoon wore on and the sea breeze picked up to ensure it never got beyond 20 degrees, the peanut gallery built up on C Green to watch the knockouts, and they were treated to some great contests, among them Murray Piggott vs Phil Gillespie, in which Muzza had to survive a big comeback by Gillespie to win 15-13, while Jared of Manning Jack Attack came from the grass to play against defending champ Joe Angel, who was in desperate trouble as Jared led 13-12 and was holding game with a shot to play, but Joe proceeded to trail the jack on said bowl, followed by doing it two more times to win the game 15-13, before Joe himself was brought undone by club president Steve Salamon 15-13 in the quarter final.

I think Joe’s downfall was when we let him know Claremont had kicked the first 3 goals against East Fremantle in the WAFL Prelim (Joe used to play for East Freo) while he was playing Salamon, because the big fella didn’t get a shot for the rest of the game.

Undoubtedly, the star of the day was 1st Division lead Steve Lambert, who was still playing with a set of brown bowls that he’s been trying to sell for months, but I think Steve’s tacked a couple of hundred dollars onto the asking price with his performance on Sunday, because he ripped his way through a section featuring 2 other 1st Division leads (Gatti & Macpherson) despite having to mark the 1st Game, proceeded to wick Razor Ray Chester out of the running 15-8 in the Quarter Final, which was followed by a rest due to the alignment rounds, and once they came back out for the Semi Finals at 3 o’clock, Steve dispatched Matt Hoskin 18-7 to reach the final, where he’d play Murray Piggott, who recently came back to the club refreshed after 7 months wandering around the northern parts of Australia…

And Adelaide.

In the final, which was played while South Perth United belted out Tubthumping and Sweet Caroline in celebration of some form of a title, in addition to our peanut gallery talking endless amounts of crap, Lambert applied the blowtorch to Murray and led 15-8 in another outstanding display of draw bowling, as Murray clearly struggled after being told to remove his colourful Kalbarri hat due to it not being a Manning club hat.

But Murray finally got the mat back and brought it forward (Despite putting a few rolls into the ditch), a tactic that paid off as he cut the score back to 15-14, but Lambert responded and sealed the title with a hold of 2 to get the mat back, followed by a 1, with the winning bowl being a wick that moved the jack back to his closest bowl, a fitting end to a Sunday in which he racked up at least 20 wicks, according to the players he took out.

Full results here:

If the Eels do spring the upset against Penrith on Sunday, I hope they celebrate like they did when they won their maiden premiership 41 years ago today

By burning down the Cumberland Oval Grandstand.

Commbank Stadium is now on the site of the old Cumberland Oval.

I’ve got two words for them.

WATCH OUT.

My Patrick Dangerfield No Premiership jokes have been buried, next to the Leonardo Di Caprio has no Academy Award jokes that died in 2016

I always enjoyed this one from 2019, when Marlion Pickett made his debut in a Grand Final, the year before Dangerfield finally made one:

But, quoth the raven, NEVERMORE.

The FIBA Women’s World Cup won’t get too many highlights in the mainstream media, but the Australia vs Canada match should be put on repeat.

It probably will be played on repeat in the Blicavs household, considering Sara Blicavs is in the Australian team, while on another screen they can watch Mark Blicavs, the worst basketballer in the family, play in Geelong’s Grand Final win.

The Grand Master himself Magnus Carlsen providing us with some spicy chess drama with his statement on Hans Niemann

For god’s sake, why don’t they just settle it like reasonable teenagers…

Lock them in a cage make them play a match naked.

Bill Brown died at the age of 81 on Saturday

The name may sound very generic, but Bill Brown (No relation to current Supercars driver Will Brown) is best remembered for a couple of reasons to Australian racing fans.

First of all, he won A Class in the 1964 Bathurst 500 in a Vauxhall, second of all, he was one of the drivers that raced for the Holden Dealer Racing Team in 1968, the precusor to the Holden Dealer Team that would be formed by Harry Firth in 1969…

And most of all, he was remembered best for two spectacular crashes at Bathurst – The first coming in 1969, when he rolled his Falcon GTHO coming through Skyline on Lap 17, also causing John French to roll his Alfa Romeo in the process…

But even more spectacular was his crash in the 1971 Bathurst 500, which remains one of the nastiest crashes ever seen on Mount Panorama, as Brown’s XY GTHO Phase III Falcon blew a tyre on the run through McPhillamy Park while he was in 4th overall, causing the Falcon to barrel roll along a fence, slicing the car in half just behind Brown in the driver’s seat.

Even more amazing is that two trackside marshals weren’t killed during the rollover:

Another notable achievement by Brown during his career was that he raced in the 1975 Bathurst 1000 with his then-wife Sue Ransom in a Ford Escort RS2000, finishing 3rd in B-Class and 11th overall, which remains the best finish by a husband-wife pairing in the race’s history.

Funnily enough, Brown and Ransom would drive together again in 1978, by which time they’d divorced… They retired just 20 laps short of the finish.

Monday marked 1 year since the Russian Grand Prix

Best remembered for the heavy rain that fell in the last 10 laps that caught out several drivers, Lewis Hamilton winning his 100th Grand Prix, Max Verstappen coming from last on the grid to 2nd and saving his championship, and Lando Norris (after starting on pole) losing his maiden win after misjudging the level of grip his slicks had as the rain fell, although I’d forgotten about this moment…

This was Lance Stroll on the Aston Martin team radio being asked if he can stay out on Slicks on a rapidly deteriorating track, to which he replies yes.

Stroll went off seconds later, nudged the tyre barrier, continued and finished a distant 11th.

And finally, with another anniversary, today is the 30th anniversary of Ricardo Patrese getting airborne in Estoril after clouting Gerhard Berger and somehow not being splattered against the overhead pedestrian bridge

The days before aero pieces started cluttering cars… Probably explains most the incident.

It’s worth remembering that crash occurred 10 years before HANS devices were even tested on Formula 1 cars.

How the hell Patrese didn’t end up with some kind of a skull fracture was a miracle.