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October 2004 | |
Interview: The Last Bastian Unions: High and Dry Security: Liquid Borders Industrial: No Bully For You History: Radical Brisbane International: No Vacancies Economics: Life After Capitalism Technology: Cyber Winners Poetry: Do It Yourself Poetry Review: Hard Labo(u)r
Politics Parliament The Soapbox The Locker Room Parliament Postcard
The Premiership Quarter
Xerox Copies Waterfront Tactics Hardies Asbestos Woes "Snowballs" Air Fleet Grounded By Job Cuts Pacific National Sidetracks Hunter Jobs Black Diamond Deaths Spark Mining Inquiry Pensioners Strip Over Pension Strip
Problem Solved How To Run Society
Labor Council of NSW |
The Locker Room First Past The Post
***** Watching the once great game of Rugby League descend onto a festival of corporate bestiality saddens this column. The modern game is an ugly spectacle. A sort of hybrid between pro-wrestling and touch football. No one gets deep and runs onto the ball in attack. You have to watch a team coached by Gentleman John Lang before you will come across a side that has the intestinal fortitude to run the ball up the middle of the ruck. No wonder we have to put up with spoilt brats like Chris Walker, and the sight of Chris Flannery (the footballer, not the hit man) limping off with an injured testicle. John Sattler wouldn't have given a rats about having an injured testicle. In fact Sattler, who was never a brat, probably would have played on even if the jewels had been ripped off and thrown into the southern stand at Belmore. Whether it was the Johnny Peard bomb, the ten-metre rule, second row scrum feeds or Warren Ryan that killed Rugby League as a spectacle is a moot point - best saved for when you want to get into a fight down the pub. Thankfully football season 2004 can be safely forgotten for another few weeks as spring arrives and our minds turn to more edifying pursuits, such as horse racing, betting systems and pawning electrical goods. Spring is the time of the great Southern Hemisphere racing carnivals. The Cox plate, the Caulfield Cup, the Epsom Handicap, the Metropolitan and the biggie of them all, the Melbourne Cup are all coming up over the next few weeks. Luckily Group One racing in Australia has descended into some bizarre joke where specious ring-ins and non-contenders leave form and field selections rather murky to say the least. The old firms of Waterhouse (nee Smith) and Cummings are on the wane and these days listed races attract more characters than a Beijing phone book. So punters can thank god for midweek provincial races if they are to get to what constitutes the heart and soul of the Sport of Kings, which is making some nice readies with very little sweat of the brow. There are three sorts of fools that bet on horses in midwinter, and this column is one of them. Now that the season of four horse fields and drunken jockeys is behind us we can start to keep an eye out for conveyances returning from a spell of six months or more, or those that have recently arrived in the country after running around some extraordinarily provincial track in NZ. These potentates, some smelling of a recent paint job on the flanks, will appear at interesting odds at midweek provincial races with eponymous form tips such as 'market best guide', 'worth watching' or 'needs this outing'. The Locker Room would advise that readers put their life savings on such conveyances as the prices available first up are never to be repeated ones, and is probably your best bet at winning enough of the folding stuff to start your own space program. * In case of disappointment readers should console themselves that Man U's profits took a tumble last month, and market analysts (who we hope aren't Paul Scholes) say that the dosh at Old Trafford will continue to head south on falling media revenues. Traditionalists can rejoice. It is the beginning of the end. Phil Doyle - spinning out of control at the end of Conrod Straight. * - Persons with increasing dudgeon vis a vis the absence of efficacy appearing from this equine munificence system proposed should send their complaints in writing to: The Hon John Howard MP, Parliament House, CANBERRA ACT 2600
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