Jet lag - after 50 minutes

Enough is enough, for Essendon and West Coast supporters. Both groups are heartily sick of the pointlessness of their teams' interstate trips - made worse for Eagles fans by the simple fact that they do it more often than Essendon. West Coast has lost 26 of its last 28 games away from Subiaco. I can empathise with the frustrated Eagles army, because as an Essendon supporter I have had enough of institutionalised interstate failure. Essendon has won just eight from the past 36 games in Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane. It has won two from its last 16 trips to Adelaide, two from its past 14 in Perth, four from its past 14 to Brisbane and six of its past 14 in Sydney. Essendon appears to have talked itself into a mindset in which going through the metal detectors at Tullamarine strips away all basic concepts of effort, run, accountability, execution and composure. What is worse is that the players appear to accept this: they have their pre-prepared excuse of it "being tough to win on the road," so they go through the motions in an exercise they do not believe from the start can be successful. It is a disgraceful indictment of them as professional sportsmen, and of the club as an organisation that it accepts this state of mind. Quite simply, Essendon is beaten in its interstate games when the fixture comes out. (In Adelaide, make that ‘belted'.) The predictability is devastating. I look with admiration at how professionally Geelong, Collingwood and St. Kilda approach road trips - even in finals, a situation that only compounds Essendon's surrender-oriented mindset. I look at Hawthorn volunteering to play out of Melbourne, and actually creating a second-home advantage. I look enviously at Fremantle, and the way it has come to grips with travelling - and again, it travels a lot more than Essendon. It shows the insularity of AFL football that in the first days of national expansion, clubs were allowed to get away with the excuse that it was difficult to win interstate: it shows the insularity of Essendon that it alone has elevated an alibi to a core principle.

The return of the blond leggie

So Steve Smith, at 21, is now our front-line Test spinner, with a first-class bowling average of 48.84. Good judges say that this is a mockery and will definitely improve. A blond legspinner is on a hiding to nothing coming into the Australian team, but Smith is an outstanding cricketer and a very exciting prospect. We just have to remember that he is an all-rounder, not Shane Warne Mark II, and in fact his bowling may not yet be up to Test level. In that sense it is good that Smith will make his debut against Pakistan and not in the heightened pressure of an Ashes Test. He certainly cannot be faulted in the way that his cricket has advanced while he has been part of the Australian set-up, in the two short formats, and now the opportunity for a very long career presents itself at Test level, if his trajectory of improvement continues. Like everybody, I completely under-estimated the extent to which Australia's ascendancy over England was due to Warne and McGrath: that is why the temptation to think of Smith and Josh Hazlewood as reincarnations of the great ones is very strong. Smith is unlikely to be Warne, but he certainly looks capable of filling the all-rounder role - in which a capable wrist-spinner is a much better option than a gunbarrel-straight, too-short, cut-and-drive-me purveyor like Shane Watson.

Wild thing, you make that (white) ball zing

While it was great to see Shaun Tait back in action and putting the wind up both the speed gun and the English batsmen, Ricky Ponting is pushing the envelope of credibility saying that he wants the Wild Thing in the Test team. Tait quit first-class cricket for good reasons: he knows his body well, and the rigours of four-day matches - let alone Tests - were beyond it. Plus, the short forms of the game give him the ideal opportunity to try to blast batsmen out - but it's not as if there is a Plan B. Yes, it warmed the cockles of the heart to see the likes of Craig Kieswetter and Eoin Morgan turning their thoughts from the prospect of a 5-0 whitewash toward the more pressing matter of surviving grievous injury, but I would hate to see Tait trying that on an unresponsive fourth-day road: we saw enough of that from Brett Lee. And just try to imagine an Australian attack with Tait in it, and Shane Watson going down with injury again, or Mitchell Johnson being unable to find the pitch: all of a sudden, one hand gets tied behind Australia's back - a situation we've been in too often against the English of late. By all means fire the Wild Thing up in the yellow uniform - but please selectors, think more clearly than that when contemplating the Ashes.

And then there were four

If nothing else, the World Cup semi-finalists show that rewards await the teams that are sent out there to play as a team and enjoy it. It is not enough to assemble a group of superstars like a Brazil, a France, an Argentina or an Italy (or England, in their own, their media's and their fans' minds.) and send it out in World Cup. The delight that each of the semi-finalists shows in playing as a team is plain to see. Certainly Uruguay took that to the nth degree with its raucous celebrations after Luis Suarez's intentional handball on the goal line against Ghana: quite clearly, Suarez was a hero for taking one for the team. But of all the rule changes that FIFA must make after this World Cup, the Suarez incident should in future mean an automatic goal, and a send-off. But it still makes my blood boil that Luis Suarez's deliberate act, and Harry Kewell's imperceptible bodily twitch, received exactly the same sanction: only this time, the Ghanaian blew the penalty. (If you haven't yet watched the replay of the Ghana-Uruguay penalty shoot-out, watch it for the effort of the Ghanaian captain: he scuffs the ground as he kicks it, and pushes the lamest penalty attempt you've ever seen at the goalie. The Accra-mony at home will likely rage for some time.)

No pressure, Ben

Kudos to Ben Mitchell for making the Wimbledon boys' final. Although Mitchell lost the final in straight sets, the very fact that he made it will hearten supporters of Australian tennis, who can see that when Lleyton Hewitt finally drags his beaten body off into the sunset after a wonderful career, the Australian mens' cupboard is temporarily empty. Over the last ten years the likes of Mark Phillipoussis, Chris Guccione (who lost this same final in 2003, and peaked at a ranking of 67 in 2008), Todd Reid (who peaked at a ranking of 105 in 2004), Brydan Klein (currently working off a bad-boy reputation after accepting a six-month ATP ban for making a racial slur) and Bernard Tomic (undoubted ability, but appears to carry a sense of entitlement not supported by results or ranking) have been looked to as the great hope of Australian tennis, but for various reasons have not come through. If Hewitt retired today, Australia's only player in the Top 100 would be Peter Luczak, ranked 84 - but Luczak is almost 31 years old, and can't be expected to remain on the tour much longer. Australia did win the Junior Davis Cup - the 16-and-under title - in Mexico in December, and Davis Cup captain John Fitzgerald believes the team of Queenslander Jason Kubler, South Australian Luke Saville and New South Welshman Joey Swaysland make the nation's prospects the brightest in years, but their flowering on the senior tour is some years off. The same goes for the 17-year-old Mitchell, the latest tyro to pick up the faded banner of Australia's past tennis glory, but in the words of Simon and Garfunkel, "a nation turns its lonely eyes to you."