Maintaining the rage

Clearly, the Melbourne Storm players have not read the script. One emotional, redemptive, us-against-the-world flogging of a hapless victim was only to be expected: even pre-ordained. But a second playing-for-nothing-else-but-pride-and-each-other belting could be seen as going too far. The Cowboys' Willie Mason, who saw the Storm close-up and personal on Saturday night, says they were "scary" and predicted that they could win every game for the rest of the year (he even gave them rugby league's highest praise, describing them as "a grouse football team.") The players say coach Craig Bellamy has loosened the shackles and told the team to play for fun. This is uncharted territory for league fans: the Bulldogs played for no points in 2002, but only toward the end of the season. Rugby League is a notoriously attritional, debilitating season, with the load of representative games piling on top of an already-long season - especially when you have, as Melbourne do, some of the most heavily involved multi-level players. Can the Storm's current level of über -motivation last? In Melbourne, they would certainly like to think so. And if it does, it is likely to revolutionise coaching: no more "it's all about getting the two points." Can you imagine a coach saying: "At the end of the day, it's all about a group of blokes delighting in how well they can play the game, revelling in each other's skills, feeding off the feeling of being part of a team, and all drawing from a deep well of will to win the game - just because they wanted to?" 

Angry, of Essendon, writes ...

Yes, I am an Essendon supporter. But the rushed behind free kick paid against Henry Slattery on Saturday night was ridiculous. And it was no surprise that it was the AFL's Mr. Officious, Scott McLaren, who paid it. The rule was brought in to stop players rushing the ball under no pressure, to get a quick reload on the kick-in. The umpires were obliged to give the benefit of the doubt to the defenders, such that where there was implied (ie. perceived by the defender) pressure, rushing a behind was allowable. As it has been. So why, after five rounds, does Scott McLaren decide that the rule is actually black-and-white, that there is no room for benefit of the doubt to be given to the defender? When the penalty is a goal, no less? No, Jeff Gieschen (AFL Director of Umpiring) and Scott McLaren have to realise that - just as with the equally stupid deliberate out-of-bounds rule - the Slattery interpretation has to be paid every time, or not at all.

Boys, your job is to play the game

While I'm on the subject, can we get rid of players appealing for free kicks? Australian rules football is not cricket: the umpires will make decisions without being asked. It is becoming a very unedifying spectacle, with players starting to carry on like Italian soccer players appealing for a penalty. Even creeping into the game is players trying to prompt the umpires by mimicking the signals for decisions such as holding the ball (although they don't yet achieve the balletic flourish that takes the umpires six weeks in a dance studio in the pre-season to master.) I would like the clubs to be told that this kind of melodrama could actually negate the free kick being sought.

Off the long run

Thanks to Misbah-ul-Haq, for shelling a couple of (difficult) early chances that enabled Shane Watson to get going and pace Australia to 191 overnight, a target that was beyond the defending T20 world champions, Pakistan. Australia's win was all that could have been asked for in their opening match, with good contributions with the bat from Watson; the Suburban Boy, David Warner; and the newly central-contractless David Hussey (who re-filed his application to Cricket Australia rather emphatically) backed up splendidly by Tait-Nannes-Johnson speed attack. If there was anything from the victory with which to quibble it was that the Pakistanis got hold of our slow bowlers when they had to be used, but the damage was contained. Australia is bucking the trend at the T20 World Cup with a reliance on pace, but it did the job first up.

Robbo, our green baize hero

One of the nation's longest-standing sporting droughts could be about to end tonight, at the famed Crucible in Sheffield, if Melbourne's Neil Robertson can turn a slight advantage at the halfway mark of the final of the World Snooker Championship into Australia's first title since Horace Lindrum in 1952 (and even that was tainted, with Lindrum being one of only two of the leading players at the time not to boycott that year's event.) Not since 1975, when Eddie Charlton lost at his third attempt, has Australia even had a finalist at the Crucible. But the 28-year-old Robertson - the Nick Riewoldt of snooker - has overcome a nervous start to lead Scot Graeme Dott 9-7 after the second session. Robertson's impressive powers of concentration will be tested to the limit tonight: in a lamentable failure of diary management, his Norwegian girlfriend Mille is due to give birth. That's right - while he is trying to finish off his first world title win. No pressure.

Don't do it, Thorpey

Just as the superannuated Group I winners that sit underneath the clerks of the courses get antsy during the heightened atmosphere of the Spring Carnival - sometimes trying to block the winners they are leading in from parking in the winner's stall in the mounting yard - so has the smell of an approaching Olympics reportedly got into the nostrils of Ian Thorpe. Leave us with the memories, Thorpey, and leave the suit in the wardrobe. Besides, it isn't legal anymore.*

(* Clarification: In no way do I wish to suggest or imply that Ian Thorpe would not possess his medals and records if it were not for swimming suits he wore at various times.)