Pitt: stop

We begin with nominative determinism. Many of our readers will be aware of the well-documented findings that almost everyone named Brad is a cock. Particularly Brad the ute-driving Cletus from Woombieland who tried to crash our one-dayer mission to the Gabba a few years back. You know who you are, choad warrior. We even HAD a spare ticket and there was still no fuckin' way you were getting it.
















Some folk'll never eat a skunk, and then again some folk'll...

Brad Pitt continues to fail to disprove Brad Cock Theory. No, not just because he mates with rubber-faced brother-snogging freaks like Angelina Jolie, or because he's allegedly better looking than us. No, because he's single-handedly responsible for Cletus-among-Cletuses, Nicky 'The Kentucky Kid' Hayden, winning the MotoGP world title. And the Doctor (not me, the other one) not winning it.

Explain further? Thought you'd never ask.

In the latest issue of Esquire magazine, timed to coincide with the run-up to this weekend's MotoGP finale in Valencia, little unshaven Bradley has waxed lyrical about the funky-fresh stylez of one Valentino Rossi, in an article entitled 'The 15 Things I Think Everything Should Know'. Such as whether Ange is as gutter-filthy in the sack as one might reasonably assume her to be, I'm guessing. On the topic of the Doctor, Pitt labelled him 'mesmerising' and 'a magician', describing his work as 'pure ballet' and claiming he has 'a sort of innate sense of balance that's beyond mortal man... He's like Lance Armstrong on a motorcycle. Just poetry to watch.'

Yes, poetry to watch. Absolutely. Except when he drops the thing like a 250-riding L-plater at a wet intersection. Then he's a fuckin' idiot to watch.

Statistically, Rossi crashing out of a championship decider is as rare an event as, say, a Schumacher-pedalled Ferrari F1 car blowing up in the second-last race of the year, or even more obscure, a Ford winning Bathurst. But, like the other weirdo entries on our Bizarre Shit file for October, it happened.

But how did it happen?

Rossi has won the last five premier-class world championships, bridging the old two-stroke era when the bikes were basically hand grenades with handlebars, to the modern era of 200mph four-stroke missiles. The last time Rossi was without a world championship to his name, New York still had twin towers and Alex Zanardi still had legs. The last time Rossi failed to reign supreme in a championship decider, it was Valencia (again) in 2000 when he dropped it (again) chasing an American with an ego the size of a small planet (again) - Kenny Roberts, on the Suzuki RGV500. Since the introduction of the four-stroke MotoGP rules four years ago, noone has beaten him. He almost single-handedly brought championship glory back to Yamaha, who hadn't won since Wayne Rainey had a functional lower half of his body.

However, like another certain seven-times world champion in Another Motorsport Series, he's had a pretty indifferent year. Despite five wins to Hayden's measly two, he's been on the back foot from day one. Mainly because on day one he was punted into the gravel at the first turn of the season-opening Spanish GP, and by the time he got back on his bike the field was two corners up the road. But it wasn't that which destroyed Rossi's championship. Nor was it the engine failures at Le Mans (when leading comfortably) or at Laguna Seca, nor the rear tyre delaminating at Shanghai, nor getting beaten by a pube-width in the penultimate round at Estoril. Where Rossi lost the championship was much earlier in the year, and much easier to define. It was simple.

He spent too long dicking around.

While Honda was testing throughout the preseason, readying their six-strong works attack (Hayden, Pedrosa, Melandri, Elias, Stoner and Tamada) for their strongest assault yet on Rossi's Yamaha upstarts, Rossi was... dicking around. More accurately, he was dicking around in last year's Ferrari F1 car, trying to figure out if he was Michael Schumacher or not. Eventually it turned out that he was not, as he actually had a personality.














Leo Sayer's first test for Ferrari went better than expected

But by then it was too late. The season started, the Brand H entries were quicker, more reliable and more numerous than the Yamahas, and Rossi was fucked. By the mid-season break, Rossi's results ran 14th - 1st - DNF - DNF - 1st - 1st - 8th - 2nd - 1st - DNF and he was more than fifty points behind Hayden, who'd been on the podium every race bar one. Hayden was tedious, predictable, usually off the ultimate pace of the race winners, but consistent. Rossi, in the words of the late, great Barry Sheene, was consistently inconsistent. Despite a late surge, and a penultimate-race meltdown from the Preparation H outfit when Pedrosa parked his RCV in the fairing of Hayden's similar machine, Rossi was never in the hunt.

What Rossi needs to do now is to refocus solely on next season. Get back on that bike, and slog the guts out of it and himself through 'winter' testing (most of which happens in the Southern Hemisphere summer at places like Phillip Island). Remember the shame and embarrassment of losing to a talentless arseclown like Hayden, dwell on it, and use it to fuel the development of the new bike. Forget F1, forget the hangers-on, forget the distractions, and get on with it.

But instead, he's coming down to Rally NZ next month to chuck an Impreza WRC at the trees. Not quite what the Doctor should have ordered, perhaps...














What might have been

If at first you don't succeed, try Troy again
And from our Happy Endings Dept: almost lost amidst the 'Inbred Yeehaa Wins MotoGP Title' headlines was the astonishing grid-to-flag victory of 37-year-old Ducati stand-in Troy Bayliss, subbing for Sete Gibernau who was still carrying nasty injuries from the lap 1 corner 1 stacks-on at Catalunya that was basically the only thing that prevented Loris Capirossi or Marco Melandri winning the title instead of Hayden (both ended up winning more races and either would have been more deserving). Bayliss left MotoGP at the end of 2005 with his tail between his legs, after a dismal season for a satellite Honda team. He came back to his old armchair, the Ducati 999 Superbike, and won the title by the equivalent of four clear race wins' worth of points. Then he came back to MotoGP, on a bike he hadn't ridden before (apart from its great-grandfather in 2003-04), on Bridgestone tyres he'd never seen before... stuck the thing on the front row of the grid between Rossi and Capirossi, led off the line and was never headed.

Arse!
Like we said, it's been a month for championship ballsups. Rossi blew the start and then low-sided out of contention, two weeks after he was almost gifted the title after Pedrosa barrelled into Hayden. In the WRC, Seb Loeb managed to fall off his pushie and crack a bone in his upper arm, handing Marcus Gronholm the chance to rack up enough wins in his absence to ameliorate the midget gymnast's championship lead... and yet Gronholm, with noone to beat but his teammate, threw his Focus off the road on the first stage of Friday morning at last weekend's Rally Australia, and handed Loeb the title straight back again.

And as previously observed, Ferrari managed to blow up the Red Baron's mount for the first time in five years, ending his championship tilt on the spot. Though they did turn up to the season-ending Brazilian GP with specially commissioned gumball Bridgestones and similarly one-off hand-grenade engines which gave them something like 15km/h straight-line speed advantage over all and sundry... and people still straight-facedly raved about Massa Attack and Scrumfeeder's respective 'drives of the day'. Seriously, you could have put ME in that motherfucker and I'd have lapped the field. But no, we still had to endure a lot of total bollocks about how wucking funderful Shoomie's last pedal turned out to be, and how that made it all right for all the cunty things he's gotten up to in the last 16 years (or just the last 16 races.) Most of this total bollocks came from one man: ITV F1 commentator James Allen, the most thoroughly shit commentator in all of motorsport. And that includes that shouty bloke who only cheers for the useless Brits in the World Superbikes. AND Greg Rust.

For some time it has been painfully apparent that not only could Murray Walker, who was punted into retirement Schumi-style by Allen, could still do a better job at 78, but so could James Hunt, even though he dropped off the twig 13 years ago. Now, it seems, those of us who can take no more of Allen's untrammelled shite (case in point, Austria 2002, that infamous stage-managed finish where Barrichello had to bend over and take it from Schumacher on the last corner, when Allen came out with "I CANNOT ADAM-AND-EVE IT!" Rhyming slang, geddit? Just like Lock Stock! I'm down with the kids, yo!) are not slender in number. In fact, a campaign to have him gotten rid of is thriving in the UK. Courtesy one of the Weak's favourite websites, SniffPetrol.com, we present the Stop the Cock campaign. Please give generously.
















Witness tha fitness
Just to finish, while we're ripping off SniffPetrol.com completely, we have to give a shout-out to one of the most stupidly funny segments anywhere on the web - Crazy Dave Coulthard's funky-fresh F1 race reports. For shizzle mah nizzle.

Och aye the noo muthafuckers! Crazy Dave comin' atcha with the phat flava of Red Bull. Tastes like dat shit they use to prevent MRSA in hospital. So Crazy Dave, he slide over Chinese side and he's startin' tha race runnin' heavy tanks. Hey, tha' ain't no problem for Crazy Dave, cuz he used to carryin' heavy tanks, know wha'am sayin'? Then Crazy Dave, he get in a smackdown, and he got problem with steering. He havin' to wrestle wheel wit' both hands. But tha' ain't first time Crazy Dave have to hold somethin' wit' both hand, know wha'am saying? I'm referring of course to my Pole Position range of grooming products which comes with two separate bottles containing shaving foam and a moisture balm.

I think there's something in that for all of us.

The Doctor is OUT.

Noel! Where's me fruit platter!

Noel Gallagher is in his late thirties, seemingly still gets his hair cut by his mum with a pudding bowl and tin snips, and plays in a Beatles tribute band called Oasis. Yes, they're still not dead yet. He's been known to be good for a quote on the odd occasion. Usually, though, he just talks bollocks. As was the case recently when he decided to voice his opinion ref. the Strayan Nayshun's latest squadron of canary yellow heroes (except their playing strip is more of a urinary tract infection gold), the Socceroos. Here's the link courtesy SMH.com.au which we will now, in accordance with company policy, blatantly rip off:

Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher has let rip at the Socceroos, saying Australians should stick to sports they're better at. The keen soccer fan saw the Socceroos play at the World Cup in Germany this year and says he wasn't impressed. Gallagher, renowned for his controversial outbursts, said he did not have a great deal of respect for Australians playing soccer. "Stick to the Aussie Rules and the tennis and the cricket and the rugby, you are good at that," he told AAP from the United Kingdom. "Football is the game of the intelligentsia and you are shit at it. You will never win anything so give it up."

On that basis, why have England botherered fielding a team anytime in the last 40 years? Or, come to think of it, why the fuck are YOU interested in football, Gallagher?

The 39-year-old is a keen follower of his hometown club Manchester City and was the unofficial mascot of Italian World Cup striker Alessandro Del Piero.

Is that why he's now so shit?

It was the Italians that dumped the Socceroos out of the World Cup under controversial circumstances, thanks to a hotly disputed last-minute penalty.

Meaning they were beaten by the eventual champions. Meanwhile, Engerland staggered asthmatically past Ecuador, only to lose to the Portuguese diving team. Who went on to be the worst side in the last four by some distance.

"What do they call them, the Socceroos? Do me a f---ing favour, you could come up with a better nickname than that."

OK, fair point.

Gallagher says he has a particular dislike for Socceroos midfielder Tim Cahill, who plays for Liverpool club Everton. "I don't know, there is something about him. I would love to kick him right in the bollocks." Cahill scored two goals for the Socceroos in the World Cup match against Japan and was widely considered one of the country's best players of the tournament. "He has just got one of those faces," said Gallagher, whose brother Liam is also in Oasis. "Don't you find his face really slapable? I can assure you, lots of people in England do."

Noel old son, next time you feel a hankering to slap a Samoan gentleman in the face, might we suggest a night out in South Auckland.

Oasis toured Australia last December and next month release a "best of" album, titled Stop the Clocks. The album features a selection of what Gallagher considers the band's best work, including tracks such as Wonderwall and Morning Glory.

...i.e. the stuff he wrote fuckin' years ago when he was working for the fuckin' Gas Board, as distinct from anything the mouthy Mancker has extruded since. Noel Gallagher hasn't written a decent song in the last ten years. It's well known that before Oasis released their first album, he was sitting on about a hundred songs which he'd written. All the best stuff, the cream of the crop, went on Definitely Maybe. The next best stuff went on What's The Story With My Morning Glory, and the leftover shite went onto whatever the fuck their shitbox third album was called. Then he actually had to try and write some new stuff, which was also shite. That just about brings us up to today, where he's resorting to slagging off Samoan kids in order to try and get someone, ANYONE, to buy his hastily scraped together compilation made up of half of Possibly Vaguely and bits of his Morning Glory.

Despite his outburst, Gallagher said he liked visiting Australia and that he was "gagging" to get over for the Ashes cricket series. "The last time was just brilliant so the sooner the better for me," he said.

Yeah, Noel, us too. My old man, he told me, England will not bat till tea. With a nick-nack paddy-whack give-Patsy-Kensit-a-bone, pasty Pommies FUCK OFF HOME.

Meanwhile, Manchester City, as of press time, have won just one away game since last December, and in last weekend's round of games, managed to lose four-nil to Wigan Athletic.

I think there's something in that for all of us. There certainly was for Wigan Athletic.

The Doctor is OUT.

Viva Espana

The Spaniards might have a history for harbouring despots, cranks and crooks like Franco, Pinochet, and of course Skasey, but as a nation they have one thing right. Well, two things - those being their excellent and tasteful selections as their national sports of choice. The national sport of Spain is football, closely followed by MotoGP. And you thought their national sport was stacking their Paralympics basketball team with tall wankers pretending to be 'tards.

The A-League is actually pretty good. No, seriously.
To the A-League, for no reason other than its strategic alphabetic advantage. The last couple of weeks have seen some entertaining football being played, and some even more entertaining Random Shit going on in the background, or more aptly on the sideline. Last weekend's Sadelaide-Melbored game belied the two cities' funereal reputations, being a tense, pulsating affair headlined by the awesome set-to between Adelaide coach Johnny Kosmina and Victory arsehole-in-chief Kevin Bloody Muscat. Chasing a ball over the sideline, Muscat barrelled into Kossi at a decent clip and knocked him off his $7.99 Kmart resin chair and onto his arse in no uncertain terms. Kosmina, known for his even-tempered approach to both the game and to life in general, responded by grasping KBM by the throat and offering his services as a freelance trachaeotomy vendor. The lanky frame of assistant coach Aurelio Vidmar may have been all that prevented Kossi from tearing Bloody a new one. A few weeks prior, an equally entertaining sideline stoush saw NZ Knights coach (apparently they have one) Paul Nevin banished to a seat in the rafters for a couple of games. Made no bloody difference whatsoever. Can't win with him, can't win without him. Can't win. Any wonder why all the decent All Whites now play for Perth... or Brisbane... or Newcastle... or Sydney...

Not that young NZ winger Jeremy Brockie (the kid with the skanky dreads) is getting much of a gig at Sydney at present, not with Benni Carbone in town for his guest stint in the blue and blue (and bits of orange, randomly) shirt. To turn Carbone's guest stint into a full-time gig will supposedly cost the cash-strapped glamour club about $300K for the year. They need to do this. Now. If they don't, I think we'll finally have figured out what the FC stands for, i.e. a character description of their board and chairman. Carbone has them fresh skills so ill he makes anyone playing alongside him look twice the player. Even Sasho Petrovski - even though twice fuck-all is still fuck-all.

And the fun keeps coming. Latest rumour has Perth Glory, fresh off tanking their 10th anniversary game against the Raw, looking to recruit some experienced finishing by employing newly-retired Everton great Drunken Duncan Ferguson. Which would be tops - there's a man who'd be an instant cult hero, not only in the Shed, but throughout the comp. It's all looking pretty good for the A-League, with boisterous crowds, entertaining football, interest from overseas talent, and not all the clubs being completely broke yet. So, on balance, is the A-League up to much? Fuckin' A.

Meanwhile, in Europe...
Same old same old. Chelsea are leading the Premiership, winning ugly. Mourinho's whinging. Liverpool are alternating astonishing wins with implausible disasters. Madrid are fucking appalling. What's new?

Well, Chelsea's most recent ugly win over promoted blue stripey team Reading came at a price - that being the consciousness of both their starting keeper Petr Cech (anyone want to buy a vowel?) in the first minute, then replacement gloveman Carlo Cudicini (who's been around at Stamford Bridge since the days when he was number two to Mark 'Mindless Drug Hoover' Bosnich) got knocked out in a goalmouth scramble near the end of the 90 minutes. Captain, centreback and definite-non-goalie John Terry went cautiously in between the sticks for the duration, hurriedly pulling on the third choice goalie's jersey. Hilario!
(That's actually his name - he's the third-string keeper who started the Barcelona game this morning. By the end of which, he was probably be wishing for a sudden lack of consciousness - if only to blot out the memory of Barca's hideous fluoro orange away strip. Yes folks, they've managed to top last year's iridescent yellow council hi-vis jackets...)

Quote of the Weak
...goes to William Gallas, newly arrived at the Arse, who has ended up with squad number 10 off the retiring shoulders of Dennis Bergkamp. Clearly being bestowed with the most famous shirt number in football (as worn by of Pele, Maradona, Baggio, Zidane and Steve Corica) even though he's just a vaguely useful left fullback has gone to his head. Either that, or he's just an arrogant French prick. Quoted ahead of the recent round of Euro2008 qualifiers, he said this of his national team:
"These days our group opponents are quaking in their boots when they look at our line-up, especially when you look at the spine of Henry, Vieira, Makelele and Thuram and then see Gallas, Ribery, Abidal and Sagnol. People are scared of France again. We got our status back at the World Cup when new players came through and showed their worth."
That weekend, France played Scotland. And lost one-nil.

Keeper fucks up. England lose. What's not to like?
Meanwhile in somewhere unpronounceable in Croatia, England played like a busted arse and lost 2-0 to the tablecloth wearers, with the second goal resulting from Spurs' Paul Robinson taking an astronomically appalling air-swing at a loping back-pass and watching in slo-mo horror as it kicked up, sailed over his outstretched boot and into the back of what some would call the Auld Onion Bag. Being not only an astoundingly bad piece of goalkeeping, but one which caused England to lose a football game, it was truly one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

But that wasn't the funniest thing I've ever seen.

This is the funniest thing I've ever seen.















But suddenly, the stunt goes horribly wrong...

OK, so that's just the 'Before' photo. And before we get to the goings on at the Interior Parabolica, turn six at the Circuito do Estoril, and the circumstances by which the number one team in MotoGP conspired to lose both their championship-contending riders in the same hilarious moment of insanity, in the second last race of the year... some context.

Ten years ago, the Valentino Rossi of the '90s was a grizzled old Queensland bastard who walked with a limp and rode like he was wrestling a rodeo bull. His name was Mick Doohan and he was tougher than old boots. These days he's more famous for nuding up in Darwin strip joints and getting turfed out by security, but in his '90s heyday on the works Honda NSR500 he was a machine. He'd comfortably tied up the 1996 world 500cc title long before the season-ending Australian Grand Prix at Eastern Creek, ten years ago last weekend. The Creek had managed to pinch the GP off Phillip Island at the beginning of the '90s, but the decision to take the race back 'home' to the Island from '97 on had been greeted with widespread joy in the GP paddock. Regardless, Doohan had every intention of winning the last ever GP at the Creek, and on the all-conquering Repsol Honda, he had no real challengers. Bar one, of course - the only other guy on a Repsol Honda, a young Spaniard called Alex Criville. Criville had chased him all year - he wasn't up to being a race leader on his own merits, but could follow doggedly in Doohan's wheeltracks while the Aussie tried his usual break-'em-from-lap-one charge from the startline, and had even succeeded in pinching one or two races on the finish-line from his senior team leader this year. Which pissed Our Mick off no end, as you'd expect.

On the last lap at the Creek, Criville was leading, upsetting the form guide, and of course Our Mick. Not for long. Doohan scythed down the inside into the Turn 2 hairpin like Vinnie Jones in his Wimbledon heyday clattering into a poncy opposition winger, with or without the ball. The two team bikes hit solidly, fairing-to-fairing, and Doohan was through into the lead. There was only one other place to pass on the uninspiring Creek layout - the downhill right-hand hairpin behind the pits about 2/3rds the way through the lap - and Doohan was going to make damn sure Criville wasn't coming through. Except Criville was equally sure he was, particularly after the unceremonious hip-and-shoulder from the boss. Two shiny Repsol Hondas tried to fit into a section of tarmac (the apex of the downhill right-hand hairpin behind the pits) in which only one shiny Repsol Honda could fit. Result: two not-so-shiny Repsol Hondas in the dirt with bits missing off them, two Repsol Honda team riders who were now very much off each other's Christmas card lists, and an astonishing debut 500cc win for Loris Capirossi on the Marlboro Yamaha YZR500. So surprising, in fact, that the Marlboro Yamaha team had already fired Capirossi for season '97.

Fast forward ten years, and seamlessly switch tenses. Mouthy, Cletusesque, dubious-facial-hair-sporting Septic Tank, Nicky Hayden is leading the world championship with two rounds to go, but is choking like Greg Norman in Michael Hutchence's hotel suite; the Mick Doohan of the naughties, Valentino Rossi, is hunting him down on his Yamaha, coming back from a 50 point deficit only a handful of races ago. Hayden's Repsol Honda teammate, young Spaniard Dani Pedrosa, fast as you like but genetically incapable of smiling, has ballsed up his own title aspirations by taking a chunk out of his knee in a crash in Malaysia a few weeks beforehand. Off the line, front row starters Rossi and Yamaha teammate Colin Edwards (who's half Australian, i.e. the half that isn't intermittently shit) are in formation, chased by those shiny Repsol Hondas, the young Spaniard in front. Anyone else see what might happen here? Yup. Hayden barges past into the tight left-hander behind the pits, Interior Parabolica. One lap later, same corner: Pedrosa misjudges his braking, puts his front wheel onto the painted kerb on the inside of the corner, and drops the motherfucker, skittling his world championship leading teammate into the dust. Two not-so-shiny Repsol Hondas in the dirt with bits missing once more. And likewise the Christmas card list thing. In fact, in a glorious tanty captured in super slo-mo by the trackside cameras, Nicky Hayden throws the toys so far out of the pram you'd need Google Earth to see the bastards. Dr Yobbo offers him a free character reference and doubles up in hysterics on the couch.

And Valentino Rossi wins the race. Or would have, if he'd finished it 0.003 seconds earlier than he did. Young Spanish rider Toni Elias (no relation of Back Door Benny) completed the distance some two-thousandths of a second ahead of him, after drafting past on the run to the line. Like Capirossi, Elias' Fortuna Honda team may have already fired him for next year - but they're suddenly revising those plans in a great big fuckin' hurry. And one other ironic throwback to the Creek ten years ago... in Elias' corner, down in the Fortuna Honda pits all race, and cheering him on from the enclosure below the podium after it, were his two biggest supporters. One, his dad, a former Spanish motocross champion. The other, his mentor, 1999 world 500cc world champion for Repsol Honda... Alex Criville.

So to Toni Eliarse, Grand Prix winner, the Weak would like to say: nice work my son. However, if Vale loses the world title to that fuckin' hillbilly by the five points you pinched off him... we know where you live, sunshine.

The Doctor is OUT.

Hopefully the hangover will clear by the top ten shootout next year

THIS WEAK ON MYTHBUSTERS:
We finally answer the question that has been plaguing and terrorising viewers since day one. No, not which one of them is the gay one.
The question is: Are red cars faster than blue ones?















No.














And no.


MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH...
Some weird things happened on the way to your correspondent getting totally mucking funted watching the Peter Brock Memorial SuperBrockAuto Brockhurst 1000.05 at Mount Brockarama. Including the following astonishing, one-off, never to be repeated phenomena:
- Michael Schumacher expired in a cloud of smoke and a hearty Hi-Ho Retirement for the first time since the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis, 2001
- Otago's injury-debilitated provincial rugby side absolutely Took Apart in-form Ranfurly Shield holders North Harbour by fifty-something to not much in the quarter-finals of the Air New Zealand Cup
And most astounding of all:
- Jeremy Clarkson admitted to being 'a bit of a dick' on Top Gear.

But the big story of the weekend was the Brock One Thousand, scene of several award-winning performances. Anyone else sense another dose of the Dodgies coming on? No? Just me? Must have been that iffy Hero roll from the servo on the way back from the Bowler.

THE DODGY AWARDS: SUPER CHEAP 'N' NASTY PLASTIC SHIT MADE IN CHINA FOR FUCK ALL AND SHIPPED OVER IN A BIG FUCK-OFF CRATE AUTO 1000 EDITION

Best Performance in a Cameo Role: Mark Skaife, Holden Precision Crashing Team
You don't get much more 'cameo' than thirty seconds. Plus he was kind enough to drop the F-bomb on Racecam, which as we've observed in previous media commitments, was a skolling offence. Say what you like, the guy is clutch. (At least HRT have one of the fuckers that actually works now.)

Best Performance in a Recurring Role: That fugly Chrysler that looks like a Mafia staff car, SuperCheapAuto 1000 safety car
Turning up more regularly than Ray Martin at a celebrity funeral, the Chrysler 300C safety car logged more laps than both HRT cars combined, taking ten curtain calls. Which as we've observed in previous media commitments, was also a skolling offence.

Best Atention to Detale: whoever was running the spellchecker at the graphic shop which did the stickers for the WPS Falcons
The WPS team, unlike most of the V8 Supercar field, don't receive from either major manufacturer, and proudly advertised this on their windscreen banners for the Great Race. With a big, bold, shiny sticker proclaiming that they were 'INDEPENDANT'. Independent of a fuckin' dictionary, apparently. This wasn't a skolling offence, but we drank anyway.

The R. J. L. Hawke Memorial Bathrobe for Going the Blub in the Line of Duty: The Lownd, Triple 8 Lucky Star Golden Palace Online Casino and Race Engineering Workshop
He cried before the race. He cried after the race. He probably cried during the race, and he certainly cried when he got home, a Bathurst winner once more, to find out his wife was still as alarmingly unattractive as she was when he left home as just a washed-up former Bathurst winner. Slagging off Lowndes' missus wasn't a skolling offence, but it helped.

The Peter Brock King Of The Mountain Trophy for Man Of The Race, Bathurst 2006: Old mate at the Bowler who put $10 into the pokies, pulled out $200, and proceeded to spend it all on jugs of Speights for Team Pisshead
Zero-Five may no longer be alive, but the spirit of Bathurst lives on.
Who says PhD students aren't of use to society.


PON-TANG CLAN AIN'T NOTHIN' TO FUCK WITH
Yup, it's cricket season already. The first domestic game of the Strayan summer begins this week, with Queensland taking on Tasmania, or Victoria, or some bunch of randoms. Who gives a shit. It's not as if a man needs an excuse to drink all day during summer. Meanwhile, on the subcontinent, the ICC Not Really Very Important Trophy is in the prequalifying stages, with Sri Lanka and the Windies installing the predicted Rheem in the Bangers and the Zimmers. Soon they'll be joined by the other international teams who can actually play one-day cricket, and England, to play off for the coveted (by someone, surely) bit of silverware. Favourites, as usual, are the canary yellow contingent (that's Strayan gold my friend and don't you etc) led by hairy BO-affected midget Richie Pontingham. That is if extremists don't attempt to fuck with their shit first - and by extremists we don't mean dickheads with random hair paragliding down black diamond ski runs with their pubic hair on fire... although that would be an interesting way to draw attention to your political cause.

The Doctor is OUT.

Silly Billy's willy

The biggest news in a Weak of Grand Finals wasn't Queensland A beating Queensland B in the NRL, nor the fuckin' West Coast Eagles' fuckin' awesome win over the Sydney fuckin' Swans. (Hey, fuck off kid, I just won the Grand Final.) No, the biggest news story in the sports world this week surrounds Craig McDermott's dodger. Or more precisely, what was surrounding it when his video camera was last running.

Former '80s Quoinsland and Strayan fast bowler and ginga of repute Craig 'Billy' McDermott, these days a multi-millionaire Gold Coast property developer, recently had his big fuck-off boat into the shop to be detailed. As you do when you're a multi-millionaire Gold Coast property developer. And you have a big fuck-off boat. Which needs detailing. Anyway Billy's error, such as it was, was to leave a home-made videotape of himself and his missus on the job on board. (Whether they'd been on the job on board, or whether the action sequences were filmed on terra firma, has not been confirmed at time of press; the latter seems more likely as it promulgates the idea of Billy going down at sea.) One of the boat shop's less reputable staffers got wind of this, managed to theft a copy, and proceeded to blackmail Billy for tens of thousands of your Australian dollars. I believe the most appropriate way to describe this is 'Very GC'.

The blackmailer was finally caught in a sting with Queensland Police, who were outraged that anyone would come up with such a corrupt and illegal operation without inviting them to join in. Like any good investor, Billy will presumably now have the tape put on the internet in order to recover his original capital. As former NZ opener Mark 'Rigor' Richardson commented this evening on Kiwi sports show The Crowd Goes Wild: Given that Craig McDermott has ginger pubes, if you were looking for the video at the video shop, would you need to look under 'Pornography' or 'Horror'?

The Weak would like to point out that The Crowd Goes Wild is on free-to-air television, and airs at 7pm at night. NZ telly is all kinds of fucked up. But it's funny.


Grand Final Wrap
The West Coast Offence beat the Swannies in the AFL Grand Final, momentarily disheartening the hoards of chardonnay-sipping, pristine-new-scarf wearing, bandwagon-jumping north shore tossers who now have to go back to supporting the Wallabies. The Westies celebrated by fuckin' swearin' in the fuckin' post-match interviews and blanking the kiddies on the rostrum. The Melbourne papers, naturally, reported this into the Greatest Sin Against Humanity since Pol Pot was driving the Khmer Rouge bus through Cambodia.

Some 18 hours later and 1000km norther (northerer?) Melbourne tried to beat Brisbane in a Grand Final, and failed. Given that everyone who has tried in the past to beat Brisbane in a Grand Final has also failed, the only solution is clearly to ban Brisbane from all Grand Finals.

And in much more important news, Newtown almost won reserve grade (OK, 'Premier League') - if they had it probably would have left Tommy Raudonikis needing another septuple bypass, so it's just as well the baby Eelses got up - and the actual Queensland Cup (as distinct from Brisbane Norths vs Toowoomba Clydesdales at the Grand Old Girl Stadium Australia) was won by Redcliffe's Dolphins (fresh from their legal victory over the Gold Coast NRL side re the 'Dolphins' name) over the aforementioned Big Horsies from Woombieland.

And now our Exclusive NRL Grand Final Gallery!*

*OK, ABC Sport's exclusive NRL Grand Final Gallery, just with our half-arsed comments added





















Not content to have the least original jerseys of any new team in NRL franchise history, the Gold Coast Titfucks have also managed to secure sponsorship from budget air carrier DeathStar, the dodgiest airline since Plummett Airways
('We bring you closer to the ground - Faster')















Number 10, get your hand off my arse

















Webcke introduces Smith to the concept of the 'grapple tackle', an approach which is of course entirely foreign to the Melbourne hooker


















Kids, don't smoke crack
















Fuck Queenslanders are gay






















Shane Webcke triumphantly ends his career as a Grand Final winner, only to be attacked by a vampire on full time


And now our all-new** feature:

News in Briefs


**'All-new' does not infer in any way that any 'all-new' jokes will be used

• Ducati and Taree's Troy Bayliss is Superbike World Champion. There's no joke here, we're just giving him props. And of course pointing out that we had this picked months ago before the season even started.
  
  
• UEFA Champions League Champions of UEFA's Champions League of Champions, FC Barcelona, have broken a 130 year tradition and whored their corporate arses by putting an international organisation's logo on their jerseys. However, in another first, they've actually paid them for the privilege. The logo is that of Unicef, who'll benefit to the tune of a couple of thousand Euros from the Barca coffers per year. All together now: Awwww.
  
  
• Peter Crouch: good feat for a big man. In last week's UCLCoUCLoC Matchday Deux game against Galatasaray (I think it's a kebab shop in Lakemba), Crouch pulled off an astonishing and frankly physically unlikely overhead bicycle kick to put his Liverpiddle team up three-blot. Being Liverpool, they conspired to almost lose the fucking thing 3-2.
  
  
• Jonah's goooooorrrnne. Having missed out on a Super 14 contract, the most fearsome tuft in world rugby Jonah Lomu has finally figured out that trying to make an international comeback in time to represent NZ at the 2007 World Cup with half a functional kidney (and that being someone else's, as well) probably isn't a goer. Unless he's representing NZ at the Cricket World Cup, in which place he's probably still half a chance.
  
  

Nostrildramas has crystal balls
And he's busting them out, on his Weak comeback, for a series of Exclusive Predictions on this weekend's Big Sporting Event. It's the Tuesday after Grand Final weekend, which can only mean one thing: Bathurst in five days.

Nostrildramas' Exclusive Predictions for Bathurst 2006

1. Holden will win
   
2. Ford will not
   
3. The telecast will consist entirely of fawning tributes to Brocky
   
4. It will piss down for half the race, prompting ironic comments about 'this rain is really needed in rural NSW, but not today, [insert smug self-congratulatory laughter here]'
5. Partly due to the rain, the fugly Chrysler 300C pace car will finish more laps than either of Dick Johnson's shitbox Falcons
6. Greg Murphy will either win or spit the dummy in monumental fashion; either way it'll be funny
7. The Stone Bros Fords will be quick for the first hour, then some random $2 part will fuck up on them and they'll get lapped
   
8. Win, lose or sandtrap, Mark Skaife will swear on Racecam
9. Daryl Beattie will start every pit lane report with 'Yeah nah yeah'
   
10. Dr Yobbo will be very drunk for most of the afternoon
    
    

Nostrildramas' Exclusive Predictions for Bathurst 2007

1. Anyone thinking Ten's coverage was bad will be astonished by how absolutely fucking appalling Seven's will turn out to be
2. See point 10 under Nostrildramas' Exclusive Predictions for Bathurst 2006

The Doctor is OUT... to go and get in training.