He's been doing it all day sir

My family is fully sick. Which is not to say they are a subwoofer in a lowered Civic owned by an adolescent gentleman from Punchbowl, but that they are all nursing head colds, including the wee three-week-old chicken. As am I. This has, at least, given me the excuse, nay obligation, to stay home on a Monday and look after them. By lying on the couch all day watching motorsport replays from last night. And by all day I do actually mean all day. 10am through 5.30pm inclusive. As Spike Milligan's headstone is meant to read, I told you I was sick. Still, it was worth the price of admission: a couple of great races in the world Superbikes, a truly mad MotoGP free-for-all in the wet at Donington, and an almost Aussie 1-2 in the Indycars if not for Ryan Briscoe's thing going off-song in the closing stages (the brilliantly named Will Power from Woombie Land got the win guesting in a third Team Penske entry, beating the tax-dodging Brazilian ladyboy Castoneves and fellow new dad Scott Dixon). And all that without even having to mention the fucking snorefest that was Lewis Hamiltwunt's much unappreciated return to form in the Hungarian F1GP. He's the New Senna, just ask him. And his publicist. And the entire English media.

If anyone's the New Senna, dammit, it's Felipe Massa. Just not for the reasons he'd have wanted to be.

Your Correspondent bailed on the F1 race early yesterday morning after Red Bull Racing had reinstated their previous policy re Mark Webber of 'If a race is worth doing, it's worth fucking up' and bollocksed any chance he had of winning by making a dog's breakfast of his pitstop. That, and because an hour forty of two men frantically frigging themselves in commentary over the Return of Jesus Christ in Motor Racing Form was possibly beyond me at that stage of the evening. Truly, the only thing worth watching in the entire race appears to have been Hamiltwunt's naaaaasty ex-Pussycat Doll girlfriend Nicole Skanksinger jumping up and down, shaking it all about and all but doing the Hokey Pokey (not that you'd want to have a go now after he's put his third leg in, taken it out, put it in, shaken it about and still failed to touch the sides) after a particularly compelling pitstop on behalf of the McLaren outfit.

Still, despite his and his team's best efforts in fucking up their race, Webber's now second in the championship courtesy his third, Button's 7th and Vettel's no-score, an unlikely recovery from where he'd looked mid-race. Could say the same for Valentino Rossi in the MotoGP after he'd dropped his Yamaha under pressure from no-name Repsol Honda newcomer Dovizioso into the Donington esses, yet because of everyone else fucking up - Lorenzo crashing, Ducati having a pre-race brainfart and putting their boys on wets on a dry track, Pedrosa just being a fucking pussy and riding too slow on a greasy track - he ended up in a better position than when he started the weekend. And ditto - sort of - the apparently indestructable Nori Haga of Ducati world superbikes, largely and loudly expected to lose his championship lead to mercurial Texan rookie Ben Spies given the latter is Fucking Fast and the former, following a series of crashes, was more broken than Borat's brother's anus (thanks v. much Jezza Clarkson). Of course, Nori's idiot teammate taking Spies out in the first race probably didn't harm his cause.

There was a small unpowered window in the wheeled sporting festival, that being the highlights of the final stage of the Tour de France - if you can call yet another fucking Manx Mong victory procession a highlight. As predicted previously, sorta, Contador won because Astana let him - not that he was going to listen if they told him to hang back - and Armstrong and Bruyneel are goneski. Armstrong's off to work at Radio Shack and will probably take all his mates from the Disco along with - Bruyneel, Kloden, Leipheimer, Popovych et al. Which will nicely fuck the Borats off seeing as though they'll have a team made up of Contador, a returning Vinokourov, and a bunch of hapless Kazakh development riders who'd only recently been allowed to take off the training wheels.

As for me, I can confirm that seven and a half hours of largely continuous motorsport is about as much stuff-going-vrroomm as anyone really needs.

Then again there's NASCAR Brickyard 400 highlights on late tonight, and I'm on night shift until after midnight anyway...

The Doctor is OUT.

I just wasn't made for these times

Were you born in the wrong decade?

I think I might have been. I've long held suspicions that I was, anyway. My CD collection says I was. The CD in my car As We Speak is a self-slapped-together compilation called 70>80, made up of of tracks from between 1970 and 1980 (AC/DC, Sabbath, Purple, Zeppelin, Sex Pistols, Stooges, MC5, Zappa, Radio Birdman, Motorhead etc). The magazine I most avidly read these days is Australian Muscle Car, a periodical for grumpy old men with petrol (Super, of course) in their veins who think the Torana A9X and Falcon Cobra were as modern as performance cars should have ever been allowed to get. I love it because I love all that old muscle car stuff, from here and the States. I love the stories of Bathurst in the late 60s and 70s - Brock winning in '72 in the XU1 Torana slaying the Falcon GTHO hordes single-handedly in the wet, Bob Morris in tears in the pitlane in '76 as his Brit codriver nursed his dying L34 home for a heroic against-the-odds win. My favourite Matchbox car growing up was 'Ruff Trek', the jacked-up off road HX Kingswood ute. Would I trade my safe, secure, ABS and airbagged modern family chariot for a snarling Monaro GTS or even a Hemi six-pack Charger? If we're trading the heavily policed dual carriageways of modern times for the unrestricted two-lane blacktop of pre-1971 'Straya... hell yeah. Just as I'd trade the South Sydney side of 2009 - annihilation of the hated Broncos aside - for the Souths side of 1971, cos they actually WON SHIT.

But dammit, who wouldn't? Who wouldn't trade Ricky Ponting for Ian Chappell, Mitchell Johnson for Dennis Lillee or Michael Clarke for Dougie Walters? Who wouldn't trade Lara Bingle for Brigitte Bardot? The Kings of Leon for Led Zeppelin? Kevin Rudd for Gough Whitlam? Pure Blonde for Something Actually Fucking Drinkable?

Yeah, yeah. Rose coloured glasses and all that. Back then, large tracts of Australia were stagnant, white-bread, backward Anglo shitholes. Your chances of getting a decent coffee were akin to those of getting a decent kebab. TV was still in black and white and so was racial politics. Twuntering, iPhones and the internerd were twenty years away, meaning that pr0n was unavailable in the quantity, quality and variety that it is today - a dog-eared copy of Mayfair passed on by an older brother/cousin or mates with same, if you were lucky. Still, their were unexpected educational benefits, particularly in geography. Maps of Tasmania bigger than the Collins Junior Atlas of Australia. Topographically accurate in many cases.

And I'd have needed a different career. There's no fucking chance a good-but-not-brillo high school student like m'self would have had the opportunity to go to uni, discover life-affirming shit about biology and genetics - much of which was still to be discovered in the early '70s - and veer off in the direction currently occupied by Your Correspondent. Not until Whitlam made uni available to everyone, not just those who scored scholarships and those whose parents could shell out for it.

Nope I'd have probably done what the old man did - went to teachers' college. Newcastle Teachers' College to be precise. Pub crawls up Hunter St - win. Holiday job in the steelworks - less so. And while he had some crap cars in his time - anything prior to the V8 muscle car explosion of the late 60s was inevitably British, anaemic and embarrassing - were some weapons too. In my childhood there was a 253ci V8 HT Kingswood ute, followed later by a '71 Fairlane 351ci V8 auto in heroically early-Seventies rust brown, the ultimate Antipodean land barge. 'Course any and all of them would be dusted by the base model Falcon he has now, but that's not the point. He had mates with V8 Falcons and GTS Monaros (though the latter was *cough* the 186ci six with Traumatic transmission), all of which appeared in the peeling photos and faded slides from the era - as did the shots of the old man and his mate Norm jumping the sand dunes around home on the old man's Suzuki TS185. Unsurprisingly this led to photos of rider, bike and sand dune arguing with each other, then photos of each going their separate ways.

Norm's in a lot of stories about my old man. They met at teachers' college, the old man being from Sydney, Norm from the North Coast. It was Norm who introduced the old man to the area, and the tiny little beach village where I was brought up. Norm had the Falcon GT - he was from a family of Ford-heads - but went against his own programming to get a V8 Calais, and before that - world of weird - a Lada Niva 1600 4WD to tow his fishing boat with. Fucking appalling idea. Gearboxes made from old tins of borscht, wouldn't pull a sailor off your sister, fell to bits faster than Humpty Dumpty. He'd packed in teaching early, medically retired on stress, so for most of my childhood he just kicked back and looked after himself and his family, fishing, running the caravan park, the local volunteer bush fire brigade, that sort of stuff. Five or six years ago he traded in the Calais for his true love, a V8 Falcon - an Arctic White XR8, in fact. Made about as much sense as buying a Lada and parking it at the beach.


There's a theory - it may be just the old man's - that suggests that typically people only last twenty years or so after they pack-in full time work - perhaps the brain just atrophies with not enough to keep it vibrant and functional. Maybe it was true in Norm's case. He passed away yesterday morning. He'd been ill for a long time, with a variety of medical issues - physiological, structural, neurodegenerative - so it wasn't unexpected, but still a sharp, stark punch in the guts. He was a genuinely good bloke and didn't deserve to go out the way he had to. Sadly, you don't often get to choose.



This, according to the old man, was the song playing on the stereo in the shop where he bought the tie he married my mum in - Cream's Tales of Brave Ulysses. Norm was one of the old man's wedding posse - probably groomsman, I dare say his brother was best man - and is in all the appropriately dodgy photos complete with genuine 1971 beard, which both he and the old man maintained until they both turned grey.

That's all I got. Not particularly funny, but you get that on the big jobs, to borrow a line from a good mate of mine. I'm off to raise a glass to a good mate of the old man's, someone who played a large part in my upbringing. It might only be Double Brown in a can, because like the old man I'm fucking cheap when it comes to beer, but the sentiment will remain.

The Doctor is OUT.

On shaky ground

Steve Price is a lovely fullah. Mild-mannered, decent and reliable. As captain of the NZ Warriors he's undoubtedly the Shaky Isles' favourite Aussie, and his media-friendliness and on-field leadership has done more for the Warriors' cause than anyone could reasonably credit. Probably has as much to do with the spike in popularity in League in NZ as the indifferent form of the perennially choking All Blacks.

Yup, Steve Price is a good bloke. But Jesus Christ he can't fight.

Admittedly, he didn't look like he actually wanted to, when Brett White picked him in the dying moments of an apocalyptic Origin fixture at the Grand Old Girl Cauldron Suncorp Stadium for an astonishingly innocuous knee when White was resuming the upright to play the ball. To be fair, White looked like he just wanted to punch someone, or something, because he's ever so slightly thick. He IS from Melbourne after all. He'll be quite disappointed the credit for the hit which finally established the Price was Wrong, Bitch had to be shared with the late, random, cretinous and completely superfluous-to-requirements intervention of Trent Waterhouse, who got sent for it. Punching on is fine, but turning up after the fact and trying to split it up is a heinous fucking war crime apparently.


All part of the master plan, though. One-in all-in, win the stink and win the game, was NSW's declared strategy, according to avowed retard AVO Watmough. It'd seem Roy and HG, having been shut out of calling matches by the NRL's digital rights policy, have taken a gig as NSW's tactics coaches. Successfully, given the scoreline and the temper tantrum thrown by Justin Hodges before and after the final siren, with his take on the All Blacks Naughty Haka aimed in Trent Barrett's direction. Apparently Barrett, after his sly hit on Bowraville's Greg Inglis in game 2, is For It the next time Hodges and his Big Mates meet up with him, when the Broncos play the second-from-bottom Sharks in Round 22. Better hope Hodges and his Big Mates actually turn up for that one. Last time: second-from-bottom Sharks 46, Broncos 12. And given Hodges' representative captain attempted to remove the Wolfman's head with his boot rather than let the beardy nutter score a try, the fuckwit doth protest too much methinks.

Of course suspicion remains that losing Game 3 was a premeditated tactic on Queensland's part to retain Darren Lockyer in the Maroons side... and intercept specialist Brett Kimmorley in the Blues lineup. Sadly - for both sides - Kimmorley played the best game of Origin in his nuggety midget life (not that hard given what it had to compare with) and is, it would appear, the future of NSW halfbacks. Unless Sterlo or Tommy Raudonikis replace him.

Meanwhile, in accordance with the Old Man's great theory of the universe - that with time, Things Get Wobbly (houses, cars, people etc) - the South Island got wobbly last evening to the tune of 7.8 on the Richter scale, not to mention a mild puckering on the Sphincter scale. In honour of this great event - or just as an excuse to crank up one of my favourite underappreciated Aussie bands of the past few years - you just gotta Shake It.



The Doctor is OUT.

World Wide Web

I have a cunning plan. A plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a fox. Having listened to this decade's installment of Triple J's Hottest 100 of All Time, I've hit upon the ultimate get-rich-quick (or at least get-less-poor-eventually) scheme.

Triple J Classic Hits FM.


Seriously. The alternative hits of the 90s, 90s and 90s, cranked just the way you thirty-summin' late-Gen-Xers like 'em - angstily and/or whinily. Hell, we can even get Helen and Mikey back to do breakfast.

Unky Rupert's goons have had a stab at dissecting the facts and stats of the Hunnert, but who needs that shit when you can just take a gander at the pointy end of the countdown again, with year of release appended in parentheses:

1. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)
2. Rage Against the Machine - Killing In The Name (1992)
3. Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah (1994)
4. Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart (1979)
5. Radiohead - Paranoid Android (1997)
6. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)
7. Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye (1994)
8. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under The Bridge (1991)
9. Foo Fighters - Everlong (1997)
10. Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven (1971)
11. John Lennon - Imagine (1971)
12. Oasis - Wonderwall (1995)
13. Radiohead - Creep (1992)
14. The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony (1997)
15. Radiohead - Karma Police (1997)...

...in fact you gotta get down to 17th before you get to the first post-2000 track, or the first Australian act for that matter: the Hilltop Hoods with Nosebleed Section. Where the bloody hell were ya, Bernard? Or you, little Danielle Johns? Timmy Rogers? Chris Cheney? Quan? Kram? Phil Jamieson? Dave McCormack? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

And what happened to Gen Y? Did they get distracted by shiny objects and forget to put their votes in?

What do we think of that lot? PISS... POOR.

And speaking of which... the Ashes. As predicted, a draw. But only once Australia had gotten into a position to win the thing, only for their attack, with all the penetrating snarl of Spongebob Squarepants, to fail miserably in the task of dislodging even the comical Munty Can-of-Sars from the batting crease. The Tour is still an Astana benefit - regardless of the random Italian from the perennially rubbish AG2R outfit who's currently being permitted to lead.

But none of that matters a pinch of shit today. Because the nation can finally smile again, for the first time in eight years. Because MARK WEBBER FINALLY RAN OUT OF WAYS TO FUCK UP A GRAND PRIX.


He tried. Really he tried. Getting a drive-through penalty for a dismally weak Woolies carpark nudge on Rubens Lemoncello - who spat the dummy ROYALLY at his BrawnGP team after the race for costing him the win, ignoring the fact his being quite a bit shit probably had more to do with that - was about the only thing he hadn't tried before, after a career spent on the sidelines. Or more accurately on the side of the track watching smoke and steam piss out of his broken Minardi/Jaguar/Williams/Red Bull. Webber's entire career has been a testimony to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like in an upside-down Mercedes sportscar at 200mph plus on the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans in 1999. Or chasing the lead of the Monaco GP in a woefully uncompetitive Williams a couple of years ago, until the fucking thing packed up on him. Or coming around a bend on his mountain bike in his eponymous adventure challenge in Tasphobia last summer to find a massive fuck-off Nissan Patrol coming the other way.

This year he's had the most competitive car he's ever had in his career, but he's also had the best teammate he's ever had or likely to - even if the perpetually smiley Seb Vettel looks like he'd be better suited to hosting kids television than cracking heads in F1 - and missed most of off-season testing with that broken leg. Webber's career has been compared to current World Championship leader Jenson Button - long frustrated career, finally coming to fruition - but the more valid comparison for both of them may be Nigel Mansell, dogged by appalling Webber-style luck throughout his career until he finally won the world title as a late 30-something. And like Mansell, Webber's just a bit dull - doesn't drink much, seems to be whinging a fair bit, strange accent (Brummie for Mansell, whereas Webber sometimes sounds like he's learned English from second-gen Slavic migrant kids). The only vaguely interesting things about him are that he used to be a ballboy for the Canberra Raiders (in their late-80s bemulleted pomp) and that his missus is 13 years older than him (which we'll be charitable and call Hot-Fot-Teacher-itis rather than Oedipus syndrome.)

But fuck all that. He just won a fucking F1 Grand Prix, AT LAST. I declare a National Day of Celebration. Let's all go and sit on the side of the road with the bonnet up in honour of him.


The Doctor is OUT.

Don't (don't don't don't) believe the hype

Pfffftt. In a word, that's the over-hyped Weak(end) in Sport. The world has been promised; what will likely be delivered will be a Readers Digest Junior Atlas.

The heavily hyped first Ashes test will end in a disappointing draw after the shit Welsh weather intervened to prevent Australia racking up a first innings lead of 200+ by the end of day three. Day four is expected to be played underwater.


Queanbeyan refugee Mark Webber was quick in first practice for the Don't Mention The War German F1GP, but you know he's going to finish the weekend on the side of the road watching wisps of steam issue out from under the Red Bull's engine cover - or worse still, on the end of another hiding from his pre-pubescent childrens TV host teammate.


Souths won a game, which was more embarrassing than anything.


And above all - mainly as this irrelevantises a lot more than just a weekend's sporting entertainment - the Tour was decided on the uphill slog into Andorra overnight. Some French kiddie won and some Italian dude from the breakaway is in yellow, but that's not the point. The point is that the intra-Astana team fight didn't and won't eventuate. In the final kilometres, after the Astana boys had cracked the whip viciously over the entire field all day, Bruyneel sent Contador sent over the top to make up the time he was down on fading maillot jeune Fabbo Cancellara of Team Sux0r Bank, as well as teammate Armstrong. This, then, was a statement of intent from Astana: Contador will win the Tour, and Armstrong will let him. This has been the official songsheet out of Team Borat since day minus lots - that Contador was the team leader and Armstrong's only role was laying down supporting fire and getting his Nike LiveStrong logo into plenty of post-race interviews and photo-ops - but it's fairly deflating, as a nominal neutral, to see that mentality being enforced hard, early and often on the very first stage.

Because it means there is no race this year. Astana have spent far more on recruitment and have much better cattle in their squad than any other team on the tour - the sight of Cadel Evans fighting a lone, doomed hand against two to three powder-blue Borats at the pointy end of the climb told its own story, as did the anonymity of the likes of Andy Schleck or Carlos Sastre - and an Astana rider will win this tour. Credit to Bruyneel for doing what it takes to keep him in employment, and to Armstrong for doing what he said he was always going to do - ride for Contador and help him win the Tour.


That said, it'll be interesting - possibly the only thing left which WILL be interesting in this tour, given the flat stages belong to the Manx Mong and everything else to Astana - to see what the American sports media, which usually misses the nuance of tactic-heavy Euro team sports, makes of Their Golden Boy effectively being prevented from directly contending for victory by his own team. Whether he was ever up to it isn't really the point.

The Doctor is OUT.

All hands against his own

He found all hands against his own
Found all eyes were looking down
And the sun had left and gone
All his friends could not be found.
- The Black Keys, 2004

No you haven't stumbled into In The Worst Possible Taste by mistake - though the latest installment thereof is up, fresh 'n' tasty like, via the link to the right (*cough blatant plug cough*) - just borrowing the fine work of the Black Keys (before Danger Mouse fucked up their most recent album) to underline one of my favouritest things about le Tour de Fromage Mangeant le Singe de Reddition. No, it's not Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, it's not the intrigue and backstabbing in the Astana camp, it's not even the slammin' hotties in the clingy frocks who plant sloppy wet kisses all over the lucky sweaty bastards on the podium.

OK it is that a bit. But mostly it's the oresome oresomeness of when a breakaway bunch of five to ten riders get out in the lead of the race from the first kilometre, and somehow manage to defy the entire peleton to bring it home for the win. You've got to love that. A couple of renegade nutters versus every decent professional cyclist in Europe. Nine times out of ten - nineteen out of twenty, if not more - they don't make it. They get shot down in the last five or ten kays - or even, cruelly, the last few hundred metres. But that just makes for even more oresome when they do make it. Like last night, when Thomas Voeckler of the perennially shit Bbox-Bouygues Telecom team - the clowns who stacked it royally in the team time trial the day before - led an all-day breakaway. With 120km to go their original 9min margin had been trimmed to 3m20 and falling and someone who will remain nameless Twuntered 'This breakaway has less chance of success than Bert Newton's next hair transplant, I'm off to bed'. Yet the original six blokes still somehow had a minute in hand with 5K to go - the gap had fallen to 30s and then blown back out to 90s while the teams behind hissed and farted and argued over who was going to coordinate the pursuit. At that moment Voeckler picked his chance and bolted, flicking out of a roundabout chicane and making a solo bid for glory. The rest of the breakaway were swamped on the line - one survivor from Katusha managed to outlast the Manx Mong (thanks v. much Lerm, I'm nicking that), gun sprinter and awowed retard Mark Cavendish - but Voeckler defied the peleton and claimed the win, on the fifth anniversary (give or take a few days) of him claiming yellow and holding it for 10 days in the 2004 Tour.

The only reason any breakaway survives is because the peleton fuck up, either because of ignorance or arrogance. In this case it was petulance. None of the other teams were interested in helping the Manx Mong's team (Columbia-HTC, in a previous life the Deutsche Telecom/T-Mobile team, later transplanted to the US) chase down the breakaway, because none of the other teams were interested in watching their lead sprinter getting duffed up in yet another Columbia-HTC sprint-train procession. With Zabel retired, Hushovd getting old, McEwen broken and Boonen mysteriously slower than the past couple of years (not sayin', just sayin'), Cavendish is the only game in town when the stage ends in a bunch sprint. I dare say the rest of the teams were delighted to have seen he and the Septics come up short in their bid to claim their third flat-stage win in succession. I certainly was.

Which leaves just a couple of Matters Arising from the overnight sporting feast:

- Is Peter Siddle the new Michael Kasprowicz? Not that much to him at first glance but tries his guts out all day, and the last ball of the day has the same zip and snarl as the first. That one he castled Prior with was case in point. An ideal new ball bowler... for the second new ball.

- Re the prominent billboard at Sophia Gardens compelling the stupid to 'READ KP ONLY IN THE NEWS OF THE WORLD', does he actually have a contract to write for them, or do they just bug his phone conversations and print the transcript as per standard practice?

- Can Nathan Hauritz throw? Or is he Scott Muller in disguise?

and finally

- Is this the most heroically gratuitous restaurant marketing campaign in the history of heroically gratuitous marketing campaigns?

There is a sporting context, honest. She's Nicole Begg, the inline world skating champion, whatever that is. She's from Timaru, 'cos someone has to be. She's sponsored by a South Island chain of Thai restaurants who are based here in D-town (and do a fairly stellar feed, particularly given the distance in space, time and culture from downtown Bangkok to the Deep South.) And she got so annoyed by her complete media anonymity despite being a World Champion and stuff that she decided to hold her breath and stamp her feet until someone paid attention. Failing that, she took off all her clothes and got photographed for Playboy. (That link's safe for work. Others weren't. Though you can Google those yourselves at your own leisure.) Now why can't Danica Patrick do that? More than she has already, I mean.

Menu looks good though. Anyone else wondering what their seafood course is like?

The Doctor is OUT.

Delusions of adequacy

I've clearly missed something. Something big. And I've missed it not by a small margin, as separated Lance from yellow this morning, but by a lot, as separated Nate Myles from the bowl a few mornings prior.

England think they're going to win the Ashes.

Not by a small, split-second amount, but by a monumental, length-of-a-brown-streaked-hotel-corridor, veritable gaping chasm. Sky Sports UK's judges have called it unanimously:

David Lloyd: “I fancy England. Strongly.”
Nasser Hussain: “England. Not strongly but I think they’ll win.”
David Gower: “(coquettishly) I prefer to ask the questions. (Then, after ribbing from Hussain) Okay, I’ll say 2-1 England.”
Ian Botham: “England 3-0.”

And ESPN are in on the act too, puffing up their pre-Ashes visitations of the Cricket Australia Academy and training facilities with sludge like 'beginning of the end' and 'downfall of a once-great cricketing nation'.

I'm sorry, but what the fuck?

Did we not just go to the house of the then-number one Test playing nation in the world and beat them up on their doorstep with their girlfriend and their sister watching? And then shagged the pair of them on the bonnet of the Jaapies' car?

Did we not kick the shite out of the West Indies earlier last year in the Caribbean, a team England somehow conspired to lose to, the only team to do so in living memory?

Have I lost the ability to read, because I was fairly certain that A-U-S-T-R-A-L-I-A, the name of the country on top of the ICC Test Rankings, doesn't actually spell ENGLAND, which is the name in FIFTH place nestled in between between Sri Lanka, who've won one of their 185 test matches against Australia, and Pakistan, who don't even have a home country to play in?

For fuck's sake. This makes about as much sense as picking Noddy Kimmorley, King of Intercepts, as halfback for NSW in Origin III. To play alongside another washed-up old clown whose last game of consequence was as Noddy's opposition half in a Grand Final ten years ago. (Has Gary Ghost been picked on the wing? He'll get a lot of balls thrown his way.)

Anyway at least it's not just me whose Ashes bullshit detector is bleeping like the decibel meter at a Shihad concert. Even the Poms - though precious few of them - are registering doubts. Most, though, are boarding the bandwagon and booking Trafalgar Square for the post-Ashes open-topped-bus parade.

Anyway, with just Hours Remaining (nine at press time) until the first ball at Lords... erm Cardiff (why Cardiff? What the fuck would a perennially rainy nation of coal miners, leek herders, sheep shaggers and eunuch choirboys want to watch the first installment of England losing the Ashes again?) we present our Twitter-Generation-Compliant Preview to the 2009 Ashes. Three words. 'Cos 140 characters is fully, like, an ESSAY.

ENGLAND
Not bloody likely

Andrew Strauss (c)
Arsey left hander

James Anderson
Stupid haired twat

Ian Bell
Take care, fragile

Ravi Bopara
Who are ya?

Stuart Broad
Run out specialist

Paul Collingwood
Fired for cheating

Alistair Cook
Lanky streak o'shit

Andrew Flintoff
Will be injured

Graham Onions
Appears quite vegetative

Monty Panesar
Nice hat mate

Kevin Pietersen
Missus fucks Warnie

Matt Prior (wk)
Gloves of iron

Graeme Swann
No one knows

AUSTRALIA
Barely good enough

Ricky Ponting (c)
Cross eyed dwarf

Michael Clarke
Mr Lara Bingle

Stuart Clark
Glenn Mc Grath

Brad Haddin (wk)
Gilly? Not rilly

Nathan Hauritz
Not very good

Ben Hilfenhaus
Needs seam movement

Phillip Hughes
Light the phughes

Michael Hussey
Not the spare

Mitchell Johnson
Call the plumber

Simon Katich
The Black Cro

Brett Lee
Crocked, thank fuck

Graham Manou (wk)
Manou are ya?

Andrew McDonald
Red haired clown

Marcus North
Next great hope

Peter Siddle
Fair to middling

Shane Watson
Will be injured

For those seeking greater detail, our Preview of the 2006/07 Ashes Series is still available, is still accurate, and has better jokes.

The Doctor is OUT.

Borats on bikes

Of the serious contenders to win this year's Tour de France - Sastre, Contador, Evans, the Schlecks, Menchov, Leipheimer, Kloden and Armstrong - nearly half of them (if you count the Schlecks as one gestalt entity sharing two bodies) ride for one UCI ProTour team. That being Astana, the Kazakhstani-based outfit helmed by former US Postal/Discovery Channel Team boss Johan Bruyneel. Now over the dozen or so Tours I've paid attention to, many ProTour teams have come and gone, and most can be split into one of three groups: good, dodgy, or stupid. Astana manage to be all three at once.

They're good. This is self-evident, with half their '09 TDF squad being capable of winning the Big Fromage. Alberto Contador won in '07, Lance With Less In His Pants won the seven Tours prior, and both Andreas Kloden and Levi Leipheimer are former runners-up in the General Classification.

But they're dodgy. Very, very dodgy. They were set up when the Astana Group, a syndicate of monopolistic state-owned enterprises of the distinctly despotic Kazakh 'government', decided to bail out the remnants of the former Liberty Seguros-Wurth cycling team after they were decimated by arrests, bans and turfings-out during and after the 2006 'Operation Puerto' doping investigation brought by the Spanish gummint. The attraction was obvious: lead rider Alexander Vinokourov, a national hero in Kazakhstan despite (a) routinely dudding out in the Big Tours, Vuelta '06 aside and (b) being front-and-centre amidst the stench of the Puerto allegations. Much of the Astana team's brief history has revolved around its riders either being punted from events or from the team for failing drugs tests, or the entire team being declined entry to races on account of their habit of stinking up the place with riders who have been or should be punted for the above. This came to a head when Vinokourov failed a blood doping check off the back of winning the individual time trial in the 2007 Tour, followed by race organisers inviting the team, rather than continuing their involvement in the tour, instead to go and fuck themselves. They declined to invite Astana to last year's Tour, meaning new signing Contador - who'd won the '07 tour after everyone else got busted for drugs - ironically couldn't defend his title because of all the Astana riders who'd previously been busted for drugs (Kessler, Mazzolini, Vinokourov, Kashechkin - all just in the team's first year in ProTour Cycling.)


A management purge, followed by the hiring of former US Postal/Discovery guru Bruyneel, along with a bunch of other former US Postal and Discovery team riders (in particular the massive PR win of enticing Armstrong out of retirement) and backroom staff was a major step in Astana's attempts to sort their shit out and begin giving the impression they were running a professional cycling team and not a safe injecting house, if one accepts (as Astana belatedly have appeared to) that there is intended to be a difference between these concepts. Except that the other side of Astana's dodginess - the source of all that lovely money which underwrites the premise - reared its ugly head. Or failed to. The Global Financial Clusterfuck's effects on the Kazakh economy led to certain salaries not getting paid, certain riders competing in jerseys with certain sponsors' names blanked out, and calls from the likes of Armstrong for the teams licence to revert to his old mate Bruyneel, in whose name the shell company which held the team's licence was kept. The money's flowing again - presumably because the oil and gas are too - but the team's future is only guaranteed until the end of the year.

While all that's plainly pretty dodgy, it's not quite stupid. What's stupid is what comes next. Or what comes back next. Vinokourov. Yup, the confirmed drug cheat, Narcissist and fuckwit ends his two-year doping ban on July 24 and expects to swan straight back into the team. "This team was created for me and thanks to my efforts. I have served my suspension and I do not see why I could not return. If Bruyneel does not want me, it will be Bruyneel who is leaving the team." And this appears to be the most likely result: a battle for control of the team between the ex-Discovery faction of Bruyneel and Armstrong against the Kazakh interests of Vinokourov and his sponsors, with whom Contador has allied himself in order to further his own ends.


In fact, it's battle over already - the Kazazh Federation heads have been quoted (though it was in L'Equipe, the National Enquirer of sports journalism) as saying the team will be led by and built around the whims of Contador and Vinokourov. The Astana arseclowns have visions (or delusions, if you prefer) of a Kazakh national team in the style of the Basque Euskatel-Euskadi team, staffed almost exclusively with Kazakh riders (plus the occasional big-name Contador-style mercenary ring-in) with which they can rule the professional cycling world for generations to come. Precisely the sort of neolithic mentality you might expect from business minds forged in the brown-hot furnace of totalitarian/oligarchic state monopolies such as those which form the Astana Group of Companies.

So as you'd expect, the larger Astana squad is packed with Kazakh development riders. And as you'd expect, the shitstack of busted-arse Borats on Bikes who make up the larger Astana squad have managed to contribute just one sole solitary Kazakh native to the actual lineup of Astana riders selected to compete in the Tour de France. Going well so far. Going so well in fact that the Arstana muppets are sufficiently self-chuffed to think they don't have any particularly use for a team manager who masterminded eight Tour de France victories, another who rode seven of them, and the backroom staff that ran one of the best, most professional, and (whisper it) cleanest ProTour cycling teams of the past decade.

Seriously, if they were any dodgier, or any stupider, they'd be Festina.


AND they're bloody Volvo drivers.

Enjoy your Tour. Even if just for the hotties in the frocks on the presentation dais at the end of the day.


I'm guessing they draw straws to see who has to end up in the polka-dot ones.

The Doctor is OUT.

The Lions get red-shirted... and Tuqiri goes Tah-Tahs

Last weekend the Partly British with Occasional Irish Lions Rugby XV lost their Test series against the Sarth Effricorn Sprungborks, two-blot with one test to play. As with previous professional-era Lions tours to NZ and Australia, the stadia of South Africa are filled with red-shirted fans - the aerial-footage redwash of Fortress Loftus Versfeld being a case in point - as presumably are the pubs, hotels and restaurants, taking advantage of their forex rate advantage to splash their pounds and Euros about the place like Roman imperial largesse. Everyone goes on, and on, and fucking ON, about how wonderful the Lions are for international rugby, how important they are for the spirit of the game, how - like the Barbarians - they are a link to the traditions and history of the game. Now, obviously, I'm not qualified to make a comment on rugby union, being as though I went to a government school and have never seen a soggy Sao in my life, but one pertinent point occurs to me.

What's the fucking point if they never win a fucking game?

The last time the Lions won a test was in Brisbane in 2001, mugging a tired home side on their last legs after winning the previous World Cup who bought the PR story and dramatically underestimated their visitors. The last time they won a series was 1997 in Bokkeland, under precisely the same circumstances. They have won one - count 'em, one - series against the All Blacks, in 1971, and as you'd expect the NZ rugger media is still crying foul over percieved injustices surrounding THAT to this day. Yes, it's a lovely concept - every four years, the four Home Nations pitting their best players against the best the Southern Hemisphere has to offer. But if all it is now is an excuse for a bunch of largely objectionable City of London stockbroker types to buy matching scarlet Adidas jerseys and head off on a junket through the colonies with a bunch of other Hooray Henrys... what's the fucking point?

I get the PR argument. I really do. The 2001 Lions tour was Good Times, and I mean that sincerely as someone who really had no fucking time for union or what it stood for up to that point. As such I'd never even heard of the concept before that tour, but had sure as hell heard all about it once the Lions had mugged the Wallabies at a scarlet-drenched 'Gabba. The fact that the ARU had to give out gold scarves and T-shirts at the gate for tests two and three tells you all you need to know about your average bandwagoneer Wallabies fan. The Lions fans outsang and outbarracked the wanna-be Wallaby support, even if the on-field action went the way of the golden GPS lads. Like a less obnoxious version of the Barmy Army, they gave good crowd. I can't speak to the atmosphere at the grounds, but in the pubs of south east Queensland - the RE where we watched game one, Adrenalin for game two and O'Malleys in Surfers game three - the place was absolutely buzzing.

Yet not even Graham Henry and the nucleus of the 2003 RWC winning Pommy outfit could get the Lions over the line that time, and since then the Lions story has been a confection of arse frosted with more arse. In fact, I'm beginning to see Lions tours as I'm beginning to see State of Origin. A massively overhyped but inexorably flawed concept which on sporting grounds should be bound for the bullet, but which commercial concerns will prop up like the reanimated corpse of Bernie from Weekend Therewith for as long as the bucks keep rolling in. There's no doubt, in the case of Origin, that the seat of power and influence in rugby league has shifted to Queensland. It's the only place where stadiums still sell out - 40K plus for Broncos-Titans games, versus 20Ks max for traditional Sydney stoushes like Dogs-Eels or Bunnies-Dragons. More importantly for the commercial stakeholders it's the only place where Nine's live(ish) NRL coverage still wins its timeslot, every week, no questions asked. This creates an inevitable positive feedback loop - more money, more interest, more player development, more quality players. Where you start or finish on that loop doesn't matter, it's all good for Queensland. And the obvious inverse is happening in NSW - less money, less interest, less players. Queensland will dominate Origin for the foreseeable future - at least the next five years - and good luck to 'em. They care more - they always have. Eventually, the lack of NSW interest in watching a man kicking a dog - in particular their dog - will probably kill off Origin, unless there's another Joey Johns about to be unearthed from the mining towns of the Hunter.

The Lions' problem is similar - a bunch of randomly assembled all-stars from four nations who hate each other are never going to get over the top of a pack of well-drilled professionals who play alongside each other every month of the rugby season. Any time you see an All Star team or a Rest Of The World lineup or any sort of conglomerate side come together against a properly sorted Team of Others, the result is never pretty. The Harlem Globetrotters might have touched up the Washington Generals on a regular basis but there's no doubt they would get their arses handed to them by the Lakers. Money Bill's Baa Baas GOT their arses handed to them by the Wobbilies. As did the all-star, no-interest ICC World XI a couple of years back against the Australians in three one-dayers and a one-off six day test match at the SCG (two days of which were spent in the hotel bar, having been proven surplus to requirements.) And regardless of the fact that the Lions led for almost all of last night's game against the Boks - mugged by a penalty on the buzzer, in a move BLATANTLY STOLEN from the Wallabies of Rod Macqueen's era - there was never really any doubt about who would win this series.

Which leaves two questions, each of them equally pressing.

One - should the 2013 B & I Lions think about touring some country they might actually BEAT in a three-Test series instead, like Argentina? Or Guam?

Two - what the fuck is wrong with South African people that this unit is their idea of an ideal sports host?

Jakobus Johannes 'Kobus' Wiese is the face of Supersport's Lions Tour coverage. He was a bookend in the '95 RWC-winning Boks outfit. And he was most demonstrably, as mentioned in other media commitments, born when meat was cheap. Is this what South African manhood is meant to aspire to? Do Supersport and the SARU wonder why the only obvious black faces in Loftus were Bryan Habana and a couple of his mates in Springbok jerseys, as distinct from the Rainbow Nation's turnout for Bafana Bafana's Confederations Cup semi against Brazil a few days previous?

Maybe that's not fair. Maybe he's from a family of anti-apartheid civil disobedience activists, like Luke Watson. Maybe he'd punch PW Botha in the face if he met him. (Which would appear unlikely as the fascist old apartheider dropped off the twig in 2006.) I just doubt it somehow. The moment Kobus opens that boerwoers-disposal-unit of a gob, all I can hear him saying is: 'DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY.'

And three - yeah I know I said two, but this is a hastily and half-arsedly tacked-on update several days after the original, on the flimsy pretence of it also being a rugby story but also 'cos I can't be bollocksed writing anything new - what the fuck did Wallabies and Waratards winger Lotsa Tequilas do THIS time to warrant the ARU finally giving him the arse? Given the anal retentiveness of the current ARU administration - where starting a food fight is tantamount to turning up at Glebe Police Station too drunk to remember your own name and being crowned 'the drunkest human being ever' by the Fuzzy Muff - it's anyone's guess. These are mine.

Take your pick from:

• sinking a few with Symmo
• powdering his nose with Dell
• punching on with Matt Henjak
  
• sharing a glass with Greg Bird
• sharing a hotel room with Blind Freddy Fittler
  
• going for a drive with Jake Friend
• taking a wander through the Cronulla shops with Brett Seymour
• wildlife tourism with the Western Force
  
• or sharing a bun with the Sharkies

Answers on a postcard to the usual address. Which won't get there cos this is the internerd and all, but anyhoo.

Final thought: if wonderkid James O'Connor had been at the Sharks rather than the Wallabies, it wouldn't have been his over-generous willingness to share his food that would have got him into trouble with his teammates - more his likely unwillingness to share his girl with them.

(Takes until about 3:53 before she shows up in the YouTube vid above, but it's probably worth the investment of your time.)

The Doctor is OUT.