To the Weak In Sport Newsbench. We couldn't afford a Newsdesk, it's actually just a couple of milk crates and an old bus stop sign.
AB negative: bloodletting likely after French farce
Stade de France, Paris, Saturday: Team upheaval, mass selection changes and possibly wholesale firings are expected in wake of the dismal performance by the New Zealand All Blacks™ against the French. The ABs performance could only be described as an abject failure, never looking like winning... by the traditional forty points they usually beat the French by. Headmaster Graham Henry pulled no punches in his assessment of the game. "We were poor," noted the man known as Ted to his friends, both of them. "Worse than poor. Worse even than this hideous excuse for facial hair that I've taken to sporting on this tour. Can someone buy me a Philishave for Christmas please? Fuck's sake." Pundits both in the press box and at home lambasted the performance and tried vainly to find a way to blame it on Ma'a Nonu, largely because he wears eyeliner like a big dreadlocked poofter and makes various overly macho ex-rugger media personalities rather uncomfortable about their sexuality. However, most commentators eventually blamed English referee Jeremy Pompous-Twatt's policing of the scrum, particularly his ludicrous insistence on penalising Carl Hayman for boring into the side of French hooker Notime Toulouse at a 45 degree angle to the point where Toulouse ended up with an inner ear infection from Hayman's beard.
Weather to blame in Wallabies loss: Australia doesn't have any
Lansdowne Road, Dublin, Sunday: The Wallabies, a rugby union team (at least it appears that's what they're attempting to play) made up from inbred Hoorays from Australia's finest private schools and all-boys colleges, have maintained the Australian tradition of young ex-pats on 'OE' in Europe of going out, getting a bit silly and making complete embarrassments of themselves, losing to Ireland by 21-6 in a who-cares fixture held in horizontal sleet at Lansdowne Road. That's the Irish rugby ground not the pub at Chevron Renaissance on the Goldie. Australian coach John 'Knuckles' Connolly attributed the loss to the weather, pointing out Australia didn't have any. "We stopped letting weather into the country years ago," Knuckles explained. "John Howard banned it years ago, part of his refugee policy. Rain is un-Australian." The last prospective sighting of rain on Australian soil, according to the consensus of opinion among Australian sports journalists at the game, was actually on some piss-ant island south of Melbourne. "Some of the V8 guys thought they'd seen some in the recent round in Tasmania," said one, "but that turned out to be residual precipitation from Lowndes still bawling his eyes out after Bathurst."
Despite Greg Growden of the SMH and Peter Jenkins of the Daily Terrorgraph acclaiming the result as a Knucklicious tactical masterstroke solely on the basis of its likelihood to confuse the New Zealanders, the Wallabies' prospects have further dimmed with the recent theft of Knuckles Connolly's secret playbook, containing all of the amassed wisdom which convinced the ARU (or at least Growden and Jenkins) to give him the job in the first place. Unexpectedly, this is reportedly not a completely blank single sheet of A4, but a large list entitled 'Excuses'. Having successfully blamed weather for losing the Ireland game, in future games Knuckles intends to blame global warming, gravity, entropy, and the decline of feminism in post-modern society. Not on the list, apparently, is picking a team of totally fucking wank players and training them to play like busted arses.
Meanwhile, for the third Sunday night in a row, Eddie Jones giggled himself to sleep.
Shane! Shane, come back!
The Gabba, Brisbane, yesterday: This just in: apparently Shane Watson is good all of a sudden. Who knew. Judging by efforts to get the heroically mediocre all-rounder's strained hamstring ready for Thursday's first Ashes Test, Watson is the only man standing between the Australian cricketing nation and a metaphorical red hot poker jammed up the country's collective sporting date. Accountant-In-Chief John Buchanan explained the Australian selectors position on Watson, which appears grounded neither in recent form, Test record, or any other basis in fact. Unfortunately Buchanan explained their position in a desperately, soul-sappingly boring monotone that made everyone present want to throw themselves off the Story Bridge, a temptingly brief taxi-fare away.
"We sought to undertake an exacting and comprehensive statistical analysis," droned Buchanan, "evaluating the historical performance of the English batting lineup in Ashes contests against a range of variables, correcting for all accepted parameters that may have a biometric or informatic bearing on the outcome."
For God's sake make the man stop.
"Then from the vector-based algorithmic model thus derived, we extrapolated a series of potentially statistically significant factoids that..."
At this point The Weak drifted off to the sweet release of sleep, but by copying another journalist's notes afterwards it appears that Buchanan's plan is based on a fairly simple tenet:
"In the past seven Ashes contests, more English wickets have been taken by bowlers called Shane than by bowlers with any other first name," explained Buchanan when he finally deigned to get to the fucking point.
Should Watson's bid for match fitness fall through, the Australian team have been scouting potential replacements, the Weak can exclusively report having hacked into Buchanan's laptop by way of an email virus advertising implant surgery for certain, um, appendages. Namely his personality.
Shane Bond
Pros: Can bowl a bit
Cons: Crocked all the time. Also not from this country, but unlikely to matter (prior art: N. Fien, K. Hunt, W. Mason, R. Crowe)
Shane Gould
Pros: Proven sporting record
Cons: Drinks soy milk instead of VB. May be a bit of a girl.
Shane Kelly
Pros: Keen to get into the gym, particularly the exercycle
Cons: Keeps falling off the exercycle when his foot slips off the pedal
Shane Dye
Pros: Without fear. Without nerve. Short enough to get even stump-high half-volleys 'wided' as bouncers in ODI games.
Cons: Keeps falling off the exercycle and being trampled by everyone else in the gym
Other potential options: Shane Horgan, Shane Williams, Shane Heal, Shane Webcke, Shane St James, Twania Shane
History never three-peats
Stamford Bridge, London, any time between August 2005 and yesterday: English glamour club Chelsea FC defeated Premiership rivals [insert name here] overnight by a single goal to nil in a dour, scrappy affair more representative of Conference League football than a side compiled at vast expense with the proceeds from flogging off most of Siberia's oil reserves. Following the Blues' recent run of success despite not playing anything looking remotely like football for many years, Chelsea have announced that in future they will not bother fielding a side at all in Premiership fixtures, but will rely on unshaven haught-merchant coach Jose Mourinho psyching out opposition teams and psychologically destabilising referees in his pre-match comments, intending to secure one-nil victories through nervous own-goals or dubious penalties, and hence an inevitable third consecutive Premiership title. When questioned on Chelsea's new tactics on the basis that this was 'anti-football', Jose Mourinho sniffed, contemplated his nails and scoffed: "To you, perhaps. To me, it is the ultimate expression of my art. Bow down to pragmatism, your new God." Mourinho ended the press conference by bidding the Fleet Street hacks what he described as a traditional Portuguese farewell, "Sua irmã, mija curvada," which he translated as "Good health, good heart". It was some time after Mourinho had left before it was worked out that what he had pronounced actually translated as "Your sister cannot piss straight."
A picture tells a thousand words; knowing this column, half of them would probably need bleeping out
Thorpedo calls press conference to finally make that big announcement which we've all been expecting for several years... no, not THAT big announcement, the OTHER one
Young John Wayne Montoya seems to be fittin' in good with them NASCAR folks now, y'hear
Assume the position, boys...
The Doctor is OUT.
