Geelong Advertiser, Saturday 3 February 2007, p. 31. Education looks like it will be one of the big issues at the next election, with both major parties awakening to its importance to the future of this country. Kevin Rudd has already launched the first parts of what...
Journalism 2007
‘Break Point’
Geelong Advertiser, Wednesday 17 January 2007, p. 21. On Monday there was trouble at the tennis with young men in Croatian and Serbian tops abusing and attacking each other. On Friday night, 190 people were ejected from the MCG, mainly men between 18 and 25. Three...
My Christmas reading
Geelong Advertiser, Saturday 6 January 2007, p. 25. One of the joys of the Christmas and New Year holidays is the chance, once the festivities are over, to settle down with a book or three, not for work but for pleasure. This year some of the regular and usually...
I’ve seen the future and I’m worried
Australian and British Soccer Weekly, Tuesday 9 October 2007, p. 14. Last month I was at the 25th annual conference of the British sports historians in Stirling and after lunch on the Saturday a few of us watched the last half-hour of a Scottish Premier League match...
Victory’s victory
Geelong Advertiser , Monday 22 October 2007, p. 33. Putting its off-field problems with star recruit Ljubo Milicevic behind it, Melbourne Victory pulled off a narrow two-one win against Perth Glory at Telstra Dome last night. Skipper Kevin Muscat did not recover from...
Kevin, we are the ones who should be seeing red.
Age, Sport, Monday 3 December 2007, p. 12. Dear Kevin No, I haven’t played the game at professional level, so I don’t know first hand the situations you face every week in the A-League or the top leagues in England and Scotland, but I have watched your career since...
Victory finals hopes dashed
Geelong Advertiser, Monday, 17 December 2007, p. 42. Melbourne Victory effectively surrendered its chance of playing in this year’s final series when it lost by three goals to one to Newcastle Jets in the A-League at Telstra Dome last night. Victory fielded the same...
Overdoing it
Geelong Advertiser, Saturday 15 December 2007, p. 39. We sometimes get a very distorted view of Australia’s place in the world from our media. Reading the accounts of the Bali climate change conference, you might conclude that the key event was our new Prime...
Christmas reading
Geelong Advertiser, Tuesday 4 December 2007, p. 13. It is the season of publishers’ catalogues, booksellers promotions, book launches and serendipitous strolls around the bookshops of Geelong and Melbourne trying to turn up something for presents, something for...
Hanging Ben out to dry, ignoring Dick
Geelong Advertiser, Wednesday 21 November 2007, p. 19. When sports officials want to bring someone to heel they often resort to an omnibus charge of bringing the game into disrepute. This has always existed as a weapon in most of the major codes, but its use has...
An extraordinary, ordinary woman
The page on which this column appears is called Perspective and I certainly gained some perspective on life when my mother-in-law died two weeks ago. She was in her 94th year and we had spent the best part of a month visiting her in September. Click on the article...
Origins of footy again and a cautionary tale of Tutsi high jumping
Published as 'Footy fiction', Geelong Advertiser, Tuesday 16 October 2007, p. 15. by Roy Hay The recent rediscovery of an etching at the Museum of Victoria which appears to show group of Aboriginal children playing kick-to-kick possibly a year before a set of rules...
Football and religion
Published as 'Praise them' Geelong Advertiser, Wednesday 10 October 2007, p. 23. The notion of football as a secular religion is an old one. Marx wrote about religion as the opium of the people, the consolation of the oppressed, and many have followed him in more...
It’s Wigan not Paris
My wife turned down a trip to Paris this week. We have been married so long, she knows which questions to ask and when I asked if she fancied Paris, quick as flash she said, “Which game is on?” “It is Scotland versus France”, I replied. “It’s a European championship...