Sime says

If one swallow doesn't make a summer, then why is a Swann going home for winter? This is anything but a single instance. Trott has already trotted off, Prior will be next to come up with a previous engagement hindering his selection and, if you believe the press, the English cricket team’s dressing room is rife with avian influenza. They are all shot ducks. Graham Swann’s decision to retire mid-series is one of the most disrespectful, selfish, rude and self-obsessed decisions made in 2013, second only to Astro Boy’s white-anting of the ALP. Lauded by some as being England’s best ever off-spinner, the 255-wicket-taking tweeker destroyed The Aussies in the Ashes series in England last summer and was Alistair Cook’s go-to man when a breakthrough was needed. Thank you Graham for bowling us over with your talent and for confirming that there is an “I” in team. Although you are not the first to spell it right, just ask Sebastian Vettel. Surprised? Not really. We are all pl...

In WA Colin Barnett wants to hook into sharks. In NSW Barry O’Farrell is the star in Casino Royale, while Tony and Chris are educating the rest of us on how to perform an ugly backflip. It’s December and everything’s arse up. It must be an end of year thing. The nation is punch drunk with broken promises and is now bracing itself for the final knockout blow: the best ever fireworks display, ever to be viewed on New Year’s Eve in Sydney. Twice as big … bigger, better, best! From the Opera House, “WOW”, and the Harbour Bridge, “”WOW”. You’ll even be able to send “love U” text messages to the Sydney Harbour Bridge pylon. Now that’s a personal greeting. “Triple WOW”. It’s all part of the touchy, feely, sugar-coated ‘showy’ finish to another year – Sydney’s way of glossing over all the detritus dished forth on 364 previous days. Cynical Sime? Christmas grouch? Mid-life crisis? Now, that’s a winning trifecta! It’s hard not to argue that the news cycle is predictable, full of s...

Stretching and contorting like an orb of sardines, the mass movement along the Great Ocean Road is not fish out of water. Totally at one on a scintillating stretch of bitumen, the lithe beings on bikes beetle towards the finish line. It’s September in the seaside township of Lorne in Victoria, where legions of cyclists gather to compete in Amy’s Gran Fondo (AGF). Batteries of bikes roll into town. Locked and loaded on top of vehicles they arrive in menacing numbers from all points north, south and west. There is safety in numbers: close to 4000 riders, spread across three events, bolster the ranks of a green army that rules the closed roads to traffic. Man is not a mouse but Mamil s (Middle-aged men in lycra) are in plague proportions at Gran Fondo time. From teens to 60+ veterans, mates and girlfriends assemble at the starting line. Age is no barrier but time is of the essence for stragglers who might fail to make the cutoff. Starting in rhy...

Koels aren’t the only birds creating a racket in Sydney. Plucky roosters are crowing from the rooftops and the din will continue well through summer. With sharpened spurs and clinical efficiency, the Sydney Roosters dispatched the high flying Manly Sea Eagles from their perch without barely ruffling their plumage during the 2013 NRL Grand Final. From early in the day, supporters of different feathers flocked together inside ANZ stadium to witness a back-to-the-70s, cage-fighting scrap between two of the NRL’s most polarising breeds. There was no love lost between the team that everyone loves to hate and their adversaries, whose roster value would top any winnings from chook lotto. In tennis circles the name Williams has a certain closeness about it, but in this game the Williams were poles apart. On one side a fledging eagle found himself incapable of launching off the ground and contesting the aerial bombardment. Weighed down by shaggy quills, wolf man W...

It’s a slow climb out of bed for many of us still struggling to fill the late-night void left by 169 finishers who covered 3500 odd colossal kilometres in France. But what now for weekend warriors, the legions of Saturday morning cyclists who have ridden the rivet on sofas and sprinted to the fridge during ad breaks for three weeks straight? The lack of sleep is sadly not the only reason for my comatosed state, it’s the persistent talk of drug taking that has permeated my body and the veins of many: Pantani, Ulrich, Armstrong and now, most gut wrenching of all, Stuart O’Grady. Stop the rot and get on your bike! Clip some cardboard to your wheels, time trial yourself around the block and make some noise. This is not the time to back peddle to 1998. Despite the juiced-up talk, the memories of this year’s TDF remain vivid and the discussion at the café is as invigorating as drinking alpine water from a spigot. Gabrielle Gate fried fis...

As clouds gather this week and the heavens prepare to unleash bucket loads of rain, the sporting gods have united to produce a confluence of events unseen at any other time during 2013. It is a Perfect Storm, the genesis of which can be traced to Canberra, where the Astro Boy of global politics Kevin Rudd has created a whirlwind to suck-up every Labor stalwart into the stratosphere before the party’s solstice in September. Such an extreme weather event shares the same pattern as the fast-moving front moving north from New South Wales. On Wednesday night, two high-pressure systems – one blue and one maroon – will butt heads in Brisbane. Emergency powers will swing into action as Campbell Newman invokes a State of Chaos. The biff is back and there’ll be gallons of blood on the pitch as Slater, Smith and Cronk unleash some Melbourne Storm-inspired footy and level the three-match series. In northern climes, flash flooding and strong winds are predicted at Wimbl...

On Budget night I stood at the kitchen basin doing the dishes while frog face ribbited on in the background. The Treasurer tried in vain to gild a pond full of lily pads, anything to make a deficit sound better than a surplus. “Ribbit.” Before his half hour was up, I pulled the plug and watched the water run down the drain, taking Swan’s surplus, the baby bonus and other scraps with it. As the water receded, there were gurgles down the pipeline, somewhere near the S-bend where the bonus backed up against a stack of poker machines. I better call the plumber. On this night of nights to rival ker.. ker.. ker.. ker… Kevin singing on The Voice , it occurred to one S ingle I ncome N o K id or S elfishly W illful I ndependent M ogul like me that I’m no drain on the state. Unless you’re a ‘couple’, a ‘family’ or a ‘pensioner’, singletons hardly rate a mention on the night the nation counts its pennies. But there are advantages to bucking the national trend. In SWIM m...

If you think watching golf is like observing paint dry or tea brew, well, climb down from the ladder and turn off the kettle because today, even though it’s Monday, there’s no excuse for feeling below par: Adam Scott has become the first Australian to EVER win the USPGA Masters golf tournament. 30 years after nabbing the America’s Cup, a feat which by chance was retold on the ABC’s Australian Story tonight, an Aussie golfer has clubbed them again, this time raiding the yankee closet to claim the famous green jacket. In suiting up, Scott has turned the colour green into the new black and cuts a fine figure. Girls, if you love Black Caviar, you’ll adore the now single Adam Scott, just like tennis glamour Ana Ivanovic did. Bet she’d chip, putt and drive her way back into his life right now if she could. The guy’s got the looks and the game to match. Golf is akin to hitting a Birdseye frozen pea with a toothpick. It's a huge waste of time to some, is cluttered with a...

2000 wetsuit-clad bodies stand like a huddle of penguins on a beach in Frankston, Victoria. The sun is just awake and an arctic-like blizzard has whipped-up the waters of Port Philip Bay, sending metre-high waves crashing onto the shore. It’s bitterly cold as a flock of spectators gathers on a pier adjacent to the beach, waiting patiently for their black brood to take fright and head out to sea. Penguins or madmen? Ironmen more likely, ironwomen too. Call them what you will, but there’s no doubting the determination of this lithe lot in lycra. The mass human migration from the beach represents the first leg – a 3.8km swim – of a gruelling event to rival wildebeest crossing the Zambezi River. If they survive the angry sea awash with porpoising bodies clambering and kicking their way around buoys and make it back to the beach, a 180km bike ride takes them to hell and back before a punishing 42.2km marathon runs each competitor into the ground. Feeling exhausted...

Ah the façade of life. Not the fabric of omnipresent mcmansions, where steadfast bricks and mortar have been replaced with lightweight masonry frontages. Rather, it’s the pretense in daily life that impregnates the pillars of society like a concrete cancer. All of us put up the barriers at some point and live a sham existence: it might only last a millisecond or as long as it takes to write a sentence; drag on for a day or for what seems eternity. During a press conference, listening to question time, sitting in front of a salesman or presenting to a board, there’s a speciousness in such activities that is oh so predictable. How invigorating it is then when cracks in a phony exterior reveal honesty more potent than drugs in sport. Just lately, there have been numerous examples where veracity has triumphed. Let’s kick off with Todd Greenberg, the CEO of the Canterbury Bulldogs rugby league club. In announcing that Ben Barba – the club’s 23-year-old wunderkid and the...

Speak science, philosophy, fine art and literature to me and you’ll find I’m a bit of a lightweight. Like a fish out of water, it doesn’t take long for my cerebrally challenged brain to flounder. But I’d rather lack intellectual depth on some issues than carry the weight of the world around my arse. Tipping the scales at just 74kg, I felt decidedly Biafran when walking into Goulburn’s celebrated Paragon Café during the holidays. A stack of 5kg jars of Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread sitting on the counter at the café’s entrance, and selling for a cool $65 each, signaled that this is the big end of town. The large pots matched the corpulent posteriors, which swallowed seats, and the flabby arms, which quivered in the air-conditioned cool. Like father like son and daughter like mother, hungry hordes followed me in to this human feedlot. If there were such a thing as Wagyu Beef on two legs, I’d found it. The larger-than-life characters (think Bert Large in ...

Cricket is to summer as vegemite is to toast: hand in glove or hand to mouth, the two come together for a feast of sport at this time of the year. When our cricketers are winning, the nation is full of happy little Vegemite s. So, when a key ingredient of the game of cricket retires and no longer stands upon the commercial shelf of fame, a void opens up like the gap between the bat and pad of ill-prepared batsmen. And so it was when Ponting recently left the crease, the steely Tasmanian who once sported a goatee and a shiner in the same year. But those were the early days when impetuous youth was blunted by bucket loads of talent, which lasted right up until his final dismissal in Perth at the ripe age of 36. He might not have been able to pull many punches during a night out in Kings Cross but during his illustrious career out in the middle, Ponting’s effortless ability to despatch a rising delivery over mid-wicket, left many a fieldsman ducking for cover. P...