SBS Blogs

Sneak Peak of Episode 4: A Bright Future

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

According to Chinese tradition, when a baby is 100 days old, a big celebration should be held. In this episode, a 100-day-old baby celebrates his special day at teh West Lake Restaurant and is given a special sword and mirror to fend off any monsters or evil forces in his future life. A strange ritual is also held in which a live carp is made to kiss the baby on his lips to make him articulate and eloquent when he grows up. Then a huge crowd noisily celebrates the symbolically important day in the baby's life while he is fast asleep in his pram. The restaurant is also celebrating a special day. Its third birthday. Owner, Mrs Qin, has invited 1000 guests including her old friends, loyal clients and suppliers, and government and local officials.

I have to hand it to Henry

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:15:10 +1100

What France captain Thierry Henry did against Republic of Ireland was blatantly wrong. Under the same circumstances would I have owned up? No.

Just as I was gearing up to tell you all about the flight home from Oman, Thierry Henry decided to practice his volleyball skills during the France v Republic of Ireland World Cup qualifiying playoff second leg and in the process , helped his side into the finals.

I actually heard about the incident before I had a chance to see it and I thought “well that happens quite often.” But when I saw the vision I realised how blatant it was and came appreciate the fallout.

Not only did he intend to keep the ball in play, he actually appeared to take a controlling touch (with his hand) to guide the ball back onto his foot.

While it's devastating for Ireland, at the end of the day Henry set up the winner that got France into the World Cup and although it's something I don't like seeing, it's part of the game.

When we're bombarded with this notion of 'fair play', it's hard to swallow incidents like this one. Having said that, Henry got away with it and now his country is playing in the World Cup.

If you can get away it, why not?

Had that happened to me, I wouldn't have said anything in the heat of the moment and I probably wouldn't have said anything after the game either. It's something I wouldn't want to bring up and I'm sure Henry is embarrassed about it.

Inevitably, the old debate about using video has surfaced.

I think an extra assistant referee at the end of the pitch would be better than video, which leads to problems like 'how do you restart the game', 'how and when you do you stop a match'.

From a player's point of view, either an extra referee or some more assistants at either end of the field is far more preferable to stopping a match for an indefinite amount of time, which can effectively destroy the natural flow of the game.

I can see how Henry got away with it, his angle was such that neither the referee nor the assistant referee could possibly have seen it.

With an assistant referee on the goal line he wouldn't have got away with it.

But he did and unfortunately, that's football sometimes.

Smeltzy's on cloud nine

I arrived back at the Gold Coast this week after a 20-hour flight (not one of the pampered, massages-on-tap variety mind you) from Oman feeling bloody tired, and it would have been nice to have a few extra days off.

I wasn't the only arrival from international duty mind you, with Shane Smeltz getting back after qualifying for the World Cup with the Kiwis.

Let me tell you, he is certainly pumped. We haven't talked about it too much, though, because our main focus is on the A-League.

Well, the rest of us haven't talked about it. For Shane it's been hard not to. It's his first World Cup and naturally he's really excited.

It's great for New Zealand to have qualified and while we would love to meet them at the big show, I've heard it's pretty hard for us to actually draw them.

I haven't talked with Shane about the possibility of a Trans Tasman clash in South Africa, but if we are drawn together, I imagine a few words will be exchanged.

We won too you know

Amid all the excitement about the World Cup there was some other football action going on. The Socceroos had a great Asian Cup qualifying win over Oman.

Days later Brazil beat Oman 2-0 and I think that result highlights just how tough it is to travel to the Middle East and get a result.

People sometimes expect the Socceroos to trounce these 'smaller' Asian teams but these guys can certainly play and we know it is always an extremely tough assignment to play them in their own backyards.

When one of the heavyweight football nations toughs out a close win there it shows it's certainly not a walk in the park.

For us to come from a goal down, with 10-men, to win 2-1, was a great result and very encouraging for all the boys.

Akhtar needs to shed more than excess weight

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:00:00 +1100

In the twilight of his career one of cricket's most maligned talents may still have time to make a change for the better, writes Jesse Fink.

Can it get any more humiliating for Shoaib Akhtar?

The Rawalpindi Express, a man who instilled crotch-wetting fear in the hearts of
the world’s best batsmen and bowled the fastest delivery in the history of cricket in the process, has become a byword for comedy.

First, it was genital warts keeping him out of Pakistan's squad for the World Twenty 20. Akhtar opted to stay at home and subject himself to a course of electrofulgration treatment, which is a nice way of describing getting your goolies zapped.

Now it appears he's just too fat to bowl a ball. Akhtar won't be touring Australia this summer because he's just undergone liposuction, despite the deputy director of the country's Sports Board declaring it would have no bearing on his cricket.

Said Dr Waqar Ahmad: "The shedding of weight of more than 12 kilograms might help him only when he will improve his muscle strength and stamina. Considering his age, I don't think he will be able to show any kind of improvement as compared to his last previous [sic] performance."

For the record, Akhtar is 34, an age when most professional cricketers are thinking of giving the game away, but Akhtar is one of those unusual cricketers who actually hasn't played much cricket – just 46 Tests and 144 ODIs.

Injuries, suspensions, politics and some of his own misjudgements have had a part to play in that.

But there's money to be made in the new game in town – the Indian Premier League – and so all kinds of reasons for him to stay in the sport for as long as his body will allow.

Where once ageing cricketers turned to the speaking circuit and spruiking commercial products to make money once their international careers were over, now they can go to India and earn the same payday in a fraction of the time. (Akhtar was briefly with the Knight Riders of Kolkata but released.)

Every man is entitled to make a living so I sincerely hope his operation is a success and he can make a return to the game in some form. But looking back over his career you can only arrive the conclusion that his has been a wasted talent.

Had he less attraction to the fast life we would have seen much more of him and he would be a far more popular figure than he is. (His signed merchandise on his personal website isn't selling fast and is currently heavily discounted.) So he should see this time out as a big opportunity for not only physical but personal transformation.

If he can shed a bit of the ego as well as the weight, he stands a chance of not just winning a few games like he used to but winning a few new fans as well.

:: For more Fink musings on the big issues in football, check out Half-time Orange on The World Game.

FIFA must order a replay for the good of the game

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:30:59 +1100

France captain Thierry Henry's soul has already been damned for his "Hand of Frog" that sunk Ireland's World Cup hopes. But there’s still time for FIFA to save its own.

What’s so galling about that insufferable cheat Thierry Henry is not his deliberate handball, or both of them, that put France through to the World Cup this week at the expense of Republic of Ireland, but that he could stand straight-faced after the match and tell people he didn’t mean to do it.

“The ball bounced and it hit my hand,” he said, referring to handling skills that would do Benji Marshall or Gary Ablett proud. “Should I stop and tell the referee and then cross? No. That is very funny.”

Funny? Who’s laughing in Ireland? Does this man have a decent bone in his body?

At the very least Henry could have gone up to referee Martin Hansson after he’d awarded the goal and said he’d handled.

It would have been a selfless, courageous act that would have gained the respect of football fans not only in Ireland and France but around the world.

Instead his name will now live in infamy as a byword for deception.

Diego Maradona has never been quite able to shrug off the “Hand of God” incident and now Henry has brought his own curse upon himself.

He has shamed his countrymen and women and set a dreadful example to the young people of the world that cheating is rewarded. He will regret it for the rest of his days.

Predictably, FIFA has said it will not replay the match, hiding behind the Laws of the Game. But laws should not matter when they go against the spirit for which they were intended.

Football Association of Ireland chief executive John Delaney has issued a challenge to football’s world body to fulfil the spirit of its own mantra: “Every time I go to a FIFA congress, I hear about fair play and integrity. If FIFA believe in fair play and integrity, this is their opportunity to step forward.”

Ireland’s case has been aided by the fact that in September 2005 a Bahrain vs Uzbekistan World Cup qualifier was replayed after a formal protest from the Uzbekistan Football Federation. The referee had stuffed up a call when a penalty kick should have been retaken by Uzbekistan and instead an indirect free kick was awarded to Bahrain.

There are important differences between the two matches. Not least the fact Hansson simply missed what happened while the referee in the Bahrain-Uzbekistan match did not – he just made the wrong call – but such distinctions shouldn’t really matter.

It should be an issue of principle.

Coaches, referees and players alike should above all else be bound by applying a sense of what’s right – not what the laws tell them is right. Isn’t that the meaning of “fair play”?

Henry’s soul has already been damned. But there’s still time for FIFA to save its own.

For the good of the organisation, for the good of the World Cup and for the good of the game it must order a replay.

Everything old seems new again

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:55:46 +1100

Twenty-three years after Diego Maradona’s hand-ball effort at the 1986 World Cup lead to England’s quarter-final exit, up steps Thierry Henry to become the new poster boy for unrepentant cheats everywhere.

Back then, Maradona was coyly evasive, claiming he scored the goal "a little with the head……and a little with the hand of God."

No prizes for guessing which description stuck all these years later.

Henry went one better when asked for his opinion about his goal this week which saw France qualify for the 2010 World Cup at the expense of Ireland.

"I played it. The ref allowed it. That's a question you should ask him", said the France striker.

Clearly Henry doesn’t do guilt well.

Moving forward, that FIFA allowed the goal to stand raises serious questions not only in regards to the quality of refereeing, but of the organisation’s reluctance to right highly contentious issues through the use of video replay.

FIFA’s Sepp Blatter, time and time again has insisted as long as he is president, video replay will not be used as it takes away the “spontaneity” of the game.

Surely it’s time for a serious re-think.

Here we are, just weeks out from the official World Cup draw in December to determine the respective groups of the 32 finalists for next year’s showpiece event and what sort of message is being sent to the world?

Certainly not the notion of “Fair Play” which FIFA has tried so desperately to espouse through the years.

In a delicious piece of irony, the Fair Play campaign, according to the official FIFA site was conceived largely as an indirect result of the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico.

As they say. One step forward. Two steps back.

In a book published back in the mid-80s, “Soccer Match Control”, the author noted that gamesmanship was the art of cheating while still believing you are morally in the right.

The referee is to be outwitted and the only crime is to be caught out.

How true those words still ring.

In one final bizarre twist, it seems moral fortitude can come from the most unlikely of places.

You do have to start wondering when betting agencies can agree to refund Ireland punters their money but FIFA can’t organise a replay.

The Circus - November 20

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +1100

Henry hands France a World Cup spot, Argentina wants Messi hair, and how not to drive a Ferrari. It's all in The Circus.

Hand it to Henry
There's nothing like a good war to stir the blood of the English tabloids. Take the newly-declared conflict between Ireland and France over the dodgy result of the World Cup playoff in France. Thierry Henry's handy assist for William Gallas' extra-time equaliser has seen England line up firmly behind the Irish, which is not something that can be said too often.

Of course it is a chance for the English tabloids to have a few pot-shots over the Channel at the French. They might not be the number-one target – that's the Germans, as in the infamous football chant, "Two world wars and one World Cup, doo dah, doo dah" – but those cheese-eating surrender monkeys will do in a pinch.

That's why it has all been so bitterly disappointing.

"Posh: I love having sex with Becks", screamed The Sun … sorry ... wrong page. "Le Hand of God. Cheat Thierry does a Maradona", screamed The Sun, which clearly didn't have its top punning sub-editors on duty.

The News of the World also disappointed: "Henry handball dumps sad Irish out" was all it could come up with, although "300 orgasm woman meets man" seemed to have promise. If only that man had been Thierry Henry.

The Daily Mail trotted out nincompoop ex-referee Graham Poll – he of three yellow cards for Croatia's Josip Simunic against Australia at the last World Cup finals – to slag off Henry, but not, we must note, the visually-impaired officials. At least the Mail did better with this.

So, it seems that the tabloids generally were in poor form. Hooray then for The Independent, which came up with the excellent "Hand Gaul! Ireland furious as Henry snatches victory".

And bless the nuffies on the Interwebs with nothing better to do than to come up with things such as these.

The hair apparent
Lionel Messi is by all measures a pretty decent footballer, but according to a bunch of Argentine fans he is missing one thing – a Maradona perm. So they have begun a Facebook campaign to ensure that the Barcelona playmaker can replicate for country what he has for club. It's in Spanish, but we're sure that because you are on the SBS website you are polylingual ... oh, all right then.

Maradona's curly-topped exploits in the successful World Cup tilt of 1986 – which incidentally included the original Hand of God goal – were the spur, although the proponents of the change point to various eminently plausible scientific reasons relating to balance, streamlining and such.

Given that the great insane man himself is steering Argentina's national side towards the World Cup, when not suspended for below-the-belt remarks, we'd have thought one Maradona was sufficient, even in lookalike form.

Baby you can drive my car
It's been quite a week for new teammates in the wonderful world of Formula 1. World champs Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton are now bosom buddies at McLaren, while Felipe Massa and new Ferrari teammate have been unveiled to the adoring masses.

That's Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo proving to be the second-worst driver of the marque in history behind Luca Badoer.

The swap shop
Manchester City striker Craig Bellamy has shattered his manager's heart by suggesting that he may have only two seasons left in the big time. His Mr Ten Percent has bought a nice 45-room manor house in Surrey and put his kids through Eton on the strength of Bellamy's string of transfers – eight in 12 seasons at last count.

Still, two more years means four more transfer windows. The possibilities are endless.

The numbers game
10 – seconds reduction in disabled athlete Oscar Pistorius' 400m time thanks to his J-shaped artificial legs, a US study has found
30 – percentage by which Pistorius' running speed may be enhanced, according to the study
2012 – Olympics for which South African Pistorius hopes to be selected as an able-bodied athlete
760 – Sri Lanka's score, for seven wickets, in the first innings of the first test against India at Ahmedabad

Quote of the day
"They're all probably clapping hands, (UEFA president Michel) Platini sitting up there on the phone to (FIFA president) Sepp Blatter, probably texting each other, delighted with the result."
- Gracious-in-defeat Irish striker Robbie Keane takes up the football-suits-want-the-big-teams-in-the-World-Cup theme, but forgets to mention Twitter.

Headline we'd like to read
Argentines shocked by Messi hair

:: More of The Circus

Episode 3: Family Duties

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

This week's episode is an unending torrent of filial piety.

West Lake Restaurant's manager Qin Linzi fills us in on her ongoing respect for her parents despite her harsh upbringing. Qin's daughter does the same only with the caveat that her mother throws money at her. A waitress lives seven to a room in the restaurant's company dorm and remits 1000 yuan ($A220) of her 1200 yuan wage to her parents. Waitresses get teary as they sing about their obligation to their progenitors. A birthday party for a 70-year-old occurs and is of the scale that only the Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World could handle. The 70-year-old mother looks somewhat bewildered throughout as the MC shouts away.

There is not much food to be seen but the birthday party reveals an array of longevity foods: chow thought to lengthen one's life. Longevity noodles are a simple dish that turns up on birthdays and Chinese New Years, generally consisting of a bland chicken stock with noodles topped with a fried egg. They are comfort food at its best. The longevity buns (shou tao) shown are steamed buns filled with sweet lotus seed paste and shaped into rough peaches.

Then there is the turtle dish. China's appetite for turtle is stripping Asia (and possibly, the rest of the world) bare of its herpetological abundance in the name of prolonged human existence. The perception that long-living turtles can bestow a longer life on whoever eats them is a popular myth in China that is eradicating the world's turtles. In an article in Time Magazine last year, Paul Van Dijk from Conservation International comments:

"We have seen the Chinese trade vacuum out one region after another — Burma, Vietnam, Borneo, Java, then Sumatra," says van Dijk. Typically, the trade follows a three- to five-year boom and bust cycle, van Dijk says, adding that 75% of Asia's 90 species of tortoise and freshwater turtles now are threatened. Worldwide about 40% of long-lived, slow to mature species are at immediate risk of extinction, according to CI."

Very few places in the world are not affected by the trade as the wild stocks nearest China are exhausted. There is now a market in farmed turtle but often those farms are being used as a method to launder wild turtles into the food trade or alternately, are soaking up the wild caught turtles as breeding stock.

Hunanese cuisine is much more than the outlying dishes that are eaten on special occasions or vanity dishes filled with rare ingredients to display one's affluence. Despite earlier exhortations that the Biggest Restaurant is trying to put Hunanese food on the map, we see very little food from Hunan apart from the occasional flash in the kitchen. Hunanese food is packed with chilis and unlike the slow, numbing heat of neighbouring Sichuan cuisine, is aggressively hot. Chili heat is front and center. There is less sweetness and (to its detractors) less subtlety as compared to China's other great culinary traditions. Hopefully, we'll see more.

Oh Sweet, Sweet Cacophony!

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:47:27 +1100

We all love music...but we don't all love the same. (Unless we're pretentious wannabes.)What we like says a lot about who we are, and where we come from. And most people judge others by what they like...Just like they judge the radio station they are listening to.So what do you like? And what would you like to hear on SBS Radio?It is easy to love AND hate the music on SBS Radio. It is not only linguistically diverse. You should hear the music we pump out on any given day across our channels. Oh, sweet, sweet cacophony. Sweet soundtrack of multicultural Australia. You are the real world music.Our new Director, Dirk Anthony, is known to comment on whether he likes what's playing at any point in time. What he is in to I am yet to discover, though I suspect the Rolling Stones are in there somewhere. Or take Trevor Long, our Business Affairs Manager. The guy is a John Farnham fan. Me, I prefer Bavarian folk, Gregorian chant, ...and Powderfinger. But I am hopelessly devoted to the music of a band called Tocotronic (check out the videos here! And the German/Hebrew accents in the interview on Jerusalem student radio! And - err, nevermind, you get my point.

The Circus - November 19

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:30:00 +1100

Katy Perry shows good support for West Ham United, and we meet a mixed martial arse. It's all in The Circus.

Basquing in the spotlight
West Ham United may be having a season to forget in the English Premier League, languishing as it is in the relegation zone with its skint Icelandic owners fighting off financial doom with a few frozen haddock. But relief may be at hand – on the balance sheet if not the scoresheet – in the lovely form of American songstress Katy Perry.

Ms Perry, who kissed a girl and liked it but liked kissing UK comedian, actor and professional Cockney Russell Brand even more, was persuaded by her Hammers-supporting paramour to wear a West Ham "basque" when hosting the recent MTV Europe Awards. The object in question is not, as one might think, a costume made from the skin of a WHU fan from that particularly stroppy region of France, but a form of corsetry.

It created such a stir that the bean counters at West Ham decided to whip up a few and flog them off for a hefty 300 quid each. Just 50 will be made, so get in early if you want to look like a right slapper at the next Upton Park home match.

The truth hurts
Mixed Martial Arts – otherwise known as MMA – is a brutal but legal combination of various forms of violence including boxing, muay thai, wrestling, karate, judo, capoeira, jiu-jitsu, grievous bodily harm and homicide. It has become so popular with both television and live audiences that some experts see it threatening the future of traditional boxing.

Fans of the sweet science must give thanks then for the likes of mixed martial arse Melvin Costa, whose presence among MMA fighters surely ensures that the new style of combat will never take over the world. The delightful Mr Costa is a white supremacist who not only sports a swastika and eagle tattoo on his chest, but also a spider-web prison tough sticker on his elbow that is said to represent someone who has killed an African-American.

On that subject Costa says with admirable lucidity, "I don't know nothing about that. I got my tattoo when I got out. I got this tattooed last year. If that's true then it wasn't a part of my knowledge when I got it." Good, that's cleared that up.
Costa topped a recent list of the worst tattoos in sport, but the swastika and the spider's web weren't the main reasons why. This was. If you are having some difficulty deciphering it, it reads, "I have a small penis."

There's the rub
We trust that Serbian 'physiotherapist' Mariana Kovacevic is down at her local Belgrade stud farm ensuring that the stallions are doing the right thing by their babes, because her radical horse's placenta treatment for footballers' ills has become the cure du jour.

No sooner had Arsenal's Robin van Persie run off to have his injured ankle rubbed with gee-gee placenta by Ms Kovacevic than five other Premier League crocks followed along.

Hopefully there's a happy ending to this massage treatment for all the football stars involved, and that it doesn't go the way of blood injection therapy, which has just been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Their Cup runneth over
All but one of the 2010 FIFA World Cup finalists are now decided after Europe and Africa zone playoffs overnight settled five of the six final places.

Bitter rivals Algeria and Egypt faced off in neutral Khartoum. We at The Circus figured things between the two countries must be really rough if playing in Sudan was seen as the safe option, but then we realised it was a playoff after the teams couldn't be separated following the group matches. Anyway, the Algerians took home the prize 1-0.

Greece is in after edging Ukraine 0-1 in Donetsk; Portugal booked its place with victory over Bosnia-Herzegovina; Guus Hiddink's Russia is out after losing to Slovenia, and France is through against Ireland, most controversially, after a late equaliser that appeared to have involved a handball.

The result in Paris must have been sweet revenge for this French TV presenter, who had the unenviable task of reporting from outside Dublin's Croke Park on the night of the first match in the playoffs last weekend.

Uruguay, leading 1-0 after the first leg, host Costa Rica in the second leg of their playoff today to decide the 32nd and final team for South Africa 2010.

The numbers game
6,000,000 – UK pounds that Formula 1 world champion Jenson Button will earn next season after defecting from the team that saved his career, Brawn, to join McLaren
2 – number of British drivers who will run about in the McLaren team when Button links up with Lewis Hamilton
900,000 – Danish kroner (about $193,000) that silly Ronni Noervig will have to pay in compensation for running on the pitch and attempting to biff the referee during a 2007 Denmark-Sweden European Championship match, causing the game to be abandoned.
1 – total of Olympic Games medals won by Bahrain. That number has to be adjusted to 'none' after Rashid Ramzi was stripped of his Beijing 1500m gold for doping

Quote of the day
"This is the second-best day of my life. The best was when I lost my virginity."
- Rugby fan Stuart Tinner puts into context the 250,000 UK pounds he won in a kicking competition at half time of the Saracens-South Africa match at Wembley.

Headline we'd like to read
He was rubbish in the sack, says Tinner conquest

:: More of The Circus

Misty eyed at the end of Atlantis era

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:16:51 +1100

As the space shuttle Atlantis lifted into the sky over Cape Canaveral in Florida on Monday it left behind a billowing cloud of steam and exhaust and loud applause from the crowd on the ground.

“It was a great day today,” Bill Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator for Space Operations, told SBS after the shuttle had left the earth.

A space shuttle launch can be an emotional event and in that respect STL-129 did not disappoint.

“Every time they launch, I cry,” said one ground employee who has worked at the Kennedy Space Center site since 1975 and seen every launch – not all of them as smooth and successful as STL-129.

With “just” 59 problem reports during countdown, STL-129 set a record, of sorts, for a smooth, hitch-free, ride into space.

After 25 years of service, 2010 signals the final year of the Space Shuttle program which will come to an end after five more missions.

The United States government is currently considering which direction to take it’s human space program.

Options currently before President Obama include missions to Mars, revisiting (and staying at) the moon, further expansion of low-orbit missions like the Space Shuttle, and there’s even thoughts of opening up the US space program to commercial ventures.

From 2011, Russia will provide the taxis taking American astronauts to the International Space Station over the next seven years of its planned lifespan, using the legendary Soyuz spacecraft.

“It's a little difficult to predict the future,” Gerstenmaier said about NASA”s next course. “By February there should be some policy known and some direction. We are preparing for all eventualities.”

NASA's top bosses have no fear admitting they’re getting misty eyed at the end of an era – even as they were sending Atlantis into orbit.

“We were talking in the firing room [where the launch is controlled] today,” revealed Mike Leinbach, Launch Director. “It is starting to hit home [that this is coming to an end].”

Space Shuttles, it seems, have the potential to develop their own personalities.

“When we lost Columbia [in 2003] it was almost like losing a family member,” Leinbach added.

The end of the program?

It’s like kicking the kids out of home.

“This is a special time in history,” said Gerstenmaier. “You have to see it and feel it.”

The NASA boss wasn’t just talking about witnessing one of the five remaining launches close up but he could well have been.

From a distance of 4.8 kilometers (the closest vantage point for all but eight rescue workers on standby 1.5 kilometers from the launch pad) the launch of Atlantis inspired tension, drama, and awe.

And for many, the misty eyes weren’t kicked off by dust.

Come blow your horn in South Africa

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +1100

Party poopers Japan should be banned from the 2010 World Cup, writes Matthew Hall.

Should we ban Japan from next year's World Cup?

Well, why not?

It's as reasonable an idea as the call by Japan Football Association President Motoaki Inukai to ban vuvuzela trumpets at next year's tournament.

"We have requested that the South African FA cut that noise out," Inukai told the Sankei Sports newspaper.

"You can't hear yourself speak," Inukai said after Japan's 0-0 draw with South Africa in Port Elizabeth last weekend. "I will be bringing it up (with FIFA president Sepp Blatter)."

Japan defender Marcus "Tulio" Tanaka chimed in: "You can't hear what your team mates are saying from two metres away. You have to go up to them to give instructions."

Oh, well, boo hoo to all of you.

Last time I checked, football matches, even at heavily corporatised high end games we see within professional leagues and at the World Cup, are played in stadiums attended by the public – not in libraries nor reverential churches.

And the second-last time I checked, the input of paying spectators at matches (let's call these people "fans") contributes 100 per cent to the experience and is a significant reason for getting off the couch, away from the TV, and to an actual game.

In Korea in 2002, we "put up" with Reds supporters and their drums.

In Japan, at the same tournament, we "put up" with high-level Japanese supporter coordination, led by bullhorn wielding cheerleaders.

Oh, and did I mention the "annoying" Japanese habit of cleaning up their ticker tape mess after each game?

That was a disgrace and should be BANNED.

The vuvuzela is part of the South African fan experience.

Here's news from the vuvuzela factory.

And lessons from some locals, from South African TV.

Don't like it? Move the World Cup next door to Namibia.

If players, coaches, and broadcasters still don't abide, they could consider a career in chess.

"Perhaps if they play good football, the fans will be quiet and watch," Japan coach Takeshi Okada said, trying to contribute to the debate but perhaps only highlighting the disconnect between officials and fans.

FIFA, though, is smartly showing whose side it is on and refuses to ban the vuvuzela from World Cup matches.

"That would mean one would have to take away the cow bells from Swiss fans and ban English fans from singing," said Hans Klaus, FIFA spokesman.

Although to be fair, a blanket ban on "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi! Oi! Oi!" might not be such a bad idea.

:: For those that know about these things, follow me on Twitter here

Burma

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Stefan encounters severe malnutrition in the refugee camps of Burma and samples white butterfly larvae, civet cat and endangered loris.

Day 1 & 2
Thailand, on the border with Burma. I was on my way into rebel Karen-held territory in Eastern Burma to investigate how the Burmese government used food as a weapon to suppress the Karen people. As I stood in the pitch-black waiting for our rebel contact to collect me, all I could think was: ‘What the hell am I doing? I’m a speccy, weedy food writer with two young kids and I’m about to be smuggled into rebel-held territory in a war zone. My kids will have to tell their mates that Daddy died making a food programme. What a tit.’

Together with my producer/cameraman and good friend Marc Perkins, I embarked on the toughest journey of my life. After about four hours in a truck, we trekked in the pitch-black through mountainous jungle, stumbling, sweating and swearing as we skirted army patrol routes and villages. At one point I heard a crash and a yelp, and found that Marc had disappeared down a large hole. I discovered him lying at the bottom, holding up the camera. Luckily he hadn’t broken his back. The next night, after hours more hiking, followed by hours more bouncing around in a pickup, and more hours of trekking, we arrived at the edge of a river ready to be smuggled the last stage into Burma itself, avoiding the Burmese and the Thai armies and into the Karen people’s refugee camp. God, I wanted to go home. I supposed that everyone on the other side of the river felt the same.

Day 3
In the early dawn, we crossed the river, scrambled up a sand bank and arrived in Ei Tu Ta refugee camp, exhausted and nervous. We were greeted by a man in a wooly hat who led us to an open-sided bamboo hut and gave us a cup of sweet tea and told us to rest. Good idea.

After a fitful sleep, Marc and I nursed our blisters and took a wander around the camp. It was extremely disconcerting: a kind of perfect Hollywood picture of a jungle village, complete with bare-breasted girls washing in streams, beautiful kids clinging to beautiful parents and a hotch-potch of leaf-roofed bamboo huts. Of course, the reality was that these people were desperately poor, on the run, a long way from home, and totally powerless. I talked to the Nao Gu Putu family who explain how the Burmese starved them out of their homes by mining the fields and using them as slave labour, then killing their relatives when they returned to collect their possessions.

Day 4
Marc and I joined up with a platoon of Karen rebel soldiers and we headed off on jungle patrol, tramping in and out of the interminable streams and up and down the humid hills, avoiding enemy patrols. Five exhausting hours later, we arrived at a Karen village. We hooked up our hammocks in the open jungle outside the village and headed in to check on the villagers just as night was falling. We found them in the middle of a harvest-blessing ceremony and many of the men were already drunk on homemade hooch. They offered us some food and drink and soon my head was spinning. They told me of their reliance on the rebels, but soon gave in to the hooch and resorted to a monotonous throat-singing. We staggered back to our hammocks and tried to sleep in the steady rain and noisy critter-filled hills.

Day 5
I woke feeling like warmed-up shite, and rolled up my hammock before setting off on another day’s trek, walking like an automaton. The Burmese army never felt very far away and we moved with a mixture of fear and exhaustion. We eventually stopped by a stream and cooked dinner from wild banana flowers.

Day 6
In the morning there was quite a commotion: one of the soldiers had shot a civet cat that looked very much like my own cat, Tom. He’d also got a weird animal that was, we found out many weeks later, an endangered loris (I reasoned that the Karen people were more endangered than lorises are, so it wasn’t surprising they ate them). We stewed them up and the cat tasted strong and sweet, better than rabbit but bonier, and the loris was good, but a little musky. This was jungle food, and the soldiers ate whatever they could scrape from the jungle.

Day 7
We visited another village, much poorer this time, and with a palpable sense of fear in the air. As a treat, the villagers offered me large white butterfly larvae that tasted oddly sweet, like Jerusalem artichokes. There was young boy with a vast tumour on his testicle. His family was too poor and too scared to go to the refugee camp where they might get some help. I left them a little cash in case they made it.

Day 8
After hour upon hour of hard trekking we arrived back in the refugee camp, and one of the women taught me to eat betelnut that made my mouth bright red and my head spin.

Day 9
We awoke at dawn and, together with the handful of aid workers there, played a football match against the camp’s finest: The Karen – v – The Rest of the World. They thrashed us 6-1. At dusk, we were in high spirits, about to leave, when we were told that a baby belonging to a new arrival had just died in the camp clinic. Malnutrition had claimed another life, and it felt that the Burmese junta had more blood on its hands. We made our way back over the Burmese-Thai border – a crushing, painful, terrifying trip that the people we’d become friends over the last week weren’t allowed to make.

Hitting the streets

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:32:44 +1100

This Kaleidoscope comes from South East Asia where we’re currently on holidays; to be precise it’s from my observations of Bangkok and I’m currently writing this in Luang Prabang, Laos’ second largest city.

This Kaleidoscope comes from South East Asia where we’re currently on holidays; to be precise it’s from my observations of Bangkok and I’m currently writing this in Luang Prabang, Laos’ second largest city.

Bangkok is a bit of a creative advertising hub, so wasn’t at all surprised by the great creatives and fantastic production values especially of TVCs and Billboards – in stark contrast to Luang Prabang, which is more of your sleepy country tourist town.

But I was also struck by the level of street market. Walking down Silom Road, Bangkok, we were caught in the middle of a street campaign for Nokia’s Ovi Maps. It was a simple idea, while Nokia is Thailand’s number one mobile brand this was about launching a new concept, the ‘ovi maps’ service.

Everyone got a pink balloon to take home as a reminder of ‘Ovi’. The entire busy street was turned into a sea of pink Ovi balloons.

In 1993 I happened to land in Vietnam the day Pepsi officially returned to the country. You couldn’t leave the airport, walk the streets without being given a can of Pepsi. Everyone seemed to love a free sample. Unilever used street marketing and sampling to great effect when it launched Sunsilk by giving out samples outside major supermarkets.

In Australia, Lebara mobiles, Loud Multicultural for their client, Western Union are two brands that have successfully used street marketing as an integral part of their multicultural campaign.

And it makes sense because many communities are geographically concentrated as my earlier blog, Think Multicultural, Act Local argues.

It’s a direct and personal way of getting your brands out there and if it’s accompanied with a sample, will be happily accepted.

With street marketing, you know that the touch point with your brand has been a personal one.

Peak tuna

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:53:37 +1100

 Will we see the end of tuna before 2023?

It's been a bad few weeks to be an Atlantic tuna with the predictions of species extinction within the next few decades. ICCAT, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas has been meeting over the past fortnight to decide upon the quotas for the world's tuna fisheries and has been announcing large cuts to fishing quotas, cuts that are designed to give the tuna a 50% chance that their stocks will recover by 2023. It's a flip of the coin as to whether Atlantic tuna will be dead in the next decade and a half rather than a serious move to ensure the survival of this pelagic predator. Charles Clover in The Times questions the math:

Wouldn’t a 95% probability of recovery have been a better objective? Well, yes, but this is Iccat. The plan was clearly designed to ensure that its members could go on fishing. Dr Gerald Scott, Iccat’s chief scientist, revealed that achieving the recovery plan with any certainty would require the bluefin quota for next year to be set nearer to 8,500 tons than the 15,000 tons that many at the meeting thought they could get away with.

Some of the fishing nations — including Libya and even Japan, the biggest tuna-consuming nation — have begun to discuss whether it would be easier to stop fishing than try to enforce an 8,500 quota on 20 fishing nations that is open to fraud. A joint United States-Japanese proposal has emerged, testing the water for a total closure of the bluefin fishery.

The tuna fishery is a classic tragedy of the commons where individuals acting in their own rational self interest destroy a shared group resource. There has been some promising research into farming the species but there is still the underlying problem of feeding them.

Tuna are difficult (but thanks to some research from University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland , not impossible) to breed in captivity. Currently, most tuna farms capture tuna from the wild, then fatten them up in offshore pens rather than breeding them. This may be set to change and a step in the right direction towards complete sustainability. But the problem with tuna is that they will never be as sustainable as other fish unless they can be conned into eating plant matter.

The feeding problem is simple - tuna eat other fish. Tuna aquaculture is a little like keeping a pen full of sea-going lions alive: you've got to pour in plenty of otherwise edible meat to grow a relatively small amount of luxury meat. (It is however socially unacceptable to farm lions for the purposes of eating or keep them in open water for extended periods). The small baitfish that get fed to tuna could be eaten by humans but poor grade sardines are just not as sexy or tasty as a fatty slab of tuna belly. Herein lies the cultural problem - should we forgo tuna and eat something less palatable to ensure their survival?

Take that, AOC, kapow!

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:00:00 +1100

Australia is a great sporting nation, but the government needs a better game plan when it comes to the distribution of funds, writes Jesse Fink.

Bravo, David Crawford. He did a sterling job in giving Australian "soccer", as it was then known, a good kick up the backside back in 2003 and now he's done the same thing to Olympic sports with the release of The Independent Sport Report commissioned by the Rudd Government.

The messages to the Australian Olympic Committee are clear: you can't have your $108m funding increase. Your top-five target at London 2012 is a pipedream. The culture of handouts to sports that no one gives a stuff about is over. Taxpayer funds are going to better spent on "other priorities", such as sports that "carry the national ethos": the football codes, tennis, golf, surfing, netball, et al.

No wonder, then, that Australia's top Olympic poobah, John Coates, says he's "pissed off", describing the work of Crawford's panel as an "insult to some of our great Olympic champions".

"Is Mr Crawford suggesting that medals won in Beijing last year by Matthew Mitcham in diving, Steve Hooker in pole vault and Ken Wallace meant nothing to the Australian people?" he fulminated.

"Is he telling us gold medals won by the rowers and sailors in Beijing meant nothing?"

No, that's not what he's trying to say, Mr Coates. They were great achievements, but not that many people cared. And when all is said and done, the government, which is spending our money (don't forget), are right to direct that money to sports that fire our imagination, that keep us glued to the box, that inspire our kids to get out into the backyard or local park and dream of one day emulating their heroes.

That is what this report is all about. Redirecting money and resources into the sports that are going to not only keep our nation's children fit for their lifetimes but embolden our own sense of belonging, of nationhood, of being "Australian".

Coates says: "Olympians have inspired this nation for decades, they've inspired Australians on and off the sporting field", and that is undoubtedly true.

But what could be more inspiring to an entire nation than seeing the Socceroos, our national men's football team, win the World Cup, the biggest sporting tournament on earth? A sport and an event that has significance in ways beyond our imagining.

I would much rather my hard earned went to achieving that goal than bringing home a gold medal in diving, skeleton, synchronised swimming or archery – sports that only get on television once every four years and only on the host broadcaster's proviso that there is an Australian competing and he or she stands a chance of winning a medal.

Jacquelin Magnay argues today in The Sydney Morning Herald that Crawford has got it wrong, having "totally misread the nation's love of the Olympics and the pride of beating bigger countries on the international stage".

She is right in one sense. We all love beating bigger countries and we love the Olympics – but not for the sports, Jacquelin, for the medals. The fact is, though, they come at too high a price and they have been for a long time.

Crawford has given Australian sport the reality check it needed. Now we just have to wait for Coates and Co to have theirs.

:: For more Fink musings on the big issues in football, check out Half-time Orange on The World Game.

Is this the Kiwi revolution?

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:38:35 +1100

The first thing that sprang to an Australian mind when New Zealand snared its place in the World Cup finals was Uruguay. We know what Uruguay led to and helped precipitate in Australia – and the question is will it lead to the same in New Zealand.

The first thing that sprang to an Australian mind when New Zealand snared its place in the World Cup finals was Uruguay.

The All Whites’ win over Bahrain was the Kiwis’ equivalent to Australia’s historic conquest of the South Americans in 2005. Scorer of the lone winning goal, Rory Fallon, is now the John Aloisi of New Zealand where TV replays of his 44th minute header will make him as familiar as we have become with Aloisi’s naked torso.

An estimated 385,000 TV viewers watched the Wellington game, proportionately corresponding to around two million viewers in Australia, surely a record for a football match in that rugby bent country.

We know what Uruguay led to and helped precipitate in Australia – and the question is will it lead to the same in New Zealand.

That will depend largely on how the All Whites will fare in South Africa where they cannot afford to be as humiliated as they were in the Confederations Cup last June.

While it is surely unlikely New Zealand can do what the Australians did in Germany in 2006, it does have some advantages even our Socceroos didn’t have.

The glut of players that hail from the Wellington Phoenix, where they are coached by their World Cup coach, will further enhance team familiarity and cohesion. And because the A-League season will be over by April, Ricky Herbert will be able to keep many of his players in preparation camps for longer than most other countries.

It is critical that the Kiwis are not embarrassed in South Africa. What their poor showing in Spain in 1982 proved – as ours did in 1974 – is that qualifying is not enough if there are longer term gains to be made.

Manchester just isn't cutting it for Robinho

Robinho’s restlessness at Manchester City again demonstrates that players and their agents, in their insatiable quest for money, should pay more attention to the lifestyle and culture of their destinations.

If reports are true Robinho is unhappy in Manchester and wants out, despite being probably the highest paid player in the Premier League. The reports claim he has already told manager Mark Hughes that he’s ready to move in the January transfer window as rumours persist that he’s already talking to Barcelona.

Robinho’s affair with Manchester turned sour when Hughes decided to break up the small Brazilian circle at City, transferring Elano and loaning out Jo. There went Robinho’s social life in a city he never adapted to.

He still struggles with the English language and recently even had to move house when neighbours complained about his continual playing of Brazilian music.

History is full of players who were bad migrants and couldn’t cope with the culture shock, eventually returning home or going to more amicable destinations.

The Robinho case reminds one of Ian Rush and his move to Italy about which he allegedly said: ‘It was like playing in a foreign country'.

Though Rush now claims he never uttered those words, he does admit that he was always homesick in Turin and couldn’t wait to return to Liverpool.

An uneven playing field

With all the brouhaha about falling A-League crowds, one should give thought to the kind of measly press coverage the league is getting compared to other competitions even when those competitions are in off-season.

The large circulation tabloids continue to fall over each other in covering AFL and rugby league even in November, four months before their season kick-offs. At times there may be six pages devoted to those sports to every one devoted to football.

Those numbers do not reflect the comparable popularities if crowd figures are the guide. For example, the A-League’s current crowd averages are around 25-30 per cent below those of the NRL. Yet the newspaper space commanded by the NRL outstrips that of football by 600 per cent.

Doesn’t make good business sense to me.

The old institutionalised resistance to football is alive and kicking.

The Circus - November 18

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +1100

Flipping the bird is worse than a punch to the head according to the NFL, and Van Persie gets back on the horse. It's all in The Circus.

Whack, whack, WHACK!
Far be it for The Circus to tell the NFL how to lay down the law, but three fines handed down by the league recently are worth having a second look at.

Last week we told you how Chicago Bears linebacker Tommie Harris lost his cool and whacked Cards' O-lineman Deuce Lutui (excellent name btw) in the head as hard as he could.

Harris was fined $7,500 for the foul-tempered incident.

That same weekend The Circus' favourite, Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco, had a little fun with the officiating crew when he took out a dollar bill in a mock attempt to sway the ref's decision on a close line call.

The NFL, in true No Fun League fashion, fined old Ocho a hefty $20,000 for the prank. No stranger to league fines, the unfazed wide receiver promised to donate the same amount to charity.

Last weekend Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams over-stepped the mark when he gave some traveling Buffalo fans a couple of one-fingered salutes during his team's big win.

The NFL's response? Do not pass go and pay a fine of $250,000!

Maybe Bud should've punched the Bills' fans instead of flipping them off. Hurting someone's feelings is a lot more costly than hurting someone's head.

A star is born
Turning to US college hoops, prized recruit John Wall saved No.4 ranked Kentucky's blushes against unheralded Miami of Ohio when he hit the game winner with just 0.05 s left on the clock in his debut for the Wildcats.

Wall is considered this year's standout college recruit and while his first-up, last-second heroics were pretty impressive, this guy puts him in the shade.

Wall, nonetheless, looks to be a young man with a very bright future. But if he's to reach the rare NBA air occupied by the likes of Jordan, Shaq and King James he'll need to get cracking on a marketing tool/nickname.

Great Wall? Load-bearing Wall? Wall-banger? Hmmm, leave it with us…

Van Persie to kick like a mule
Holland and Arsenal superboot Robin Van Persie has come up with a novel way to speed his recovery from an ankle injury suffered while on national team duties last weekend.

Seems a well-meaning Serbian doctor/shaman has gotten into his ear about the benefits of horse placenta.

He won't have to actually ingest the concoction – that would be silly. No he'll have it liberally slathered all over the affected area with the torn ligaments under the skin good as new in no time.

Dubious manager Arsene Wenger has begrudgingly allowed his star striker to fly off to Serbia to undergo the treatment in the faint hope he'll forego his multi-million dollar contract on his return in favour of a handful of sugar cubes and a good brushing.

Numbers game
2 – the number of middle fingers owned by Tennessee Titans boss Bud Adams
250,000 – the size of the fine handed down by the NFL after Adams showed those fingers to Buffalo Bills fans
1,100,000,000 or 1.1 billion – Adams' estimated net worth
0 – minutes sleep lost by Adams after being fined by the NFL

Quote of the day
"My rapper name is Lil Bugatti V Esteban Ocho Cinco the Mexican Assasin the 3rd!"
– Chad Ochocinco, via Twitter. While catching passes in the NFL and launching his own news network, Ocho has also found the time to record a rap album. The man is intent on world domination.

Headline we'd like to see
Van Persie pleased at pony placenta side-effect in pants

:: More of The Circus

The World Cup is not a democracy

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:49:27 +1100

The distribution of spots in World Cup finals has been the subject of intense debate ever since the tournament grew from 16 to 24 teams in 1982. And there seems no end in sight.

The distribution of spots in World Cup finals has been the subject of intense debate ever since the tournament grew from 16 to 24 teams in Spain in 1982.

And even more so when it went to 32 teams in France in 1998.

As the football cake got bigger and bigger many countries wanted a larger share of it.

The footballing merits or otherwise of each of FIFA’s six confederations have been brought into question many times over the years. The last few days have been no exception.

Dissatisfaction, dissent and dodgy deals have always accompanied FIFA’s attempts to convince fans that the World Cup was not, as TWG colleague Jesse Fink put it, a tournament for the best teams in the world but one for the best teams of the world.

The problem with the World Cup is finding the right balance between the need for a strong tournament and one that represents the game's universality.

At this point it is pertinent to remember that FIFA is no United Nations and the World Cup is no General Assembly, where each state has one vote. Samoa’s football team will never be treated like Brazil.

So if it is fair to recognise that Asia, for example, comprises billions of fans spanning from Beirut to Tokyo, it also must be said that the playing standards in such traditional strongholds as Europe and South America is much higher than Asia’s.

So those people who question the rationale behind four guaranteed spots each to South America's 10 member associations and Asia's 47 are wrong, unfair and misguided.

Forget Brazil and Argentina. The results obtained by Uruguay, Colombia, Paraguay and Chile in past tournaments are infinitely better than those of Asia.

And the disparity in standards and results would be even more significant if one took away Asia’s big guns Australia, Japan and Korea Republic from the equation.

Put simply, the World Cup is a football competition to be won by skill not an election to be won by votes. And the bottom line is the AFC, despite its chest beating of the last few years, does not have the runs on the board. It's best ever performance was Korea Republic's isolated fourth place in 2002.

An equally ridiculous suggestion is that Oceania should get a direct spot instead of its current half.

New Zealand have qualified for their second World Cup finals after dismissing the Pacific Island’s easybeats and edging Asia’s fifth-best team Bahrain.

How this qualifying path could or should deserve an automatic spot beats me.

Especially when one considers that countries like Czech Republic, Romania, Turkey, Sweden and Croatia had to go through a marathon series of 10 ‘grand finals’ and still did not make it to South Africa. Neither did the Colombians in South America.

Perhaps CONCACAF should consider itself lucky to have three and a half spots, only one fewer spot than the far stronger CONMEBOL.

FIFA’s modus operandi can be questionable at times but in all fairness its distribution of World Cup spots essentially represents the strengths and marketing appeal of its participating teams.

The current distribution of the World Cup's 31 spots is: Europe 13, Africa five, South America four and a half, Asia four and a half, CONCACAF three and a half and Oceania half.

I reckon the distribution should be slightly different thus: Europe 14, South America five, Africa five, Asia four and CONCACAF three, with Oceania disbanded to form part of Asia.

The remaining spot, of course, should go to the hosts and where they come from should not affect the distribution of spots.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +1100

As the United States economy begins to think about a recession recovery, many college football coaches are sitting pretty.

I hate to complain and dare not invite you to do the same (Oh, OK, go on then) but I fear I'm SO in the wrong business.

It's probable that we are ALL are in the wrong business.

An extensive report in USA Today has revealed that in the United States, university sports team coaches are making huge money.

Please note: not big money but HUGE money.

Multiple millions type of huge.

The USA Today report, which has to be read to be believed, claims that at least 25 head coaches for college football teams (that's American football) make USD$2 million or more per year.

Assistant coaches – and in American football these can number many on each team – can earn up to USD$1million.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, that English Literature professor at the same university? He or she is probably pulling in around USD$115,000.

Tertiary education in the US is being hit hard by a downsized economy as many state governments cut funding. Donations and endowments, usually significant revenue streams for colleges in the US, are also down.

Jobs are cut along with academic projects and courses. Enrolments too.

Sports, though, continues to spend.

It seems even being an average assistant coach of a football team pays big – USA Today discovered "at least 66 football assistants, including more than two dozen in the Southeastern Conference, make $300,000 or more"... and perks are commonplace... "multiyear and rollover deals, supplemental income from TV and radio, performance bonuses, retention bonuses, cars, complimentary tickets and country club memberships."

College sports in the US is – bizarrely to some foreign observers – big business.

Attendances at some football games rival the NFL while broadcasters CBS and
ESPN pay big money for television rights deals for college games.

Why? Years after graduating people still cheer for their college team and watch the games. For the guys writing the cheques, it's a simple equation and easy as your A-B-Cs.

The wrong business?

Maybe it's not too late to go back to school to learn how to coach American football.

:: For those that know about these things, follow me on Twitter here

The Circus - November 17

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +1100

French player causes Irish furore, goalkeeper does cartwheels, and Quidditch. It's all in The Circus.

Le coq rears head
A tiff is brewing in the world of football and, for once, it has nothing to do with Alex Ferguson.

Ireland's loss to France in the first leg of the nations' World Cup play-off ended sourly, with players from both teams engaging in a full-time fracas that threatens to become a full-on donnybrook if Irish claims about French verbosity are to be believed.

Midfielder Lassana Diara was accused of uttering a remark that insulted all the people of Ireland. For a country with the history of the Emerald Isle, that takes some doing.

So what could the Frenchman have said to get so off-side with the notoriously mild-mannered Irish? That Ulysses was turgid and unreadable? That George Bernard Shaw did for beards what Katie Price has done for the emancipation of women? That Father Ted was slightly less amusing than 'Allo 'Allo?

One only hopes Diara said nothing alluding to Diego Maradona's penis because that particular offence carries a two-month ban. Too short by half in The Circus' opinion . . . which is probably not the first time that phrase has been applied to the great one's unmentionables.

From Tigers to Wild Things
After Tiger Woods' Beatle-esque reception at the Masters, Australian golf has been further bolstered by the news that the Open, to be held in Sydney in December, will feature none other than Fred Couples . . .

Is it just The Circus or is this a bit like having a one-night stand with Billy Baldwin after Alec knocked you back for a date?

Of course, it could be worse: you could end up with Stephen Baldwin . . . Did I mention that John Daly will also be playing?

On campus, magic doesn't happen
Harry Potter aficionados will know of something called Quidditch. Those who have thought about the mechanics of the wizarding game for longer than a nanosecond will also know it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Surprising, then, that the game has taken a real, non-literary foothold in the United States of America.

Muggle Quidditch is a game played in over 200 US colleges by people who run around with brooms between their legs dodging volleyballs thrown at them by others similarly handicapped by household cleaning apparati.

So what kind of athletic acumen is required to make a quintessential Quidditch professional? Michigan State's Ali Warr explains it thus: "I think anyone that's on this team isn't afraid to make a fool out of themself."

No sleight of hand there, then.

Goalie watch
"Instant karma's gonna get you," sang John Lennon. Obviously US College goal keeper Nenad Cudic is more of a Paul McCartney man:

Numbers game
220,000 – dollars Channel Nine spent in an out-of-court settlement regarding the alleged defamation of Western Bulldogs director Susan Alberti
500,000 – the amount the settlement is likely to come to after legal costs are included
2 – extra episodes of Two and a Half Men Nine will have to schedule to make up the revenue shortfall
0 – signatures of Garry Lyon and Sam Newman – the men whose comments gave rise to the case – included on a letter written by Nine lawyers to Alberti

Quote of the day
"It's not my money. Channel Nine can do what they like. As long as they didn't include my name, that's fine by me."
- Nine employee Sam Newman shows where half-a-million bucks rates on his care factor scale.

Headline we'd like to read
Botched cosmetic surgery turns Newman into woman

:: More of The Circus

Lest we forget our trackies

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +1100

The second round of the Track World Cup is nigh, beginning in Melbourne on Thursday. But unless you were going, you'd barely know it was on.

The second round of the Track World Cup is nigh, beginning in Melbourne on Thursday. But unless you were going, you'd barely know it was on.

Outside of the Olympics and the European Six-Day amphitheatre, publicity for world-class track events is given short shrift to our more familiar, bigger budget road scene. As such, interest tends to be commensurate with what promoters put in.

Compared to Australia, the situation in the US is far worse. The world's third-most populous country seems to care little about their relative weakness on the boards – men like Taylor Phinney aside – nor that they do not hold a round of the Track World Cup, for they boast the world's most popular bike rider whose fans make a straightforward connection between him and the world's most popular bike race, which he'd like to win an eighth time. As if seven on the trot hasn't set the bar out of everyone's reach.

But in Great Britain, cycling – in all its forms – appears to be followed with equal fervour. Last year, they kicked butt in Beijing's Laoshan Velodrome, causing their competitors to go cataleptic. In pursuit prodigy Bradley Wiggins, they now have a bona fide Tour de France contender, as well as the world's quickest man on two wheels, Mark Cavendish – another graduate of the oval track – whose green jersey aspirations are only a matter of when, rather than if. Their mountain-bikers and BMXers aren't half-bad, either.

Armed with a monstrous budget, top-notch coaches and training facilities, not to mention the 2012 Olympics in their own backyard and a London Lord Mayor who rides his bike to work each day, things don't look like letting up.

That is why we must support our cyclists in all their forms.

Also, we do not know where our next Tour de France star, world champion, or Olympic gold medallist will come from. If our eyes are glued only to the Tour, we may not be encouraging our next Cadel Evans or Robbie McEwen or Stuart O'Grady – none of whom began on the road – to take up the sport.

Furthermore, if our all-round competitiveness wanes, as it has begun to do, it provides another reason for the federal government not to support cycling to the extent that it needs.

Currently, the federal Minister for Sport, Kate Ellis, is reviewing recommendations from the year-long Crawford review, where it is suggested that the current broad-range funding approach is too costly, and that funding be rationed to a handful of prominent, medal-winning sports.

It is understood this includes cycling, as well as swimming, track and field, and rowing.

But if cycling were to lose the stature it has worked so hard to achieve on the world stage, in years to come, the sport may find itself in a bit of a pickle.

New Zealand upsets Asia on the field and off

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:36:16 +1100

The All Whites have qualified for the FIFA World Cup for the first time since 1982 and that means huge boost for the the Kiwis but not such a positive impact for the powers that be at the AFC.

On Jaycee John’s Facebook page on Saturday the Bahrain striker wrote simply: “OH GOD PLEASE SEE US THRU.”

Divine intervention, however, was never going to be enough to thwart New Zealand’s stirring victory over Bahrain in Wellington, which qualified the All Whites for the 2010 World Cup.

Certainly not with penalty kicks of the calibre of Sayed Mohamed Adnan’s early in the second half. Worse than Mark Viduka’s against Uruguay in that famous shootout in 2005, though at least the Bahraini shot straight.

New Zealand are not unworthy World Cup passengers. Bahrain is a decent football side and earned the right to meet the Oceania champions by vanquishing the might of Saudi Arabia in the AFC playoff and recording wins against the likes of Japan and Uzbekistan (twice) on the Grand Trunk Road of Asian qualifying.

Yes, something is awry when teams of the calibre of Czech Republic, Turkey and Croatia can’t make it to the biggest show on earth and a minnow such as New Zealand can sneak through the back door by not playing a nation ranked higher than #61.

But the World Cup is not a tournament for the best football teams in the world; it’s a tournament for the best football teams of the world, an important difference, and that world has Oceania as part of it.

New Zealand’s win is important on a couple of levels.

One, if I’m not mistaken, it represents the first time since Rale Rasic in 1973 that a coach from the Australian domestic league has taken a national side to the World Cup finals.

Ricki Herbert has done an incredible job wearing both his Wellington Phoenix and New Zealand caps and is deserving of his success.

And with a team of players largely plying their trade in Australia and backroom people such as Raul Blanco aiding the cause, it is a triumph we can all parochially (if opportunistically) share in.

Two, the advancement of the All Whites weakens the AFC’s claims for five places at the World Cup from its present 4.5 and strengthens the OFC’s claim to one from its present 0.5.

When the AFC has its annual awards night in Kuala Lumpur next Tuesday evening, there will be much private discussion about the advantages of absorbing New Zealand into the confederation, as it did Australia back in 2007, in ensuring those five places are sacrosanct and not risking the calamity of dropping down to four.

Mohamed Bin Hammam, the AFC president, has much to work to do in regards intra-regional gladhanding.

Remarkably, all four of Asia’s representatives – Australia, Korea Republic, DPR Korea and Japan – come from outside the powerful Middle Eastern or “West Asia” bloc.

With Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Bahrain and UAE all missing out, there will be some stern faces in KL and they will be demanding satisfaction.

There are many fascinating twists and turns in store for Asian football politics in the months ahead.

But for now let’s all congratulate New Zealand on their great showing in Wellington and, as strange as it might sound, pray the Socceroos don’t meet them in South Africa.

They’ll be up for anything now – and especially beating Australia.

A movie's budget pops from the screen

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:46:06 +1100

Can a movie studio make money on a film based on an original and unfamiliar story, with no Hollywood superstars, a vanishing DVD market and a price tag approaching $500 million?

That question looms large for 20th Century Fox and its 3-D science-fiction film "Avatar," among the most expensive movies ever. Despite many skeptics, the studio thinks it can turn a profit, in part because the film's creator, James Cameron, was the driving force behind the studio’s immense hit "Titanic." But just in case box-office receipts for "Avatar" fall short, Fox has worked hard to hedge its large bet on the movie. Fox's efforts underscore how studios generally have been able to minimize their exposure at a time of blockbuster budgets - albeit at the cost of limiting their profit potential as well. (Oh and what does Murdoch think of the flick. Apparently he was both excited and moved. If only he could say the same thing about his share price.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/media/09avatar.html

What's Sam worth?

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:11:45 +1100

Sam Worthington has rocketed to super stardom, but he has his fair share of knockers and doubters.

Could anyone who watched Sam Worthington mumbling his way through Somersault, Thunderstruck or Gettin’ Square have predicted he’d become one of Hollywood’s hottest actors?

Not me, and I suspect that on some days, even Sam can’t believe his luck. After starring alongside Christian Bale in Terminator Salvation, Worthington faces the biggest test of his career when James Cameron’s Avatar opens next month.

Most pundits are expecting the ambitious sci-fi adventure, in which he plays a former Marine-turned Avatar who’s asked to save the world, to do blockbuster business; with a reported production budget of $US310 million and a marketing spend of $150 million, according to the Los Angeles Times, it will need to gross at least $800 million worldwide to give Fox a chance of recouping.

Even if Avatar under-performs, the 33-year-old Aussie has a bunch of films lined up for the next two years, including Clash of the Titans, Debt, Last Man, The Candidate and Last Night.
Yet Sam probably has as many knockers as admirers judging by recent Internet chatter.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeff Wells seems unconvinced about his talents, observing, “It had somehow slipped my mind that Sam Worthington is the star of Louis Leterrier's Clash of the Titans. This on top of Avatar and the last Terminator film plus Last Night, The Debt and the possible/discussed The Candidate and The Tourist...it's a kind of deluge. Worthington is into and all over everything in the same way that Christian Bale was the absolute go-to guy two or three years ago.

“Part Arnold, part Clint, past Chuck Norris...I get it, fine. I'm just feeling like I've been Sam Worthington-ed in a Paul Simon/‘A Simple Desultory Philippic’ sense.”

That’s a reference to one of Simon’s songs in which he complains about being bombarded by the omnipresent celebrities of the era such as Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, Phil Spector and even his onetime partner Art Garfunkel.

Wells’ thoughts prompted a wave of comments, roughly divided equally between those who value Sam’s worth, and those who don’t. “Not sold at all on Worthington; he's a blank-slate,” opined one blogger who calls himself actionman.

“I like Worthington enough,” asserted one fan, Eloi Manning. “He's a bloke, not a girly man. Worthington at least has some pretty solid stuff he did in Australia behind him. I think he has the chops. He's a quiet performer, not really flashy, and I think that's why he works in CGI epics. He doesn't distract from the absurdity on display.

“There's a dearth of credible action stars in Hollywood at the moment. At least he looks like he can handle himself in a fight. And I think he's popular among filmmakers because he's professional and gets on with the job without any fuss.”

One blogger predicts, “Worthington, if anything, will be what Schwarzenegger was in the 80s.” Referring to the last Terminator opus, another noted, “I don't know if Worthington is going to be one of the greats of our time, but I don't think it’s really fair to judge him on his performance in a movie that was directed by McG.”

A blogger using the ID Aladdin Sane said, “His ascension is unbelievable in some regards. Hopefully it pays off in the long term for him (artistically speaking).”

It’s sure paying off in his bank balance.

What an amazing game it is

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:26:02 +1100

It was a weekend that showed everything that is good about football, and the World Cup. A cornucopia of emotion, drama, excitement. I loved it.

It was a weekend that showed everything that is good about football, and the World Cup. A cornucopia of emotion, drama, excitement. I loved it.

Football and footballers take a bit of a battering at times. Money obsessed. Don’t care about the shirt. In it for themselves. Football has lost its soul. But I defy anyone to have watched the weekend’s action and not wake up today with a smile on their face.

We saw unbridled joy at opposite ends of the Earth, as New Zealand qualified for the World Cup; Egypt hauled themselves off the canvas to live again. The Socceroos gutsed it out, and Bosnia - a baby in football terms - gave mighty Portugal the scare of their lives in Lisbon.

Only football can deliver these sorts of scenes. Only football and the World Cup can deliver moments where time stands still. Where everything you’ve done for four years comes down to a moment. A decision. A mistake. A reaction.

Check out the scenes in Cairo when they score their second. Incredible. This is a country, that while hugely successful in their own backyard, hasn’t been to the big show for nineteen years. That explosion of joy, and the crushing sense of disappointment from the Algerians is the reason why football cannot be topped. No other sport comes close.

In this country, there are sports that have epic moments, but what do they really mean? State of Origin is fantastic, but can defeat hurt that much when you can go again in three weeks' time? And then the next year? And the year after that?

The AFL Grand Final. Another incredible spectacle. But up to 25 games to get there and failing that, at least 22 more next year.

Not the World Cup. Careers come and go between cups. Some of the all time greats never even made it, and it will forever be the regret of their career.

Look at New Zealand. Ryan Nelsen is, in Kiwi terms, a very successful sportsman. He is paid a relative fortune, but in global terms is Blackburn’s ageing centre back. Not any more. Now he captains his team at a World Cup. The ultimate.

Rory Fallon. The All Whites hero. He took his moment, and it may well be the only moment he ever gets on this stage. But what a moment. Priceless memories. Plymouth Argyle’s striker or a national hero?

It was refreshing for me to listen to some interviews with a few of the younger Socceroos. Valeri, Holman, Kisnorbo and the like. For much of the time it was your standard stuff, but when asked what it would mean to represent their country at the World Cup, something changed.

The media training disappeared, and they revealed a little of their soul. A little of what really drives them.

“It would mean everything.”

“I could retire happy, knowing I’d done it.”

“It’s the ultimate.”

I came over a bit misty eyed watching them, as I shared the same dream as these boys when I was growing up. And it heartened me to see that peers of Neill, Cahill and Kewell are still driven, not by the thought of being a big star or getting the big bucks, but by being part of the biggest show on Earth.

That’s what football does. And that’s why it is the greatest game of all. There will always be those in this country who knock it, but they just don’t see the big picture.

They need to be at Croke Park and share the agony of Irish defeat. They need to head to Zenica to see what it means to Bosnia to be ninety minutes from the World Cup.

They need to peer into the Egyptian dressing room and see the elation that they are still alive.

Most of all, they need to see the bigger picture. If Australia end up hosting the World Cup, imagine every footballer from every nation in the world saying, “It would be my dream to be at Australia 2018.”

Love the game.

The Circus - November 16

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +1100

The All Whites are the new black in NZ, and the Master Blaster urges batsmen to get their gear off. It's all in The Circus.

Don't matter if you're black or white
It is not often anything short of an STD for sheep knocks the All Blacks off the front pages in New Zealand, but that is precisely what has happened.

While the national rugby team was expected to triumph over Italy (although probably by more than the final 20-6 scoreline) the national football team's progression to the World Cup finals was anything but a lay down misere.

After ruining the World Cup dreams of powerhouses such as New Caledonia and Vanuatu, the All Whites had the considerably harder task of seeing off Bahrain, which they did thunks to fyne ifforts of 'keepa Mark Paston. Sweet, bro.

Now, team NZ join their Antipodean cousins in the final 32 and set up the delicious prospect of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand all being drawn in the same group; a trio that could turn Johannesburg into one giant version of London's Down Under bar . . . which is nice because Jo'burg may be the only city on earth for which such a transformation would be an improvement.

Use the force, not a forearm protector
"They say cricket is a gentlemen's game – it's a man's game." Viv Richards said that. So if you were having an argument about whether one could be both a man and a gentleman at the same time, the argument is now closed; closed by order of the Master Blaster.

The sheikh of swagger spoke the words while bemoaning the practice of contemporary batsman to take strike looking more storm trooper than Luke Skywalker.

"There are individuals out there who use the body protection as a form of staying power," he said – and The Circus is pretty sure he wasn't talking about Durex Performax. King Viv went on to declare that, in his day, batsmen were peppered with short stuff to find out if they had any "tummy" for it.

This is strange because, as far as The Circus recollects, Ian Botham had a pretty ordinary record against the Windies and tummy was one commodity he had in spades.

One man who has seen many a batsman wield his willow – behelmeted and otherwise – is Australia's own cricketing Yoda Richie Benaud. And just like the Jedi master, the beige one refuses to completely fade away, signing a new three-year deal to provide special comments for the Two and Half Men network.

Marvellous stuff. Especially if we can look forward to more analysis of this calibre:

Stop me if you've heard this one
It may have been a smashing weekend for the Kiwis, but the Lapwing has had better outings.

Ireland's football team get fixed up by the French in a World Cup qualifier, and the ra-ra boys were only saved from a similar fate thanks to a last-minute try to Brian O'Driscoll that drew their match with the Wallabies.

Of course, that result ruined what was otherwise a very fine couple of days for Australia, which almost added a rugby triumph to the Kangaroos' earlier demolition of England in the final of the Four Nations tournament, not to mention the Socceroos' non-demolition of Oman in an Asian Cup qualifier.

All this talk of Irishmen, Australians, New Zealanders and the English puts The Circus in mind of a great joke it once heard. And here it is.

W is for Wood(s)
The Circus isn't sure if you heard, but Tiger Woods is in the country. If your ear is cocked especially close to the ground, you will also know he was playing in a tournament in Melbourne for a performance fee that even Liza Minnelli would pretend to raise her permanently frozen eyebrows over.

And Tiger proved the old adage that you have to earn millions of dollars before you can earn another $270,000 by winning the Australian Masters by two shots from some other bloke who no one could actually give a toss about.

"I got a W," Woods said of his win. That's OK. He's not the first visiting American to be affected so by Australia:

Numbers game
20 – years Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar has played international cricket
16 – age Tendular was when making his debut, against Pakistan
15 – runs he scored in his first innings before being bowled by Waqar Younis
29,961 – runs in all form of international cricket Tendulkar has scored to date
44 – wickets taken by Tendulkar in Test matches

Quote of the day
"I … really fancy Cotto will be too much for him."
- Ricky Hatton shows that, as a soothsayer, he makes a good boxer by predicting champ Migeul Cotto would defeat challenger Manny Pacquiao in the pair's WBO welterweight title fight. Pacquiao won by TKO in the 12th round.

Headline we'd like to read
Master Blaster admits his "W" forced him to bat without adequate protection.

:: More of The Circus

Favignana Prison Island

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Recent quasi lynch-mob behaviour by some members of our society in hounding out a convicted criminal (who'd served his time) from a housing estate he'd been placed in by the authorities should concern us all.

The reason why some people in the Sydney suburb of Ryde reacted the way they did was because the media published the name and picture as well as the crime committed by the person in question. He was a paedophile.

Had the citizens not known there was a paedophile in their midst life may have gone on regardless without anyone's feathers being ruffled. As it is the person in question will still end up having to live somewhere else. How many other paroled prisoners are out there living anonymously amongst us? I dare say there'd be a few hundred. Do I feel threatened? No. Do you? While I am not condoning paedophile behaviour I do feel our society's moral compass is somewhat challenged in that on one hand we bay for the blood of a legally released paedophile while on the other we can't get enough of murder and mayhem while glorifying some of the worst criminals and murderers in our society via TV hit series.

I raise these issues as this week THALASSA, making its return in a new series, looks at prisoners on the Sicilian Island of Favignana who are allowed to work in the community unsupervised for three hours a day. The local police are aware of their whereabouts and are never far away should any problem arise. To all intents and purposes the citizens on Favignana do not know their crimes and seem unperturbed having the inmates in close-proximity to themselves and children.

Problems don't generally arise as the prisoners have all served many decades behind bars and have been granted small freedoms under Section 21 of the Italian Penal Code. Some may even earn early release and need to be re-integrated into society. The re-integration process has to start before they leave jail. Others in the program, like Angelo and Vito, are serving life sentences but have the freedom to run a dairy farm and they export their milk to the mainland. We can only imagine what their crime was since they are both serving life sentences.

Others may do small building work near a school full of children. Any one of them could be a paedophile, murderer or petty criminal, we do not know. The program doesn't divulge their crime, just the years they are serving. They work unsupervised. Can you see this happening in Australia?

I still cannot help comparing reactions of the people on Favignana to the handful of citizens in Ryde, Sydney. The question that comes to mind is should we be aware of ex-criminals in our midst if they've paid their debt to society? Do you honestly feel you would live and breather easier knowing there is a pardoned murderer, paedophile, armed robber or ……………… (put in your choice of criminal) living in your suburb or locality? It could only shatter your peace of mind and destabilise the community you live in.

Since we have many ex-criminals who've done their time and are living back in society as the law allows, I do not wish to know who they are or whether they live in my street. But that's me. I loathe the spectre of a lynch-mob (especially in the media!) regardless of who their target is. I trust that our law knows better in this instance. What are your thoughts on the matter?

Calm after the storm

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

I'm completely bleary-eyed, after two glasses of wine, a bath and a 67km solo breakaway that ended in me winning the Oceania road title.

Well here I am, in a rather large hotel room in Christchurch, with only five hours til a wake-up call for my flight home to Melbourne.

I'm completely bleary-eyed, after two glasses of wine, a bath and a 67km solo breakaway that ended in me winning the Oceania road title by just under nine and a half minutes.

Winning the race was always going to be tricky, with 75% of the field being Kiwis, and the rest all riding as the Australian National team, with their own set of plans and instructions.

So, I did the only thing I could do - attacked solo midway though lap two on the windy, hilly 19km loop.

It was just after Meshy Hall (NZ) had launched off the group to pursue two who were off the front. Alexis Rhodes (AUS) had to chase her down, and as we turned left with a roaring tail wind behind us, I knew I had to go.

I dropped the local who tried to come with me, caught and roared past the two who were away a minute later, and then rode scared for the next 3.5 laps.

I was convinced they'd get organised, despite the small field, and I kept having flashbacks of the same race two years ago when it came down to a bunch sprint after Ruth Corset and a Kiwi had been away for 80km.

So every 10km or so, the official race car gave me time gaps: 2.40 mins at 40km, 3.40 mins at 50km, then out to 8 mins by the last lap. It hailed, it rained and I still thought I could get caught.

By the last 5km of the 95km race, I was flogged, and finally heading downhill to the finish. Very relieved, and with an official start in the Melbourne 2010 Road World Championships.

Local speedster Karen Fulton outsprinted Rohelle Gilmore in the battle for the silver medal and we all tried to get warm in time for the masonic hall medal presentations.

An enormous thanks to:

:: The ebullient and fabulous Oli Brook-White of Roadworks for having the Soloist S2 go as fast as I could make it and being on hand to give bidons and be official photographer.

:: Rob and Bas at Gemini Bicycles for my beautiful Cervélos - if you're going to go solo for 67km, it helps to have the most aero and light road bike!

:: The indefatigueable Donna Rae-Szalinski for putting me through the ringer (in the best possible way) since I got home.

:: National road coach, Martin Barras for destroying me behind the motorbike every week in the Dandenongs - I thought of that on every goddamn hill!

:: Scody for my great race kit.

:: Antho, Dave, Ingrid, Dave and Tanya at CBD cycles for the pre-race servicing and bike love.

:: Rob Eva and Jason Phillips at SRAM.

:: Chris Langdon at Echelon Sports for my new 3T bars and Zipp wheels.

:: Darryl and Steph Griffiths at Shotz sport nutrition.

:: Davide at Italiatech for my splendid SMP saddles.

:: Sheridan and Paul at Oakley.

Next plan of attack is to get a TT spot for Melbourne.

Ciao

Turkish Delight

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:21:43 +1100

My apologies to the turkeys. Yes, I did find you creepy. I did find it difficult, having to show you where to find your food in the morning. Every morning. I did sometimes resent having to herd you back in from the road at least four times a day after I’d hear cars skid on the dirt as they braked trying to miss hitting you. I did struggle to love you as immediately, as unconditionally, as I did Maggie the cow. Or even Prosciutto and Cassoulet the pigs.

I apologise, because in the next life, turkeys, you taste simply delicious. Truly great. Like turkey should taste and never does. This is meat that is moist, flavoursome, tender and naturally sweet. The skin browns up to lacquer like brown-ness, the bones make a great stock. It’s like the flavour of all the turkeys you ever wanted to eat rolled into one. I don’t like commercial turkey meat. But I do love this.

I find killing the birds inordinately bad. I don’t like the chopping of the neck, and hate the plucking and gutting of the birds. I find I have to shower straight afterwards and don’t want to eat the meat for a couple of days, at least. It’s the smell of them, mostly of the feathers, that does it. But if this meat, poultry with real, inherent, complex flavour, is the end result, and the only way I can get it is to rear and kill the birds myself, I’ll do it.

The longer days have meant there are births, not just deaths, on the farm. I found my first Barnevelder egg. Sure, it was tiny, barely bigger than the end joint of my thumb. But what a day it was, so exciting when you’ve raised the birds from fluffy, fragile chicks, to matronly, full grown chooks. I don’t know who is laying. Blossom, perhaps, or is it Beryl? Apparently you can pick the chooks up, look between their legs, and tell. I think I’ll just wait and see how many eggs are laid.

Within a few days there are more eggs, more than one a day. Again, they’re tiny. Sometimes, the eggs have been coated in too fine a shell, so thin it breaks when the egg is laid. Apparently it can take a while for some birds to hit their stride. I put out a bowl of shell grit; coarse bits of shell that help in their crop (chickens don’t have teeth, they eat small stones that grind grain down in their necks) but more importantly help give the birds calcium. If you’re producing an egg a day, five days a week, you need all the calcium, and other nutrients, that you can get.

I boil my first ever Puggle Farm egg so I can have it at its most pure. I have it with sourdough toast soldiers smothered in homemade butter. The yolk is impossibly orange. Incandescent, almost. The flavour is rich, about three times the flavour of shop bought eggs, even the free range ones I’m used to. It’s taken over half of my first year on the farm, but finally one of the most basic foods, one that is overlooked by even the poshest restaurants in the land, I produce myself. These eggs, from chooks that scratch for grubs and nibble on grass, are the most humble expression of just how good, honest and true farmhouse cooking can be. Nothing bought compares to this. It helps me reconnect with the land, with the ideal of producing everyday food from this plot of dirt. What’s more, it’s bloody delicious.

Looking for work, willing to travel

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:00:00 +1100

Former Liverpool and England midfielder John Barnes could be heading to Rwanda to revive his coaching career.

If any country needs its spirits lifted, it's Rwanda, which made the third round of World Cup qualifying in Africa but had the misfortune of being lumped in a group with Egypt, Algeria and Zambia. In its five games so far it has returned the princely amount of one point but is hoping to qualify for the African Cup of Nations by beating Zambia in Kigali.

It has to not only win but by two goals to save the job of the incumbent coach, ex-Dinamo Zagreb player Branko Tucak.

So we can only wish the Wasps and their coach well. Qualifying for big football tournaments is one of those things in life that can galvanise and unite a nation like few other things.

But there is one person who will be wishing they fall flat on their face: John Barnes.

The ex-Liverpool and England star has applied for Tucak's job after failing to set the world on fire with his three previous managerial positions: Celtic, Jamaica and Tranmere Rovers.

In his last post, with League One club Tranmere, he just won two from 11 league matches before he was pushed by the club's board. Around the same time he was also declared bankrupt, which was later rescinded.

Despite his string of failures, Barnes believes he can "spur Rwandan football to greater heights", which wouldn't be hard seeing they're starting from the bottom. But a change of scene might just do him a world of good and see his managerial skills develop (they have to start coming together at some point).

That's the great thing about football – if you can't make it in one place, there are plenty of places around the world where even an average CV can get you a decent job.

Take India, where a bloke called Philippe de Ridder has been appointed coach of I-League side East Bengal.

Who is Philippe de Ridder? I have no idea, other than the fact he's Belgian, holds a UEFA-B coaching licence, once played for the Belgium men's under-20s and describes himself on his own blog as a "Pro Football coach. Artistic background, Foundator [sic] of the 360 CFT (Creative Football Training) method, Sport journalist, Cartoon creator, Art Director, Saxophone player, song writer." Just what your regular professional club football is looking for in a coach.

So long as he wins games, who cares? In his first match as coach, against Shillong Lajong, De Ridder had no problems delivering on his promises to the club. 3-0 to East Bengal. Not bad for a saxophone player.

The press in England has been hounding Barnes for wanting to go to Rwanda, the Mirror declaring his "adventure will end in disaster" and you can even bet on when he'll get the axe should he get the job, but he deserves another go.

As the Liverpool Echo said more charitably: "There is an old saying: when you fall off your bike, the best thing to do is get straight back on."

I agree. Good luck to him should he end up in Kigali. And good luck to Philippe in Kolkata.

Every man deserves a break. It just sometimes you have to go a long way to get it.

:: For more Fink musings on the big issues in football, check out Half-time Orange on The World Game.

I miss Archie

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:43:57 +1100

As I welcomed my new Socceroos room-mate Alex Brosque to the national team set-up in Oman I was interrupted by a text message from an old friend.

From what I've noticed of Oman so far, it's a lot like Dubai and Qatar: hot, sticky and frantic. Of course, that's all been from the other side of a car window, as most of my time here has been spent either training, eating or getting massaged.

Welcome to life in Socceroos camp, where our daily routine is basically: free time in the morning (most of the guys get massages or physio), lunch at 1pm, preparation for training during the afternoon, then a daily training session at 4.30pm, as the sun goes down.

It may sound fairly laid back, and it is! With guys travelling in from all over the world and at different times, Pim likes his camps to be very relaxed, with the emphasis on recovery and relaxation rather than hard training.

The only thing I miss is my old Socceroos roomie Archie Thompson (nothing against my new room-mate Alex Brosque of course). Archie texted me the other day asking how life in camp is without him and I must say, it's pretty quiet.

Archie was a huge character in the team, not to mention a bit of a joker and I'm surprised to find I miss having him around!

Congrats Brosquey

Speaking of room-mates, it's fantastic to see Alex getting a chance in the side, not to mention great to see players who do well in the A-League being rewarded for it.

It goes to show that Pim will pick the best guys available, no matter where they happen to be playing.

It is also encouraging for guys who have started out in the A-League and are still there (unlike me, who returned home in different circumstances). For the guys who have been in the A-League and are there it's great for them to know they will get noticed.

Bring on a more European season

I've noticed a fair bit of debate around about the new A-League franchises, so I'll throw my two cents in too!

I think the expansion of the league is a great thing. I'm part of an expansion club myself and from the players' point of view, we want to be playing as many games as possible. Having more clubs will mean more rounds and a longer season.

I can tell you now every player wants to be playing a longer season and hopefully, with a few more rounds thrown in, it will feel more like playing a European season.

From the fans' point of view, it's great to be able to support a team too.

I think picking up players could be difficult and no doubt the franchises will be wondering where their squads will come from, but the new franchises should simply look at what Gold Coast and North Queensland have done and in the long run, I see it as a good thing and a big positive for both the league and the fans.

Final thoughts

I finally want to touch on our A-League Round 14 game against Sydney FC. There was a lot of talk about the fact we were going through a bad patch and a club in crisis etc.

We showed a lot of commitment and passion during the game and we showed that when things are turned around off the field, it can be turned around on the field.

We showed that we are a top club and we do have aspirations and ambitions to be a great team.

All credit to everyone involved in the club. I think we've shut up a few critics.

Gloves off in Cairo

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:56:21 +1100

If the South Africa 2010 qualifying match-ups this weekend are any guide, we are set for our most diverse, intriguing World Cup yet.

While the vast majority of football fans in this part of the world and that little bit across the ditch will be packing pubs this weekend to watch their respective national teams in Asian Cup and World Cup qualifying action, as well as some of the four UEFA playoffs featuring the likes of France and Portugal, one of the most extraordinary matches of recent times will take place in Cairo.

At 6.30pm at International Stadium, Egypt faces Algeria in their final CAF Group C match, having to win by three goals or more to qualify for the World Cup or win by two to force a playoff to be played in neutral Sudan against the same opponent on November 18.

If the Pharoahs win by one, draw or lose, they are out and Algeria goes to South Africa 2010.

If the Socceroos thought they got a hostile reception in Montevideo in 2001, they ain’t seen nothing.

Already the Algeria team bus has been attacked by stone-throwing yobs, with three players allegedly injured, and Egyptian politicians have gone into damage control, foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki declaring “a joint Egyptian and Algerian desire for calm” and asking the media in Algiers and Cairo to “not fuel disagreements that are unrelated to sports and sportsmanship”.

Fat chance. It’s on for young and old. Gaining whatever advantage you can over your opponent, on the field or off, is what World Cup qualifying is all about and fans certainly aren’t beholden by such niceties. Nor are the match organisers. Only 2000 tickets have been made available to travelling Les Fennecs fans in a stadium that seats 80,000.

The Algerians can hardly complain, though, the African champions copped all sorts of hell when they played away in June, losing 3-1.

Can Egypt do it? If any team can conjure goals in a short space of time, it’s Egypt. We saw that at the Confederations Cup, when Mohamed Aboutreika and Mohamed Zidan turned on the sort of magic we would normally expect from a South American or West African team. That the Selecao ran out 4-3 winners in the end was arguably the football tragedy of 2009.

Algeria will have other ideas, of course, and have the inspirational presence of Zinedine Zidane in their corner,
the football icon reputedly skipping France’s first-leg playoff against Republic of Ireland to attend the match in Cairo.

Whoever wins, the World Cup itself will welcome its first North African side outside of Tunisia and Morocco since 1998. The last time Egypt qualified was in 1990, Algeria in 1986. Both went out in the first round.

In a World Cup that has already admitted a clutch of fascinating exotics – North Korea, Honduras, Slovakia – and potentially stands to admit a few more – Bahrain, Gabon, Bosnia, Slovenia – the biggest tournament in the world is perhaps finally starting to live up to its name.

Enjoy your football weekend.

Islam in America

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +1100

Rory Medcalf considers the plight of the Muslim soldier in the US Army and wonders if a willingness to fight for your country equates to wider social acceptance within it.

Would you want to be a Muslim in the US military?

One of the few complicated moments in Islam in America comes when the relentlessly upbeat Rageh Omar attempts to interview an Arab soldier in the US army. The whole scene is clumsily, defensively stage-managed by the Pentagon.

The interview has to be conducted anonymously, by phone. Little of substance is said, and even then the upshot is that the soldier reveals he is not happy and considering getting out.

Life for a Muslim in the US military remains tough and unfriendly, seems to be the message. The American Muslim soldier is trusted neither by the security establishment nor by his or her community.

This impression is only reinforced by the most depressing sequence in this generally optimistic documentary about the history of Islam in the United States: a conversation with James Yee, a former US Army captain and Muslim chaplain to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Yee, for those who do not already know the story, was a Chinese American who converted to Islam in the early 1990s. He was initially commended for his work at Guantanamo then arrested on charges of spying and sedition. He was subjected to an intense investigation and reportedly held for 76 days in the very kind of solitary confinement he had witnessed at Guantanamo.

In the end, all charges were dropped. But, understandably, he was left with little fondness for resuming his military career.

The scenes with Yee and the nameless, faceless American Arab soldier make one reflect on what must presumably be the unusual courage and complex psychological motivations of such people.

I am referring to the individuals from a minority community – and a minority treated with suspicion by many in their adopted country – who sign up to serve in the armed forces, whatever the consequences. (I have often wondered what my German great-granduncle was thinking when he joined the Australian army not long before the First World War; he ended up gassed by his former countrymen in the trenches of the Western Front.)

Yet it takes the pioneers of one such generation to build a truly representative national defence force for future generations – and to prove both the loyalty of their own communities and the multicultural character of the state to which they belong.

Well-meaning and liberal-minded governments can do all they like to make life in the armed forces a viable option for migrant and minority communities. Ultimately, individuals need to chance the first step and make the first, often terrible and very personal sacrifices.

But before we leap to condemn the United States for the lot of its perhaps 10,000-15,000 Muslim warriors, it is worth considering how representative are the militaries (or, for that matter, the parliaments) of other multiracial societies - Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Australia - that might consider themselves more enlightened.

In this country, the government is desperate to build greater cultural diversity in the armed forces. There are good practical reasons for this, beyond the imperatives of political symbolism and multicultural resilience. But the going is slow.

This documentary presents an exceptionally positive (and who is to say inaccurate?) picture of the place of Islam in America, taking in such fascinating detours as Thomas Jefferson’s Koran, the respect for Islam as a pillar of civilization in the original decoration of the Library of Congress, and the deep origin of blues music in the Muezzin’s call to prayer among Muslim slaves.

But until a community – any community – can comfortably play its part in the defence of a nation, has it truly been accepted? And with whom lies the onus for change?

Postscript: This post was written before the terrible killings at Fort Hood in early November 2009, by US army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan, and the attention and questions this tragedy has raised.

The Circus - November 13

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +1100

Melbourne named 'Best Sports City', IPL to trial pink balls, and female footballers attack a referee. It's all in The Circus.

And the winner is …
Everyone knows that Melbourne is the sporting capital of the world – just ask Melburnians. And now it has been officially confirmed. Sort of. The incredibly prestigious and time-honored SportBusiness Sports Event Management Awards – no, we've never heard of them either, but they are in their third year – have named the Victorian capital as 'Best Sports City'. Hoorah.

Apparently, so prestigious are these awards that more than 150 entries were received. Gosh. And, as the SportBusiness Etc Etc website breathlessly proclaims, more than 200 guests attended the glittering awards ceremony in London. Mmmm, donuts.

Melbourne was one of nine recipients of prestigious awards in such prestigious categories as 'Security'. A round of applause please for the winners, Sword Event Guard International for ensuring that Al-Qaeda did not disrupt the Galway Stopover Festival bit of the Volvo Ocean Race.

OK. Nine categories and more than 150 entries. So, let's say Melbourne beat about 20 other cities for the prestigious title. Cool. Actually, to be precise, the award went to the Victorian Major Events Company for the City of Melbourne.

Runner up was the Senate Department for the Interior and Sport for the City of Berlin and third was the Qatar Olympic Committee for the City of Doha, which last time we checked hadn't been awarded the Olympics. We can only hope a state holiday has been announced in Victoria.

IPL balls up
A meeting of Indian Premier League franchise holders held in that epicenter of world cricket Bangkok – probably in one of those nice Patpong bars – has agreed to trial the use of pink balls – OK, definitely in one of those nice Patpong bars – in warm-up matches and practice sessions.

It's truly exciting news … apparently. MCC assistant secretary John Stephenson was agog at the IPL's wonderful gesture: "The successful use of pink balls in the IPL would be a major step towards their acceptance in international cricket, as it would expose most of the world's top Test players to the ball. It would also add further weight to the IPL's standing as a progressive force in the game."

Yep, pink balls. That's progress for you.

In the headlines
Headline that didn't surprise us: Tyson in fracas with photographer.

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is being investigated on "suspicious of misdemeanour battery", which is US legal-speak for biffing a paparazzi type. Tyson's posse says the photographer tried to follow Iron Mike into an airport toilet.

Headline that did surprise us: John Daly wins place on US skeleton team.

We knew the big fella had been losing weight, but that's ridiculous. Still, he's used to wearing wacky and ill-fitting costumes, so the lycra suit will be fine. Pardon? Oh, sorry, wrong John Daly. Carry on.

Girls on film
Yesterday we brought you two doses of female aggro on the football field, and fine efforts they were, too. But now let's take you back to sunny 1983 and a report from Fantastico about a contretemps between a Brazilian women's team and a referee.

We know it's 1983 because the women are all wearing Warwick Capper shorts. And how about that referee? Fantastico!

Row, row, row your boat
Terrific sport, rowing. Only problem is that you do it backwards, which is why you have a cox.

The numbers game
Two – Manchester United matches that Sir Alex Ferguson will spend watching from the grandstands after the Premier League penalised him for language and demeanour unbecoming of a knight of the realm in saying bad things about referee Alan Wiley. He was given four matches, but half is suspended.
20,000 – UK pounds that Ferguson will have to fish from his pockets to pay the fine that accompanied the touchline ban.
14 – English Premier League clubs that voted against a Bolton proposal for a two-tier premiership that would include Glasgow Celtic and Glasgow Rangers.

Quote of the day
"Ferguson is a very complicated man. He's tough. If things are all right, then they are all right. But when he thinks something is wrong, everything is screwed. He can go from complimenting you to just plain trashing you in a matter of minutes. Has it happened to me? Hell, yes. He'll say 'Nani, how could you miss this or this'?
- Man United's Portugese winger Nani explains how Sir Alex Ferguson is really angry that he's not Ronaldo.

Headline we'd like to read
Let's play with blue balls, says IPL chief after Patpong meeting

:: More of The Circus

Sneak Peek of Episode 3: Burma

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Stefan continues his culinary journey around the world with his most dangerous trip yet - smuggling himself into the jungles of eastern Burma, where the Karen people are fighting a vicious guerrilla war with the Burmese army. &amp;amp;amp;lt;/

Stefan goes on patrol with a Karen rebel group deep into the jungle to check on isolated villages that are under constant threat of attack from the Burmese army.

There he finds villagers whose fields have been mined to stop them harvesting their crops, and whose homes are often looted by the Burmese army. The patrol must survive on a little rice and what they can catch in the jungle, even if that means eating endangered animals.

Episode 2: A Good Match

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Money buys you love. Or at least, it buys you romantic love in the view of this episode's central character and bride-to-be, Li Wanzun, preparing for her wedding at the biggest Chinese restaurant in the world. "Marriage has to be based on money," she says, "If you're too poor, you can't be romantic, can you?"

It is a refrain that is repeated throughout the episode. A waitress remarks that "money can solve any problem", another member of the serving staff has not seen their partner in two years as they pursue work in separate cities. It is a recent change in the local attitude towards the importance of conspicuous wealth. The older generation talks of walking on foot to their wedding while their children are driving Audis. The previous generation's practice of receiving fabrics as a wedding gift has been surpassed by the tens of thousands of yuan in small red envelopes, gifted throughout the wedding.

The big budget banquet for the wedding seems an exercise in pure economics dressed in the gaudy vestments of imagined Chinese tradition. While West Lake's owner, Qin, believes that the restaurant lets its patrons "revisit ancient times", the Western wedding dress and focus on cash suggests otherwise.

The size fetish of the previous episode is toned down with a closer focus on the human relationships behind the restaurant. The requisite shots of vast quantities of ingredients being trucked into the kitchen still sneak through in interstitial moments.

There are but a few glances at the food churned out of the giant kitchens for the wedding: a chicken dish whose round ingredients signify a smooth relationship; a whole steamed fish to symbolize completeness; a few snippets of a skinned and shelled tortoise. For all the coldly economic talk of weddings, the food and its preparation provide a (literally) visceral experience. Fish are gutted on the kitchen floor. A chicken flaps around wildly while being plucked. The transition from living to dead is not a clear process, it occurs in a blur of iron cleavers and animal innards.

Any cruelty to animals cannot be justified. So why is there such a divergent view from the West's concept of animal cruelty to that displayed in the Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World?

Food writer Fushcia Dunlop, in her memoir on her time in China, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, offers an explanation. After being confronted with the nonchalant brutality in China's food handling, Dunlop writes of a linguistic underpinning to the divergent opinion. She says:

"In English, as in most European languages, the words for living things we eat are mostly derived from the Latin anima, which means air, life, breath. 'Creature' from the Latin for 'created', seems to connect animals with us as human beings in a divinely fashioned universe. In Chinese the word for animal is dong wu, meaning 'moving thing'. Is it cruel to hurt something that you simply see as a 'moving thing', barely even alive?"

It is not a justification for cruelty but further observation, and it is certainly a view that can be changed.

The Police to the rescue

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Sou westers blew at 45kph and the temperature crept above 10 degrees just in time for the start of the Oceania championships in Winton, 30km north of Invercargill.

Sou westers blew at 45kph and the temperature crept above 10 degrees just in time for the start of the Oceania championships in Winton, 30km north of Invercargill.

Proceedings were so low key I had to ask the local police where the starting line was! Constable Barry fumbled around a bit with some pieces of paper, made a few calls and helpfully photocopied a map of the town. "Ah, the football field, there you go."

So, after my 25km course recon there and back over the country roads, I was ready to go (read: tried to stay upright while testing out my front wheel options).

Oli Brooke-White, bike builder/repairer extraordinaire and experienced kiwi race mechanic, was here to help me out. He gave the P3 some love and it ran like a dream.

Head honcho of Roadworks and hailing from Wellington, he wasn't finding the adjustment to the weather as difficult as I, but we both noted the leaning trees and hedgerows as an obvious sign that there isn't a lot of variety in wind direction down here!

A gaggle of good Aussie women were here, as well as some strong Kiwi riders, all vying for an automatic spot for the 2010 Melbourne world Championships. South Australian Alexis Rhodes finally went one better than the '09 Oceanias in the You Yangs in February (yes, this seems strange - the 2010 Oceania Championships are being held in November 2009, a mere seven weeks after the worlds and 9 months after the last time, but that's a UCI calendar issue, not the New Zealanders trying to get in early!)

Alex won by four seconds over kiwi Melissa 'Meshy' Holt - a talented roady and ironman triathlete. She was overlooked for selection on the road for the Beijing Olympics, despite being National TT and road champion in 2008 and 2009, and decided to take a break from the road by winning her age group in IM New Zealand in 2008 and placing top 10 in Kona. Formidable!

I was third, 29s behind Alex and a little disappointed not to make it a three-peat! Still, the last four weeks of training have been more about climbing, volume and longer term goals. That made it an 'exciting experiment' to see how I'd fare on a dead flat TT course without specific preparation (damn Donna and her experiments! Why can't I just win all the time!!)

Still, both Alex and Meshy had a great day, along with Karen Fulton, Marina Duvnak (both NZL), Vicki Whitelaw and Kathy Watt (AUS) all having solid rides in the blustery conditions.

In the men's race, triple Olympic rowing gold medallist, Drew Ginn, blew the small field apart to secure a start to his first cycling World Championships in his home town. An impressive but unsurprising 'start' for the powerhouse athlete.

Sunday's road race will see the addition of kiwis Cath Cheatley, who rounded out a stellar '09 road season with a 10th place in Mendrisio World Championships; and Kaytee Boyd, a former mountain biker and talented climber who rode for UCI team Selle Italia Ghezzi in '09. Rochelle Gilmore will also be starting, looking to repeat the victory she had 2 years ago with the help of her small but mighty team (both Ruth Corset and I were riding in green and gold for the first time, and did all that was required to get AUS the win).

In the meantime, I'm rugging up and staying out of the wind. Tomorrow, NZL's All Whites are playing Bahrain in their world cup soccer qualifier. It seems that the locals have started drinking already, so best I stay inside and pray to sweet baby jesus that NZL win or we may see a spike in violence and depression. It's big, baby.

Science and Islam

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Mark Jones searches for the proper and true Arab world and questions whether the West has re-written its history as well as distort its image.

If you’ve spent even a fleeting moment in the Middle East, you’ll understand why they call it the Arab World: it really is a world of its own.

Bustling markets are intertwined with centuries old backstreets and the awe-inspiring spires of mosques rise above the crowds. In these old cities you’ll also discover the paradox of a traditional antiques dealer on one corner, while hawkers sell “genuine” Rolex watches out of a suitcase across the road.

Then there’s the magic of standing on a flat roof and staring across a dusty city like Muscat, Oman, with its contrast of old and new buildings set against the harsh backdrop of steep mountains.

It’s a picture of the peaceful, mystical quality of life there that we often forget. Or perhaps we don’t even know it exists because mainstream media feeds us with a constant diet of conflict and war in the region.

But Professor Jim Al-Khalili from the University of Surrey transports us back into this fascinating aspect of the Arab World in his documentary Science and Islam. As a scientist, Al-Khalili was drawn understand the story of ancient Baghdad’s relentless pursuit of scientific inquiry at a professional and personal level.

Born to a British mother and Arab father in Baghdad, Al-Kahalili recalled with how he grew up in the 1960s in a proud, progressive city before the family fled in the 1970s as Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime gathered pace.

His story no doubt resonates with many Australians of non-Anglo Saxon descent – there’s a powerful desire to reconnect with the ancient culture and history of his abandoned birthplace.

His professional journey is equally intriguing. Fluent in Arabic and English, he’s taken into the necropolis of ancient Egyptian pharaoh tombs where his guide reveals a surprising historic and cultural connection.

A comparison of ancient Arab texts and Egyptian hieroglyphics inside the tombs reveal that Islamic scholars had cracked the hieroglyphic code in their pursuit of scientific study.

It meant the study of ancient Egypt didn’t begin in the 19th century as popular scientific wisdom would teach but during the latter part of the first century AD. This was a time when Arab scientists ambitiously collected and assimilated knowledge, wisdom and ancient texts from neighbouring cultures.

The city of Baghdad itself became a net importer of mathematical and scientific thinking from Greece, India and Egypt. And amid all this scientific fervor stood influential Arab scientists and physicists like al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham, born in AD 965.

Such a man pre-dated and even rivaled the historic influence of Isaac Newton because of discoveries such as the laws of refraction, Al-Khalili argues.

This was one of his life’s great discoveries for Al-Khalili. As the documentary unfolds, he marvels at Arab scientists who took advantage of the Empire’s power, cultural influence and common Arabic language to synthesise the world’s best ideas.

Greek and Indian mathematical innovations such as the transformation of Roman numerals into the nine numbers and zero we use today were readily embraced. Algebra, algorithms and the metal alkali were born.

The conclusion is that perhaps Western history books are wrong. Scientific advances by men like Ibn al-Haytham challenge conventional thinking that the age of science didn’t begin until the 17th century with the likes of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.

Science and Islam also issues us with another challenge. Arabic scientists sought to expose universal scientific truths regardless of an idea or object’s cultural or religious origin.

It highlights an ongoing struggle in Western medical science – just how much credence should be given to ancient medical therapies from the likes of China, India or the Arab world?

Arab scientists were open to foreign ideas and it inspired creativity and innovation which was ultimately applied to the fields of medicine, war and energy. In contrast, can the same be said for Western science? Are we really open-minded to ancient ideas?

Ironically, we Westerners might not be the only ones wrestling with this question. I remember stumbling across a large public display inside a vast Western-style shopping centre in Dubai. Pictured were great Arab explorers, scientists and astronomers beside examples of their early maps and crude navigation instruments.

It struck me that progress, regardless of its cultural context, can’t be made at the expense of a good history lesson.

A new season brings more headaches

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:54:23 +1100

The virtual world has given this football tragic the opportunity to steer his beloved Vitoria de Setubal to glory in Portugal... however, things don't always go to plan in management.

The board is disappointed that Vitoria de Setubal is currently on course to stay clear of relegation. Disappointed?

They’re disappointed after giving the manager a transfer budget of zilch and a wage budget of little more?

Well, I think the board need a reality check because the gaffer is undertaking one of the hardest jobs in Football Manager.

And yes the manager in question is me.

It’s one of the worst teams I’ve ever taken charge of. Every week, the coaching staff remind me that the opposition has a technical advantage, a skill advantage, a dribbling advantage... every game it’s the same thing, dismiss, dismiss.

But this delusional board still thinks Setubal should achieve a safe mid-table position…

But my first job in a new Football Manager must always be Vitoria, a tradition dating back to the first time the Portuguese league was added.

If I started with Porto or Belenenses, I’d be betraying my own unshakable loyalty to the club that is currently broke and struggling to stay afloat. Besides I always think I can do better.

Even in the virtual world, I can never do anything with them and I rarely fulfil the objectives.

Perhaps I get too emotional (could be why Jose Mourinho has never coached his hometown club). Screaming and yelling at the computer is always a feature upon the release of the new game… and after the euphoria of the new purchase has worn off.

Or maybe it’s because I always use Vitoria first.

A new game always brings new features and, of course, the latest squad lists and a whole new bunch of bargains.

The Boxing Day sales in the real world have nothing on the euphoria of scoring unrecognised talent, my latest favourite being centre-back Lamine Traore who I nabbed on a Bosman.

It has taken a while to adjust to the new format of 2010. I have learnt to love the white background; it does make things easier to read. And the new home screen is great too, the essential information all there in front of you.

And hooray for some new responses in the press conferences, the old ones were getting rather stale.

But why does the journalist from the Setubal Times hate me so much? I always attend the press conferences.

I’m not impressed with the new tactical setup, though. I do like some of the features like the philosophy setting; I find it very hard to click away from balanced or rigid with this set of panel beaters. The player role instruction is also good, although I did like the old directional arrows to give them more guidance.

The passing style is the most disappointing though. Only three options? At least give us more in the advanced mode, surely.

And why can’t it stay on advanced mode once I click on it? That bugs almost as much as my team giving possession away in dangerous areas. I said take fewer risks you idiots!

The season is quickly turning into a disaster. Only one win out of the last 11 and we’re only one point away from the drop zone.

The real frustrating thing is that the tactics are working. We counter quickly but the strikers are so bad they miss way too many clear chances.

Fortunately we’re through to the quarter-finals of the Cup, could well save the season.

It’s only January but I’m already looking towards next season. If I survive.

A game that takes aim at bigger screens

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:37:36 +1100

Indiana Jones, eat your heart out.

For decades, video game makers have suffered in the inevitable comparison with their Hollywood counterparts. For all the creative and technical wizardry associated with gaming, movies have had the interactive world just plain beat when it comes to sophistication of scope, characterization and visual storytelling. Not anymore. "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves" is a major step forward for gaming. It's perhaps the best-looking game on any system, and no game yet has provided a more genuinely cinematic entertainment experience. Characters account and respond to every piece of geometry. Reviews have been more than kind with accolades like "plants sway as characters brush past them, reflections in the water dip and sway with the ripples, and Drake actually looks wet when he gets out of it". Gee, what more can you ask for?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/arts/television/07uncharted.html
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-hd-uncharted-drakes/28089

Misty eyes for World Cup play-offs

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +1100

The last nine teams to qualify for the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be decided over the next week, but Australia won't be one of them.

These days, November is such an empty month.

There used to be a time when this part of the year, every four years or so, would bring hopes, dreams, and drama.

Only to have them clinically crushed the following day.

But since Australia's path to the FIFA World Cup now takes us through a sophisticated, controversy- and emotion-free qualification campaign through Asia?

Nothing.

Just smug satisfaction and the chance to tell Brazilian, Italian, and English friends that this year my boys were SECOND to qualify for South Africa.

(Whether the Socceroos will be first or second home, though, may be for discussion another time…)

Ah, for 2001, crammed into the Estadio Monumental in Montevideo watching Dario Silva take just 14 minutes to cancel out Australia's 1-0 lead from Melbourne and puncture dreams of Australia playing Japan and Korea.

These were the days when Frank Farina was apparently destined for Italy to coach a Serie A club (or was it Japan?) and Tony Vidmar was, like many fans, driven to tears.

I'm not even going to discuss what it was like to be at the MCG in 1997 except to say that, 12 years later, it all still feels like a very bad dream.

Then there was 1993, when a bunch of try-hards from the National Soccer League and another bunch of Aussie try-hards playing in Holland and France (take that A-League and Premier League stars), missed out on USA '94 thanks to Diego Maradona and a gust of wind.

I remain blood brothers with the fellow Australians I watched the second-leg of that match with in an East End London pub in the middle of the night.

We consoled ourselves locked behind closed doors.

In 1989, Australia lost to NEW ZEALAND in Auckland, in front of just over 3000 spectators. It was April, so maybe it doesn't count.

Here's Paul Wade discussing the "hell hole" that is Auckland (from SBS):

These days, however, its others who face a play-off palaver.

The Kiwis are now involved in an almighty tussle with Bahrain to discover who will be the worst team in South Africa.

Uruguay takes part in its third(!) consecutive Finals play-off – this time against Costa Rica.

In Europe, thanks to FIFA's make-it-up-as-we-go-along seeding system, the big guns are in box seats.

But France, or at least Raymond Domenech, could implode against Ireland;

Guus Hiddink's Russia should get past Slovenia;

Portugal, even without Cristiano Ronaldo, should beat Bosnia and Herzegovina (both of them) while Greece-Ukraine appears the tightest match-up.

Kind of makes me all misty-eyed.

:: For those that know about these things, follow me on Twitter here

The Circus - November 12

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:30:00 +1100

Brazilians are not in fashion in Manchester, Schumacher's old car for sale, and more USA footbrawls. It's all in The Circus.

The full Brazilian
Look, it may not be Rio de Janeiro, but can Manchester be all that bad? One place has beaches, gorgeous girls cavorting about in dental-floss bikinis and the 2016 Olympics; the other has a network of dank canals, Ena Sharples and Man City. Seems a fair swap, but cranky Brazilian footballer Robinho apparently has decided he doesn't want to spend "another day in Manchester" and his City career looks like going bosoms up.

Robinho came to Eastlands 14 months ago, clearly lured by something other than the charms of Manchester's gentrified inner city… maybe it was the 160,000 shiny English pounds in non-consecutive notes slipped into his pocket each week? Well, regardless of the tidy wedge stuffed into his mattress every Thursday, Robinho wants out.

Well, what choice does he have? City has disposed itself of all his Brazilian buddies – Elano to Turkey, Jo on loan to Everton, someone called Glauber Berti to somewhere or other – and, by the by, the weather's crap. Plus, apparently they speak English in England, which neither he nor Mrs Robinho cares to learn.

To top it all off, he has already been forced to move house because neighbours were peeved over the constant playing of Brazilian music, the cheerful Mancunians clearly preferring to contemplate self-harm while listening to Joy Division than doing the samba and drinking caipirinhas to The Girl from Ipanema.

Buy and sell
For sale: 1994 Ford. Only one owner. Low miles. Economical 3.5-litre engine. Slightly gaudy paint job. Engine overhauled. Lots of spare parts, including two sets of wheels. Laptop computer thrown in. Only been in one minor collision when last driven in Adelaide on a Sunday. Import duty and VAT paid by the seller. Offers around 2.6 million euros.

Bats in their belfry
Toyota has announced its departure from Formula 1, ostensibly to concentrate on its core business, which presumably is shifting motor vehicles. Frankly, after seeing Toyota's proposed design for its 2010 racing car we're not surprised they bailed out.

Curling a mo
The Movember concept is a great thing, a fund-raiser for prostate cancer research that has the welcome side effect of giving us a chance to laugh at the efforts of various Fox Sports presenters who look like particularly feeble caterpillars have died on their top lips. Lee Furlong, we're not talking about you.

For us, Merv Hughes, part-time Australian cricket selector and pay-TV virgin, offers the ultimate in sporting moustaches, but baseball fans have their own nominations for the best 'taches in baseball history – so good are they, that they had to present them as part one and part two.

Going the biff
You may have seen the video of Elizabeth Lambert's excellent work in a recent football match for her team, the University of New Mexico Lobos, against the BYU Cougars. Given that the Cougars were probably a bunch of middle-aged women preying on fit young fellas, they no doubt got what they deserved.

But come on, Liz. High school girls could do better. Socket, indeed.

The numbers game
40 – lashes Sudan-based Nigerian footballer Stephen Worgu will face after being found guilty of drinking alcohol
2.7 billion – amount in British pounds by which public spending on the 2012 London Olympics has exceeded the promised limit
9.325 million – the promised limit

Quote of the day
"He wouldn't try and con the ref. He's a lad with very good education, correct and polite. Maybe he fell down because he was worried about being injured. At times players make very hard challenges in England. They allow a lot of things to defenders in the Premier League. Sometimes there are challenges that can assassinate you. A defender could get five matches for throwing his shirt and the player who broke the leg of Eduardo only had a three-game suspension. Did the defender put the safety of the player in danger? You have to look at things in a more reasonable proportion."
- Liverpool striker David Ngog's agent, allegedly named Bruno Satin, stretches credulity beyond all reasonable measure in defending his client's penalty-winning dive… sorry, "simulation".

Headline we'd like to read
Robinho changes name to Robinhood, joins Nottingham Forest

:: More of The Circus

Venezuela

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Stefan Gates travelled to Venezuela to find out if food was being used as a political tool, but instead gained an unexpected insight into the newly elected president's love life.

Day 1
We arrived in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, a couple of days after the presidential elections. Venezuela is ruled by the popular but increasingly autocratic president Hugo Chavez, a thorn in the side of President Bush (whom Chavez loves to bait despite the fact that the US is one of Venezuela’s biggest customers for its main source of income: oil). Venezuela is the world’s fifth largest exporter of oil.

I got quite a shock when I went to fill up our van with petrol. It cost about AUS$ 5.70... for the whole tank. As well as selling cheap petrol, Chavez has managed to use billions of pounds of oil revenue to fund his populist social programmes such as land redistribution and food subsidies. The trouble is, history has shown that although these ideas are great for hovering up votes, they can be disastrous in the long term. I had come to Venezuela to find out if food was being used as a political tool, and whether or not Chavez was as boring in real life as I’d been told.

Day 2
Somehow I managed to blag my way into Chavez’s victory press conference. Not bad for a food writer way out of his depth. They invited the press to submit questions for him, so I wrote my ‘are you using food as a political tool?’ question on a scrap of paper and dropped it into the hat. I was told that the questions would be picked at random, but that in Venezuela, random doesn’t have the same meaning as in the rest of the world.

Chavez arrives, thoroughly chuffed with himself as befits a presidential winner. Then he proceeds to talk relatively incoherently for hours and hours, rambling about how good a lover he is, how his socialist revolution is doing so well, about agrarian reform in Medieval Russia and his brother’s singing. There’s quite a lot about his brother’s singing. I am asleep after the first few hours, and I eventually join the slow stream of journalists packing up and leaving. Ye Gods, that man can talk.

That night my cameraman and I went for a bite to eat. Suddenly a cacophonous riot unfolded on the street below us, complete with marauding policemen, loud gunfire and screaming women. I looked over the balcony and got caught by a vast cloud of teargas. Jesus, this stuff is painful. We had the camera with us so we ventured out to talk to the 100 or so people who were attacked. They said they were sleeping rough outside the housing office because they were homeless, but there’s a foreign dignitary due to pass through tomorrow, so they were being wiped away like shit off a shoe. The riot police at the other end of the street spotted us and looked like they were gathering to fetch us, so we snuckk into the nearest hotel and disappeared.

Day 4
I woke up with a teargas hangover. You really don’t want one of these. I visited the slum areas to take a look at a soup kitchen, part of Chavez’s social program. The people here were avid Chavez supporters, declaring their love and commitment to him. They are amongst the 2 million of Caracas’s poor living in violent barrios. You could say that soup kitchens are cheap vote-buying ploys, but hell, they are feeding the poor, the unemployed and the disenfranchised.

Day 5
On the other side of the city was the Caracas Golf Club, an oasis of calm and wealth. Here, people hated Chavez as a S.O.B. who spends other people’s money on anything that will make him reelected. The new Fidel Castro, they call him.

Day 6
Back in the barrios again, and I visited a Mercal – a subsidized food shop. There was a huge queue outside as people had heard that milk had arrived. The country had a huge shortage of sugar and milk, which seemed odd when there is so much oil cash to buy it, and so much land to grow it on. Lots of people in the queue grumbled that during the election there was loads of food, but now they were over, everything was scarce again.

Day 9
I travelled out to the countryside to visit one of the big landowners that Chavez rails against. These huge ranches are mainly for cattle, and the owners claim that the land is too alkaline to be arable. Chavez wants to redistribute the land to the poor in the form of cooperatives. I rode out with the cowboys, bouncing around on top of a galloping horse with all the grace of a mating rhino. Eventually the owner turned up in his private plane, and told me that around 5000 people had invaded parts of his land over the last 5 years, with the support of Chavez. He claimed that not a kilo of food had been grown on any of it. He felt that Venezuela would end up like Zimbabwe, with the land being handed out to people who had no ability to use it. I understood his anger, but even so, the gap between rich and poor felt pretty extreme, and that contrast always enrages people.

Day 11
On my last day, I finally visited one of the co-operative farms that had been set up on land seized from the big landowners. The men and women who’d seized the land were warm and friendly, poor and deserving. And the landowner was right: they’d been there for five years and they hadn’t grown a thing. They squatted in a ramshackle hut open to the elements, they couldn’t leave the land in case someone else claimed it, but they didn’t have the tools to farm it, and because it was a “cooperative”, they wouldn’t own it anyway. They were confident that in the future Chavez would find a way to help them, and as long as they kept on voting for him then one day, one wonderful day, they would farm their own land and share in the wealth of the nation.

Favourite Terrible Radio Moments: Part 2 - Fake Lula

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:02:18 +1100

SBS Portuguese EP Beatriz Wagner - and now we discovered also the SBS Sports stringer in Brazil, Luciano Borges - are legends in many ways. But the fact she uncovered the fake Lula bruhaha, scoring international coverage for SBS Radio, is my favourite - and another wonderfully terrible Radio moment. Not on SBS - on all those stations who unwittingly interviewed the pranksters from Brazil as President Lula.Check out the story here.

Poll's deterrent for diving is still not enough

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:00:00 +1100

Cheating players can be fined and suspended as much as they like. It's the points that count, writes Jesse Fink.

So the spectre of diving has raised its ugly head again, this time with David Ngog's "embarrassing case of cheating" for Liverpool against Birmingham in the Premier League.

If you haven't seen it, it was a dive worthy of a stunt double in a Michael Bay blockbuster and made infinitely more painful for Birmingham because the resulting penalty decision went against Lee Carsley, who'd come sliding in but made no contact, and got Liverpool another draw.

From the video replay it's clear as day that Carsley is an innocent man and Ngog should be sent to Louisiana State Penitentiary and made to work on a chain gang.

But Carsley's vindication and Ngog's shame isn't going to change the result.

Graham Poll, the former referee whom Australians know well for his inability to count yellow cards and a sometime Fox Sports guest, has suggested an interesting solution to the problem of diving in European football: ask the players directly if they dived.

It's similar to an initiative tried in the Bundesliga where, if there was a suggestion of handball in the scoring of a dubious goal, the referee would ask the player concerned if he touched the ball or not.

If he said yes, no problem – the goal was disallowed and a free kick was given. If he said no, the goal stood. But once the veracity of that "no" was then checked against the video replay and the handball and lie became obvious, the offending player would be slugged with a three-match fine.

Poll goes on to recommend a similar sanction for diving, but upping it to five matches.

All well and good, but I would go further. A five match-ban plus the forfeiting of any points gained by the player's side at the end of the match.

The problem with just banning a player for his dishonesty is the big clubs – Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham, Manchester City, Arsenal – have such deep bank accounts (or overdrafts) that losing a player for three, even five weeks is not a major calamity. They can easily be replaced by someone just as good, if not better.

Look at the benches for Chelsea and Manchester United on the weekend. Ferreira, Hilario, Cole, Alex, Kalou, Mikel, Malouda for Chelsea. Kuszczak, Owen, Scholes, Gibson, Da Silva, Obertan, Vidic for United.

The combined market value of those 14 players would roughly approximate to the GDP of a small African state.

So the incentive to dive for a Liverpool player is far greater than, say, a first-team player for Portsmouth or Wolverhampton, whose club needs him to be fit and available virtually every game of the season just to survive relegation.

Hence the Poll idea, though well intentioned, would only serve to advantage the rich clubs who can afford as much depth as they like on their benches.

The only punitive measure, unfortunately, that will deter all clubs, both big and small, is to lose points. Points are the currency by which clubs qualify for regional competitions or avoid relegation.

Every point is potentially worth millions when quantified. Clubs live and die by them.

It's time to come down hard on divers. Diving is as bad as it's ever been. Cards don't work. Suspensions don't work. The rewards for diving outweigh the penalties.

Docking points, however, will get players and managers thinking twice.

If their attitudes can change, diving might disappear from the game quicker than we thought.

:: For more Fink musings on the big issues in football, check out Half-time Orange on The World Game.

The 'A' word

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:17:46 +1100

Here’s how to get a law, or at least a bill, passed by politicians: make them work on a Saturday night.

Oh, no. They’ve used the ‘A’ word.

Here’s how to get a law, or at least a bill, passed by politicians: make them work on a Saturday night, as President Obama encouraged last weekend, and tell them they’re not going home until this is DONE.

Result? The House of Representatives passed a health care reform bill by 220 votes to 215.
(Note: ‘a’ health care reform bill not ‘the’ health care reform bill).

Oh, but what’s this?

Earlier the same evening, the same House – under pressure from anti-abortion Democrats and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops – passed an amendment to the bill prohibiting federal funds for (here it comes…) abortion.

There’s more. Any women eligible for government tax credits for health insurance will be prevented from using that money to enroll in any private insurance plan that covers abortion.

The amendment has been the number one health care talking point since Saturday’s vote (if you ignore the bizarre display by Rep. John Shadegg who brought an eight-month old baby by the name of Maddy into the House claiming she “believes in freedom and doesn’t want the government to take over health care”).

Democrat Bart Stupak and Republican Joe Pitts, who belong to a secretive fundamentalist Christian group called ‘The Family’, cooked up the latest plan.

The politicians share a townhouse run by The Family with other Christian conservative politicians in Washington DC.

Unsurprisingly, the so-called “Stupak amendment” has opened a box full of contradictions.

The influential (at least, among conservatives) Catholic bishops claim to want universal healthcare for all but, equally, seemingly want to restrict what care women can receive.

Democrat opponents of the amendment (and there are many) but supporters of reform say they will not support any healthcare bill that contains such a clause.

That’s before we get to right-wingers demanding no government role in health care but then supporting a bill in which the government does exactly that.

The bill does allow for what’s called an abortion “rider”, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious.

Stupak claims the rider allows women to purchase extra, stand-alone insurance to cover abortion services.

Just in case, ladies, you are in the unenviable position of having to make a choice you never planned on making nor wanted to make.

As for those on low incomes, well, you’re on your own.

“I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill,” said President Obama after Saturday’s vote.

Then again, none of this may matter at all.

Some senators claim the House of Reps health care bill is “dead on arrival” in the Senate.
What?

The Senate will draw up its own bill, tack on some material from the House, and send it off to Obama to sign into law.

So all of this could have been a total waste of time except for fans of procedure.

Meanwhile, as religion and personal beliefs influence what could be historic legislation, there’s still war in Iraq and Afghanistan (brought upon by religion, some would argue) and no let up on unemployment figures.

And so it goes.

Extra reading:

More On The Family

The Stupak Amendment in brief

The New York Times is not happy

A conservative lobby group “warns” healthcare reform could turn the US into, um, Canada

The EPL Compass

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:25:00 +1100

A blockbuster that broke the gridlock at the top, some relief on Humberside, and another diving saga for the holier than thou to be up in arms about.

A blockbuster that broke the gridlock at the top, some relief on Humberside, and another diving saga for the holier than thou to be up in arms about.

Heading North

Arsenal

As it stands, the best team to watch in Europe. They may still end up with nothing, but my God they are capable of putting on spells of utter brilliance. They are in the title race up to their necks. The big question is, can they beat Chelsea and Man United?

Chelsea

In the lead up to the game the headlines in England screamed “Will Chelsea win the league on Sunday?”. It’s not quite that simple but they have made themselves the front runner after a match that didn’t quite live up to the hype. It was engrossing, in a heavyweight title fight kind of way. No electricity, just two big guns taking guarded potshots; neither side able to let their guard down enough . The Blues deserved the win, just, and it was a wafer thin margin, but once again refereeing overshadowed the match.

John Terry

A great end, with the winning goal at the Bridge, to a tough week for the Chelsea skipper. His dad has been involved in a drug dealing scandal hot on the heels of his mum’s shoplifting last year.

Tottenham’s second goal

Exhilarating stuff from Spurs to kill off a Sunderland side who really deserved better.

Tom Huddlestone

The scorer of the aforementioned goal in front of Don Fabio. Fast forward twenty four hours and The Incredible Hudd is off to Qatar with England to face Brazil.

Spurs Crowd

Greeted Darren Bent’s missed penalty with a chorus of “Sandra, what’s the score?”. Reckon ‘Arry had a little smile. Nowhere else in the world...

Graham Alexander

A legend at Burnley, the oldest out-field player in the Premier League (I think), and rapidly becoming a cult hero. Opened the scoring at Man City hot on the heels of his exploits last week, The Scot epitomises everything that is good about Burnley, and what is missing around the Premier League. Deserved to be on the winning side, and his club showed that they are not afraid of anyone and belong in the top flight. Going very nicely.

Steven Gerrard

Cometh the hour etc etc. The only ray of light in a dark fortnight on Merseyside. Back from injury and salvaged a point through a penalty (more on that later). And Don Fabio is giving him a break. Nice work if you can get it.

The Villa

Put a funny couple of weeks behind them in emphatic style. Five different goalscorers and a great response after going winless since their upset of Chelsea. Given the form of the teams around them, Aston Villa are a live contender for fourth along with Spurs, City and Liverpool.

Big Sam

At one down after the first half at Ewood, Blackburn Rovers were staring down the barrel of a demoralising defeat to Pompey. At the final whistle Allardyce had seen his team command the second half, and run out winners. Set pieces were crcuial, a Big Sam specialty, but it was the half time introduction of Benni McCarthy that was key. Changed the game.

Louis Saha

Stunning finish. I’ve said it before this season, but if he could string some performances (or even appearances) together, he could be anything. Big, big win for the Toffees and for Lucas Neill, booed mercilessly by the Upton Park crowd when introduced in the second half.

Hull City

The win that may just keep Mr Brown in a job. Much to the chagrin of this correspondent.

Going South

David N’Gog

Maybe you should be heading north, but I was appalled. Blatant and a blight on our game. The sooner they seriously look at retrospective video analysis the better. Let’s see how three games in the stands for simulation would affect Liverpool during a injury crisis. A shocker.

Match officials

Welcome back to the compass. You had a week off, despite nine red cards and the Cana/Jones fiasco, but you’re back. Maybe harsh on everyone but when the high profile game is marred yet again (step forward Martin Atkinson), questions should be asked. The Evans attack on Drogba should’ve been punished, Cole wasn’t fouled, and Drogba obstructed Brown at the very least. Let the debate begin. Fast forward twenty four hours, and David N’Gog takes his tumble. Now, if it’s obvious enough to run on Channel Nine, then you know the decision was wrong. It cost Birmingham a win, and maybe kept Rafa afloat.

Manchester Unted

So after weeks of under- performing but getting the points (in the main) United produce something akin to their best, with an under strength team and get beaten. Perplexing season so far for Sir Alex, who will of course hide behind the refereeing, but must be a little troubled by Chelsea’s form and the sight of a swaggering Arsenal on the horizon.

Bolton

Awful, awful, awful. All the pre-match noises were off the ex-Villa duo of Cahill and Knight proving a point, but at the final whistle Bolton had conceded five for the second consecutive week.

Manchester City

They’ve avoided the wrath of The Compass the past month, despite some average form, but no longer. Since the epic derby clash, they’ve played five times against teams below them and drawn every time. Five points from fifteen. It’s no exaggeration to say that they could, and given their team maybe should, be top of the league. Mark Hughes is meeting the club's owners this week and there may be some uncomfortable moments.

Wayne Bridge

A day to forget against Burnley. The move to Manchester isn’t quite working out, and Stephen Warnock’s England call is a massive wake up call.

Chow Mein: The Australian Classic

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:24:16 +1100

How did chow mein become a uniquely Australian food?

Chow mein in Australia is a monotonal mush that you would cook with the express purpose of annoying the convalescent. It looks terrible and most of the components – rice, cabbage, celery, carrot, onions – are cooked to a nigh on uniform texture. If anything retains the last vestiges of their original consistency then the chow mein requires more boiling. The other key ingredients, a packet of chicken noodle soup, Keen's brand curry powder and light soy sauce, provide the MSG umaminess and salt hit that makes the dish worthwhile. This is not the chow mein that the rest of the world eats but is nonetheless, delicious.

Australian chow mein bears currently no resemblance whatsoever to American or Chinese chow mein. Crispy, deep-fried noodles in a starchy sauce are the dominant elements of both the US and Southern Chinese styles; noodles only appear in the Australian version as a corollary of chicken noodle soup rather than as a main carbohydrate. In the US, chow mein remains available in restaurants where in Australia, it is primarily a home-cooked food.

So how did chow mein become a uniquely Australian food that is also of Asian origin, like the Australian dim sim or Chiko rolls?

My original theory was that chow mein in Australia was like chop suey – a dish that was imported with Chinese and American miners (from America, where it was popularised) some time during the late 1880s and early 1890s - but survived in Australia where chop suey failed. Writing in The Argus on 21 September 1929, John Owen writes of a mythical visitor to Melbourne "down from the country for a week’s holiday, and determined in that week to see the best that the city has to offer". Amongst the restaurant recommendations, Owen suggests:

The next two nights he spends paying visits to some of the Chinese and Continental restaurants in the neighbourhood of Russell and Bourke Streets. Here, for a small sum, he procures strange Chinese foods, probably choosing one of the two well known dishes, chicken chop suey or chicken chow mein

It appears that by the late 1920s, chow mein was a well established dish in Australia; that it was mentioned in the same breath as chop suey suggests that it was held in equal esteem and possibly, the only other well known Chinese dish in Australia. At some point in the 1940-1950s, Chinese restaurants in Australia stopped cooking chop suey and chow mein. Today it is a very rare restaurant that serves either or both as a part of their menu but chow mein has lived on in Australian home kitchens.

My only theory is that chow mein was reintroduced in Australia with the Margaret Fulton-spurred wave of Chinese home cooking in Australia in the late 1950s and 1960s. Possibly, the addition of chicken noodle soup happened as a suggestion by a chicken noodle soup manufacturer (the brand Continental manufactures a "Chow Mein Mince" recipe base in Australia and New Zealand) or as a recipe in a popular women's magazine. The mix of mirepoix and cheap cabbage, mince and packet food smells like vintage Women's Weekly.

Does anyone have a less apocryphal Australian chow mein history?

Pressure is on France and Portugal

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:31:00 +1100

Big guns France and Portugal must be wondering how on earth has their 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign come down to this: the lottery of a playoff.

Big guns France and Portugal must be wondering how on earth has their 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign come down to this: the lottery of a playoff.

They actually should consider themselves rather lucky because they both hardly deserve to be still in with a chance of reaching South Africa after a disappointing qualification performance.

France, who lost the last World Cup final to Italy on penalties, now must beat Republic of Ireland in a home-and-away playoff in the next eight days to book their ticket to the Rainbow Nation.

Portugal have a slightly easier task against Bosnia-Herzegovina but they will have to do it without Cristiano Ronaldo, who is still hampered by an ankle injury that just won’t go away.

These two intriguing ties are among four home-and-away playoffs that will determine the last four European spots in the World Cup.

The others are Russia v Slovenia and Greece v Ukraine.

Common sense would suggest that the French, Portuguese, Russians and Greeks should have an edge in class and expertise over their less experienced opponents but football has never been logical.

Who knows what Ireland’s old fox Giovanni Trapattoni might have in store for the nervous French when the two teams clash in Dublin on Sunday morning?

Who knows if the Portuguese can handle the considerable pressure of expectation to beat the Bosnians without their star player?

Who knows if the inconsistent Russians can overcome tricky Slovenia, who really should have won their group after beating direct qualifiers Slovakia home and away?

And who knows if the Greeks can keep their heads against Ukraine, who are poor travellers but usually lift their game considerably when they play in their intimidating home grounds?

The ties are so tight that they are expected to go right down to the wire in the return legs Thursday week.

Much closer to home, Oceania champions New Zealand will attempt to reach the finals for the second time in their history when they face Asia’s last survivors Bahrain in Wellington on Saturday night.

The Kiwis did particularly well to come away with a 0-0 draw in the first leg in Manama and are nicely placed to cause an upset.

The vast majority of Australians would want Ricki Herbert’s All Whites to join the Socceroos in a historic ‘Anzac alliance’ in a World Cup.

Another intercontinental playoff sees Costa Rica take on old war horses Uruguay.

The Costa Ricans, who have omitted Melbourne Victory wizard Carlos Hernandez, are at home in San Jose in the first leg and would want to go to the dreaded Centenario stadium in Montevideo with the cushion of at least a one-goal advantage.

There are also three places up for grabs in Africa when its long and arduous round-robin finally comes to an end at the weekend. Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire have already qualified.

Cameroon’s ‘Indomitable Lions’ would reach the finals if they win in Morocco while Gabon, who are only a point behind them, are hoping for a slip-up and a win for themselves in Togo.

Tunisia, the ‘Eagles of Carthage’, would qualify if they win in Mozambique while Nigeria, who are two points behind them, must beat Kenya in Nairobi and hope for some good tidings from the other match in Maputo.

African champions Egypt, who did well in the Confederations Cup in June, face Algeria in Cairo. The ‘Pharoahs’ are three points behind the Algerians and must win by three clear goals to qualify.

Hang on to your hats folks, it's going to be a fascinating week of fotball across the globe.

Qualified teams for the 2010 World Cup

Africa: Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana.

Asia: Australia, Japan, Korea Republic, Korea DPR.

Europe: Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland.

North and Central America: Honduras, Mexico, United States.

South America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay.

The Circus - November 11

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:00:00 +1100

Marat Safin urges Andre Agassi to return his titles and prizemoney, and we see a contortionist shoot arrows. It's all in The Circus.

Shut up Andre
The Circus will sure miss the refreshing honesty of hulking tennis star Marat Safin who is due to retire from the game soon.

His candour on any number of issues from entourage selection to the Middle East peace process is always appreciated and in typical fashion big Marat has sounded off on Andre Agassi.

The Gas-man has been making a lot of noise about his wig use – oh and a bit of crystal meth as well – lately as he tries to drum up interest in his autobiography.

Safin's reply to all the hoo-ha? Just give your titles and all your prize money back if it means that much to you, dude.

Say what?
Imagine a world where you can insult your boss, broadcast gay slurs globally … and get rewarded for it.

That's just the scenario that faces The Circus' favourite malcontent Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson.

Johnson, you might recall, was suspended by the Chiefs a week or so back after he took a very public swipe at coach Todd Haley via his Twitter account and then backed it up with an unsavoury outburst at reporters and fans.

Well, the big wigs at KC have had enough and kicked him to the curb, but the street will likely be paved with gold.

Johnson will still get $2.275 million from the Chiefs, who are going nowhere this season, while he gets to chase a fat contract elsewhere with a team in a position to make a run at the championship.

Can I get an AMEN!!!
Chicago Bears linebacker Lance Briggs does a great job firing up his teammates ahead of each game, but perhaps he should bring his motivational speeches down just a notch.

Just four plays into the Bears' crunch match against the visiting Arizona Cardinals last weekend, Briggs' teammate, defensive end Tommie Harris, let fly with an unprovoked punch to the head of Cards' offensive lineman Deuce Lutui.

Seems our man Tommie was so het up by the pre-match address the fact that Lutui was wearing a helmet completely escaped him.

The Circus isn't going to make any value judgements on the bravery of the act – Harris had his unsuspecting opponent pinned under him at the time – but we must sternly question his logic.

At least he had the manners to apologise for the king hit that saw him ejected from the game.

Interesting…
It seems contortionist Lilia Stepanova is making quite a name for herself on the American sports scene.

The erstwhile Moldovan is in big demand on the NBA half-time entertainment circuit thanks to her mind-boggling archery skills which have also seen her make an appearance on late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Stepanova apparently gave up a promising gymnastics career to chase the bright lights and fame. The Circus is happy with her choice, but you can make up your own mind:

The numbers game
156,113 – NBA fans to have watched Lilia Stepanova's half-time act
1248 – number of arrows Stepanova has launched
29 – the number of times she's missed
0 – number of male fans who noticed she missed

Quote of the day
"Me, I don't need money. The question is: Why did he do this? What is done is done. Does he hope to sell more books? It's absolutely stupid."
- Marat Safin on some shocking claims made by Andre Agassi who has a tell-all book out soon.

Headline we'd like to see
Safin plans US Congress run

:: More of The Circus