It has been a long weekend for most in Australia, and there has been plenty of sport for fans to enjoy during their extended time off.
In football it is the start of a big period for the Socceroos.
After a key victory over Saudi Arabia in World Cup qualifying, they have spent the weekend in Melbourne preparing for Tuesday night's friendly against Brazil.
And after that, they depart for Russia and Confederations Cup matches against, at the least, Germany, Chile and Cameroon.
That is a lot of big footballing nations for a team to have to play.
Socceroos midfielder Jackson Irvine says the key to eventually joining the major players of world football lies in the mind.
"You know, we're not little Australia competing against these nations. We need to believe that we're capable of competing at this level if we ever want to become a world-class nation."
The world's big cricket nations are in Britain at the moment, fighting it out for the Champions Trophy.
But Australia is no longer among them.
A frustrating, rain-drenched tournament for the Australians came to an end over the weekend at the hands of their old enemy, England.
Big batting efforts from England captain Eoin Morgan and star all-rounder Ben Stokes made sure the side scored enough runs to knock out Australia in their clash in Birmingham.
Australian captain Steve Smith admits his team's bowling performance just was not good enough.
"We just didn't turn up the way I would have liked us to after the break. You can't be off when you're bowling to players like that. They're quality players."
And with the players' union in an industrial dispute with Cricket Australia and contracts expiring after this month, no-one knows when Smith and the others will play for Australia again.
What sporting fans do know, though, is the forthcoming weekend will bring the first-ever grand final of the new national netball competition.
The Sunshine Coast Lightning had already won their way through to the historic occasion and will have home-ground advantage.
Now, they have discovered who their visitors will be.
The netballing arm of the Greater Western Sydney Giants has beaten its fraternal AFL team for the honour of first GWS side to make it to a grand final.
GWS defeated the Melbourne Vixens, 65-57, to earn its way through to the grand final.
Giants star Susan Pettitt has told Channel Nine the way her side began the game made a lot of difference.
"We knew we had to get out of the blocks early, because the Vixens, if they're ahead, they just feed off ... confidence. And we knew that, if we could get on top of them early, (we could) silence this crowd, because we know the crowd really makes a difference as well. So, we started well, which is nice!"
As for Pettitt's AFL brothers for GWS, this weekend was not so kind.
The AFL Giants entered the round atop the competition standings only to cede that title back to the Adelaide Crows after a defeat to lowly Carlton.
And in rugby union, Australia got its international schedule for the year underway with a win over Fiji in Melbourne, 37-14.
That was reasonably pleasing.
What was not, though, was the crowd at the match -- fewer than 14,000.
It is another symptom of the malaise currently affecting the sport in Australia.
Australian coach Michael Cheika says the cause of the poor crowd is off-the-field matters but the solution to it lies in on-the-field matters.
"Yeah, it was disappointing. That's what happens when you get into off-field dramas -- on-field gets hurt. What we want to do is play as good a of footy as possible so people love to come and watch the game."
Australia's next on-the-field engagement is against an understrength Scotland side in Sydney next Saturday.
Share
