Archive for the 'Sport' Category

A waste of energy on an Olympian scale

Topic: Art and culture, Education, General, Media, Society, Sport, television

Ten thousand automatons, more thousands of fireworks, and billions glued to their screens at ungodly hours of the night. What is there to show for for the counterfeit Beijing Olympics?
Jesse Owens, 1936 Olympics champion. Black man beats a white supremacist systemA vast undemocratic nation, covered in smog and fumes, countless millions of viewers concentrating on [...]

Where nobody wins, so that everyone will lose…

Topic: Education, Society, Sport

“If we want to do better at sport, we should stop blaming foreigners, and we should now launch a merciless Kulturkampf against every feature of modern New Zealand society that is inimical to our competitive success. We should summon up our courage and tell our ballooning children to put down their beastly PlayStations and go [...]

The Great All Black Whitewash

Topic: Sport

The $130,000 so-called “independent” review of the All Blacks’ forgettable, worst rugby World Cup showing in history has finally been released, after nearly five months in the making. It is virtually worthless.
But the reviewers and NZRU would urge: fans, you must please believe that it was worth $130,000, because this inquest was written by highly [...]

When no one may be beaten, everyone loses

Topic: Education, Law and order, Politics, Society, Sport

Once upon a time, errant school children lived in fear of the cane. It was rarely applied, but the threat was enough to keep them under control, in class. Once upon a time, at school, the emphasis was on competition, aspiration and hard-earned success. Once upon a time, anyone who disrupted the class was scorned [...]

Batsman’s mean streak thwarts naked ambition

Topic: Humour, Law and order, Sport

Congratulations to Australian cricket all-rounder Andrew Symonds who, in the 10th over against India at the Gabba, showed he is more than just a handy man with bat and ball.
When a male streaker invaded the pitch, Symonds shouldered him so hard that it flung the intruder airborne before he was floored and nabbed by security [...]

Soccer World Cup 2010 promises great balls of fire!

Topic: Humour, Sport

South Africa, plagued by power black-outs, is taking unusual measures to ensure maximum excitement during the Soccer World Cup tournament in 2010, according to GoG’s football correspondent.
Armies of mud-laden labourers toil day and night to create the new stadium, but project foreman Punishment Lumumba admits that it will be impossible to solve problems with South [...]

What’s next? An Olympic mobility scooter race?

Topic: Humour, Sport

Former double gold medal-winning equestrian Mark Todd (51) is coming out of eight years’ retirement to hopefully compete at his sixth Olympic Games and try for a third gold, in Beijing.
Todd, who previously won gold aboard Charisma at the 1984 Los Angeles Games and then again at Seoul four years later, will return to competition [...]

It’s just not cricket, but at least we win

Topic: Humour, Politics, Satire, Society, Sport

What an inspirational idea from NZ Cricket to invite the Bangladesh Easy Beats cricket team here for the summer.
After our losing streak in the Americas yachting cup, World Cup Rugby, Cricket, Rugby League and every other ball game worth playing (including golf - where Michael Campbell doesn’t do for NZ what tennis-player Tim Henman [...]

Merry Christmas, and a grumpy New Year

Topic: Advertising, Consumer, Education, Environment, Health, Law and order, Media, Politics, Society, Sport, Your money

Farewell and good riddance to 2007, when politicians broke many of their own laws, rewrote others to wipe out past offences, but occasionally got caught and convicted, too. Farewell to a year of widespread silliness, where hardly a day passed without some new travesty or foul-up for us to complain about. Long may this stupidity [...]

The lights go out on a World Cup hope…

Topic: Humour, Sport

Anyone who believes that New Zealand is the premier rugby-mad nation should read on. It’s from our UK-based sports correspondent Pat Young, whose husband, readers may recall, was trapped in an Angolan airport with no telly during the France-England semi…
Hubby was at home for the final on Saturday, so we thought we were safe. But [...]