Sport

Thursday night’s qualifying final at the home of the Fremantle Dockers in front of a packed purple haze is an intimidating venue for Hawthorn to enter.

Watching the NRL experiment with the new kick off rule, while still dealing with the fallout from its expanded six-again interpretation, it is fair to ask whether the game is becoming unnecessarily complicated.

DANE ELDRIDGE: Finding the promised land wouldn’t only reward the club for rescuing the game, it’d go a long way to dispelling its reputation as being known solely for fun and wild mullets.

I enjoyed wildcard round, I’m just not ready to tell you whether I liked it because if you like wildcard as a concept, you have to be prepared to like it when the games aren’t close, writes Georgie Parker.

Spudd Carroll has the utmost respect for the Chooks and the people running the joint, but as an old Rabbitoh it annoys the hell out of him they are blocking the Bunnies’ bid to play fulltime out of Moore Park.

We would question a player who picked and chose the Test series he wanted to play in, so why should assistant coaches such as Daniel Vettori be judged differently?

At Sunday’s Sydney marathon, a cab driver named Dave from Manchester in England will take part in his 96th 42km road race. His proud achievements provide lessons for us all.

MITCHELL JOHNSON: Collapses have always been part of cricket. Sometimes a team simply has a terrible innings. But my concern is what happens if two and three-day Test matches become too common.

KIERSTEN DUKE: There are moments in rugby that feel bigger than the game itself. When the results, the ladder and even the rules themselves suddenly feel insignificant. There’s no doubting this is one of them.

Of course, at some point we’ll need to adapt to life without them, and not just because it’s bordering on elder abuse. 

MARK ‘SPUDD’ CARROLL: Luxury accommodation won’t hide the risk of players’ families losing the everyday freedoms we take for granted in Australia. 

GEORGIE PARKER: At what point do we stop treating these as isolated incidents and ask whether there is something fundamentally wrong with the drinking culture in elite sport?

Nothing compares to taking the new ball in a Test match and feeling everything come together.

More details have emerged from the scandal as Victorian Police prepare to conduct their interviews in Sydney.

KIERSTEN DUKE: There is something wonderfully fitting about State of Origin kicking new goals across the Tasman. This is why.

The Australian attack looked old at times during Bangladesh’s first innings. From the outside, the body language appeared flat and several players looked sore, writes Mitchell Johnson.

‘Dance like no one’s watching. Better still, dance like everyone is and don’t care what they think.’

KIERSTEN DUKE: The Raiders coach had every right to be furious after Corey Horsburgh’s major blunder on Sunday. How he handled that frustration is a different matter.