As Bill Lawry Would Say: ‘It’s All Happening’

Ashton Agar after getting out for 98 in the First Test

So for once, instead of struggling to come up with a topic to write about, this week there has been so much going on that I couldn’t decide which topic to pick. Therefore, as the fence sitter than I am, I figured I’ll just touch on a bit of everything and then reward myself with a weekend away.

To start, let’s talk about the Origin decider. The Queensland streak remains alive after they hung on to win by two and NSW have to wait another year to try to end the drought. Those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook know that I, like many others, think the biggest issue for NSW was halfback Mitchell Pearce.

The only people I have seen defending Pearce have been Roosters fans and even Roosters fans have been divided on it. I am not questioning Pearce’s heart or effort levels. I think he desperately wants to be the best player he can and gave it his all yet again, but he quite simply isn’t good enough. He is a good defender for his position but NSW need a halfback that can create points and that is something Pearce has not done in five years playing for NSW.

His kicking game is below par and he doesn’t have the dynamic passing or running game. He also didn’t take control of the direction of the team, which lead to many plays that looked like they had no plan.

The argument that a halfback needs a forward pack going forward to be able to perform doesn’t hold water here either as the NSW pack won the arm wrestle. NSW had every opportunity to win game 3 as well as getting the better of the forward back for the last two years in general. Pearce may well be a great guy, but he has had more than enough chances and it’s time NSW make the move they should have made before this series. It’s certainly a popular opinion and I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said elsewhere over and over, but enough is enough and it’s time the Pearce experiment ends. He just isn’t that good.

Onto the Ashes, where Australia lost the First Test but there were certainly a number of positives to take out of it. From a neutral standpoint it was one of the most entertaining and gripping Tests I have ever watched and whilst Australia ended up on the losing end, it gave me belief that we can absolutely make this a competitive series.

Darren Lehmann’s decision to play Ashton Agar instantly paid off with one of the greatest moments in Test history, with a 19 year old Agar, batting 11 and with Australia in dire straits, getting to 98 (alongside a tremendous knock by Phil Hughes) before holing out trying to get his century.

There is clearly a concern with the top order, which hopefully will be rectified as the series moves forward, but I can’t remember a tail that so consistently wags. Our bowlers are honestly not that much worse at batting than our specialist batsmen are. Which isn’t really a compliment to our batsmen, but is still praise for our bowlers.

As I write this the team for the Second Test was announced and so I had to quickly rewrite this bit about selections for the match. Cowan was axed as expected and replaced by Usman Khawaja, who was the likely replacement. Mitchell Starc also makes way with Ryan Harris getting the nod over Jackson Bird as the replacement fast bowler. Cowan had to go and Starc has been a bit down on form so neither was unexpected. I wasn’t sure whether Harris, Bird or a second spinner would come in depending on the conditions and it’s hard to argue with Ryan Harris getting the nod.

But either way, I’m no longer feeling as down about our chances for the series as I was before the First Test, which is saying something considering we are now officially trailing in the series.

Also a quick point on the whole DRS and Stuart Broad saga. First of all, I think we need to be a bit careful to put all the blame on England, when we got a bit lucky ourselves in the first innings with Agar and the fact that Clarke continues to misuse the review system. That said, Broad should have walked and the fact that he didn’t absolutely makes him a dirty cheat.  Also, the on field umpires were atrocious for both sides and this wouldn’t be an issue if they actually did their job at a level even near competent. Aleem Dar is one of the worst umpires I can remember and it baffles me how he continues to get such big matches. He is like cricket’s Jason Robinson.

Onto Le Tour. Whilst some of the individual stages have been exciting, is it just me or is the fact that Chris Froome is so dominant making the race kind of boring. It’s hard to stay up at night knowing the result is already over barring injury. That’s not to take anything away from Froome himself. He was expected to do this and he is delivering in spades and proving that he probably would have won Le Tour last year as well if his team had let him.

I also think raising speculation of him cheating as the media have been doing is ridiculous. It’s an unfortunately side effect of the sport’s history, but Froome has done nothing to suggest he is cheating besides being really, really good. I’d like to think he isn’t cheating because neither are his competitors anymore. However, should he end up in a doping scandal at any stage, it would be tragic and would be another nail into the coffin of the sport for many people.

We also are currently being graced with the presence of English Premier League champions Manchester United, who are here to play an A-League All Stars team this weekend. Then next Wednesday, my beloved Liverpool will be taking on the Melbourne Victory and I am fortunate enough to be traveling to Melbourne to watch the game. I’ve never seen Liverpool play and I’ve never been to a sporting event at the MCG, so to say I’m excited would be an understatement.

I hope to write about the experience next week, so stay tuned for that and remember, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.

Too Old For These All Nighters

 

I have been staying up late to watch sport for as long as I can remember. Whether it’s for the Tour de France, international cricket or to watch English football, being up in the middle of the night for a game has been part of my life forever.

At present we are experiencing an apex of late night sport watching activities with the Tour de France overlapping with The Ashes and before that, Wimbledon. There’s also been some late night motorsport on too and some others, depending on your interests. So you’d think I would be in my element, getting no sleep and loving every minute of it and that’s what I thought too, but for the first time I have found myself not able to do it anymore.

Every night I have gotten settled in to watch le Tour and the tennis or cricket and right as it’s starting to get good, I can’t keep my eyes open anymore and end up passing out and missing all the action. I think this is something that ends up happening to us all as we get older. First you can’t handle the all night partying of the early 20s and eventually you can’t even handle the all night TV watching. I’m officially getting old at the ripe old age of 28.

Watching sport has a way of forcing you to come to terms with your own mortality, even if you aren’t actually doing anything besides sitting there and watching a TV screen. First comes that day where you finally realise (well most of us anyway) that you aren’t going to actually become a famous athlete and that most of the guys you are watching are younger than you. That is a sad, sad day and I don’t think I’m fully over it yet, despite the fact I was never good at sport and barely played it.

Then after that, comes this day, where you can’t even watch sport like you used to. As someone who actually writes about sport and planned on writing about these late night events, it certainly has made it a lot tougher considering I’m not actually seeing it happen.

So what do I do? Either I accept the fact that I no longer am the spring chicken I once was, capable of putting in the hard yards on the couch watching TV, or I train harder than I ever have before, stop coasting off natural ability to stay awake and get there on determination and hard work. Or perhaps I should go down the route of performance enhancing drugs and take up drinking coffee.

All I know is that this phenomenon is new to me and I don’t like it one bit. Hopefully I can put it behind me and get back to watching sport like I used to, because we’ve got an entire Ashes series in front of us as well as the meat of le Tour still to come. Then we go straight into the start of the English Premier League season and I foolishly am once again optimistic about Liverpool’s future.

Yes, I am fully aware that this entire silly article is the quintessential ‘first world problem’. Shut up.

2013 Tour de France Preview (From a Guy That Can’t Ride a Bike)

Chris Froome at the Vuelta a Espana

If you know me well you know how much I love the Tour de France. Well this year’s edition, which begins on Saturday, is the 100th edition of le Tour and they have gone all out to make it a cracker.

For the first time in a decade le Tour doesn’t leave French soil, with the first three stages being held on the island of Corsica for the first time. We also will see two individual time trials and a team time trial as well as a stretch through the Alps described (at least on Wikipedia) as brutal, including a double climb of the famed Alpe d’Huez, which happens to be my favourite mountain the Tour regularly climbs.

One thing they are doing without this year is the Prologue time trial stage at the beginning of the race, so instead of seeing Fabian Cancellara (who isn’t even racing) in Yellow for a few days, we will likely see one of the top sprinters like Mark Cavendish in yellow come stage 2. However with it going straight into the mountains the next day, that won’t last long.

If you happen to be one of those fans who for some reason prefers the sprinters fighting it out for the Green Jersey then this probably isn’t the year for you. There are only seven flat stages and they are spread out over the three weeks, plus I think quite a lot of the sprinters will struggle to make the time limit to finish the stage in that last week through the Alps, especially on Stage 18.

So that’s a bit about the structure of this year’s Tour, but what can we expect during the race itself?

Well first and foremost you can expect Chris Froome to win. Froome, if you don’t know, finished second last year to his teammate Bradley Wiggins, but many thought he was the strongest rider last year and if the team had let him he very possible could have won the race for himself. This year Wiggins has pulled out of the race and appears to never be returning, so Froome, who has been in even better form this year, is the unbackable favourite to wear the Maillot Jaune on the steps in Paris.

That said, anything can happen during the three weeks and crashes or illness or injury can change everything. So if things go awry for Chris Froome, who else is in with a shot?

Well this year Aussie Richie Porte will be doing the role for Froome that Froome himself did for Wiggins last year. Porte is in great form himself and the main thing stopping him contending is the fact that his job is to help Froome win as opposed to himself. But if Froome struggles, Porte will be given the green light to try to win it for himself and he is a very big chance to do so if given the chance.

Old favourites and former champions Alberto Contador and our own Cadel Evans are still there and always in with a shot, but I have a feeling neither will be able to quite keep up and we will see the next generation of riders surpass them once and for all. Contador certainly has the ability, but he has never been the same since he got off the juice. But that kind of goes without saying now doesn’t it.

That dastardly Andy Schleck will be competing without big brother Frank this year and is being counted out. I agree with counting him out as he hasn’t quite been up to it lately and two time trials will ruin his chance. The time trials will likely also ruin the chances of some of the great climbers, such as Pierre Rolland and some of the Spanish climbing specialists.

I think we will see great performances from young guns like American Tejay van Garderen, who last year was supposed to help Cadel Evans, but when Cadel couldn’t keep up, Tejay went out and finished fifth overall himself. Similarly Evan’s former teammate Jurgen Van Den Broeck finished fourth last year and continues to improve. I expect to see the Belgian on the podium in Paris with Wiggins and 2012 third place getter Vicenzo Nibali not in the field.

I also think we might finally see Canadian Ryder Hesjedal live up to a lot of the hype he had going into le Tour last year. I don’t think he will podium, but he is a chance to do so and there will probably be at least one stage where he looks like a real threat.

In terms of the Green Jersey, the obvious duo of Peter Sagan and Mark Cavendish are the only two considered a chance to take it out. Sagan is favourite as he is much more adept than Cav at getting through mountain stages, as well as joining breakaways to pick up extra points along the way. I also worry about Cavendish finishing the race at all, a concern I don’t have for Sagan. In terms of value betting, Cavendish’s former teammate Edvald Boasson Hagen is paying huge odds to win the Green Jersey and he, like Sagan, is a sprinter who can also handle the mountains and enjoys picking up extra points out on the course. Plus he no longer has to worry about helping Cavendish and whilst his team will be focused on the Yellow Jersey, he is a chance to give the Green Jersey a shake.

However, much like with the expected winner of the Yellow Jersey, I think the favourite will end up winning the Green Jersey as well, with Sagan top of the pops in Paris.

The Polka Dot Jersey for best climber is much less clear. The betting favourite is everybody’s favourite Frenchman Thomas Voeckler. It quite simply isn’t a Tour de France if Tommy V doesn’t break away and wear the Yellow Jersey for a few days. Second favourite for the jersey is Voeckler’s teammate and climbing specialist Pierre Rolland. Two years ago Rolland did an incredible job helping Voeckler hang onto the Maillot Jaune for a lot longer than people expected and they are a formidable and entertaining duo. Rolland however drew the ire of many riders last year when he attacked during the “Tacks on the Road” fiasco that left many riders, including Cadel Evans, with flat tyres.

Beyond the Team Europcar duo there is a plethora of climbers and aggressive riders who will be looking to win the jersey, especially in a race filled with climbs. It will be a year of attacks and counterattacks and the Polka Dot jersey will be one to watch in 2013.

As mentioned earlier, the Tour this year features a Team Time Trial stage. The thing about TTT is that it heavily favours those riders with stronger overall teams, even more than having a strong team helps on regular mountain stages or building a lead out train for a sprinter. It doesn’t matter how good an individual time trialist you are if you are on a weak team and have to slow down to stay with your weaker teammates. This is yet another reason why Froome is so heavily favoured to win this year, as Team Sky is so strong from top to bottom and will not lose much time on the TTT stage.

I hope to see the Australian team Orica-GreenEDGE perform well in the TTT stage as a lot of the boys on the team are very solid individual time trialists and it would be good to see the Aussies shine for a stage or two.

If you are someone who likes to support riders based on their names I offer you two solid options. First there is Dutch rider Lars Boom. Boom isn’t a chance to win the Yellow Jersey or anything, but he is a great time trialist and might be involved in a few breakaways. Also his name is Lars Boom.

If that doesn’t tickle your fancy and you are more into TV, New Zealander Jack Bauer is your man. To be honest he likely won’t be a factor too much during the race and I guess it is unlucky for him that the race never reaches a Stage 24. No word yet on whether Bauer and his team will spend the entire race communicating via very loud whisper.

Overall, despite the fact that the winners of the Yellow and Green Jerseys seem to be predictable, the 100^th edition of the Tour de France could still be one of the most entertaining ever. The course is one that big fans of the race are super excited about and hopefully there are no doping scandals or major crashes and injuries to change the focus. It would also be great if people on the side of the road kept their dogs on a leash as there always seems to be at least one Labrador that gets in the way at some point.

I will be getting very little sleep throughout July and I invite you to stay up late with me and get involved in all the banter. I’ll be tweeting a lot (@DanCuzns) and my mates over at SBS and Stackla have put together a great Social Hub to get involved.

Download the SBS Tour Tracker now as well to keep up to date during the race or the following day.

See you on the road.

Contextual Heroes

Armstrong during his interview with Oprah

A few days ago a friend who is not a huge sports fan asked me a question, which was perfectly legitimate, even though most of us took it for granted.

She asked me why was Lance Armstrong was such a big deal when it is generally accepted that everyone else was cheating too?

The question was not asked in defence of Lance, but rather wanting to know why he was the one being so heavily scrutinised compared to others. For example, Alberto Contador may not have won seven Tours, but he did win an impressive three before being suspended and having one of his victories stripped.

The answer in one word is: context

So much of sport nowadays, especially with the “24 hour media cycle” as it’s called, is about contextualising the actual sporting events and achievements. Two players may put up the exact same stats and win the exact same number of games and yet those two athletes could be viewed in very different ways depending on the stories around them.

Lance Armstrong deserves what he is getting now for the way he acted during and after the actual cheating. I don’t need to rehash all the despicable things he said and did as I’m sure you’ve all seen enough of it now. But the point is that if he dealt with the accusations and everything else the way some other cheaters did, perhaps he could have avoided so much of the damage now done.

David Millar was never Lance Armstrong and never won a Tour. He also never started a major charity or became one of the most recognisable athletes on Earth. Therefore perhaps it was a lot easier for Millar to be honest and open about cheating when he was caught many years ago, but Millar was not only forgiven by the cycling community, he is actually one of the most respected guys on the circuit and now a big advocate for cleaning up the sport.

Both Millar and Armstrong cheated in the same way in the same events. In that regard one isn’t really worse than the other outside of the fact that one of them won. But the way they dealt with the situation was so different that the results are also vastly different.

Manti Te’o is not only an absolutely bizarre and fascinating story; he is also a huge example of how context shapes our views on athletes outside of their athletic endeavours.  People seem angry and upset over the fake girlfriend scandal even though it has nothing to do with him or even how he played. But the reason it is such a big deal is that people form opinions on sports based around the stories surrounding them. Manti Te’o wasn’t only famous because he was one of the best players in College Football and at the most famous College Football school, but because he famously overcame the deaths of his grandmother and girlfriend in the same week.

Finding out that the basis for their opinion was false makes people question their own judgement, even if they had no reason not to believe the story when they heard it in the first instance. Discovering you believed a lie is something that hits home for everybody, whether it’s in their personal life or even about a football player they watch on TV. That’s why I believe people are so up in arms about this, especially when this particular lie (or at least embellishment) was used to bring spotlight to the athlete in question.

However in some instances we overlook off field issues. Ray Lewis is about to end his NFL career in the Super Bowl and is one of the most respected and beloved NFL players of his generation.  But it was only a decade or so ago that Lewis was on trial for murder and admitted lying to police to help his friends, who were later acquitted as well. Lewis pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, but nowadays the story only seems to even be referenced via Twitter jokes and completely ignored for the most part.

So why does Lewis and many other athletes get a pass where others don’t?

It comes down to how well an athlete is able to handle the situation after the fact. Whether that involves great PR and damage control people or just being honest about the situation, most of the time the public are willing to give second chances if they think the athlete shows they deserve one.

Another factor, as much as it probably shouldn’t matter, is how well the athlete performs after the scandal. Ray Lewis continued to be a great player for many years whereas Lance Armstrong is already retired. Michael Vick had one superb season when he returned from his dog fighting scandal and some people looked past that and focussed on what he was going on the field again.

In Australia, Shane Warne was always getting himself into trouble, even if never anything as serious as mentioned above. But he was still Shane Warne and no matter what went on in his life, he was always our hero when he had a cricket ball in his hand.

Bernard Tomic is going through this now. There was always talk about him being a spoilt brat, but until we read about the trouble he was getting in and the petulant comments he made, many fans focused on the fact that he could be the next great Aussie tennis player. However as his play went downhill and his off court antics got worse, he finally had to deal with the damage to his reputation.

So far in 2013 his play has improved dramatically. That alone will go a long way to helping his reputation, simply because people love winners, but if his tennis doesn’t live up to his antics watch how quickly we turn on him.

Sport is a bizarre world. When it suits us we like to only care about what happens on the field, as evidenced by how we can forgive athletes as long as they perform. However, we are also quick to jump down their throats when they let us down or lie to us. At the end of the day, we don’t know these people personally and can only judge them on their words and actions. In normal life, we care about things like how nice someone is to us and how they treat those we care about. When it comes to athletes and other public figures, we don’t have that luxury so all we are left with is trial by media.

Lance Armstrong seems like a pretty deplorable person. I’m sure he loves his kids and all that stuff, but he has never seemed likable and I don’t think it’s rash to judge him based on what we know. However, we should never stop asking ourselves why some people get scrutiny over others and whether it is always deserved.