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Keywords: Rugby League

  • AUSTRALIA

    Give sporting politicians a sporting chance

    • John Warhurst
    • 08 April 2015
    7 Comments

    Despite often treating sports people uncritically as celebrities, Australians are ambivalent about their place in public life. Former Howard government minister Peter Reith launched an unfair personal attack on former champion Canberra Raiders rugby league forward Senator Glenn Lazarus after he defected from the Palmer United Party. The general lesson from the example of Lazarus - who is actually quietly capable - is that he is as well suited as the parliamentarians who have been lawyers, blacksmiths, builders, business and army people.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Avoiding the other 'F' word

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 04 February 2015
    12 Comments

    To prevent arguments, I have given up using the word 'football' for any code. I now almost exclusively use the terms soccer, Aussie rules, rugby (union) or league. What matters is not the shape of the ball, but whether a sport can provide great stories and spectacles on the field.   

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  • AUSTRALIA

    School sport's level playing field under threat

    • Michael Mullins
    • 30 September 2013
    14 Comments

    Five of Sydney's prestigious GPS schools have boycotted competition with another member of their association, The Scots College, because it is accused of undermining the spirit of competition in school sport by offering inducements to lure students with sports star potential. This undermines what the GPS code of ethics calls 'the spirit of the amateur' that promotes character, resilience and teamwork ahead of winning.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Holy Feast of the AFL Grand Final

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 27 September 2013
    3 Comments

    The Feast of the Grand Final has a great deal in common with celebrations in other religious traditions. Events such as Christmas and Easter are celebrations of the stories that help fashion the identity of Christians. Telling these stories each year helps us create our own new stories about the values or beliefs we follow. The Grand Final has its own stories that tell us about ourselves, as well as rituals that personalise those stories for each of us.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gillard's election year crash course

    • John Warhurst
    • 29 January 2013
    13 Comments

    Gillard's pick of Nova Peris as Labor candidate for the Senate in the Northern Territory could be a signal that she will try to get on the front foot this year. Since her famous misogyny speech last October, she may have decided not to die wondering but to crash through or crash. This poses an interesting dilemma for Abbott and his team.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Stynes a living breach of the rules

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 March 2012
    11 Comments

    He was a notorious transgressor on the football field, and the last years of his life were a sustained transgression. Terminal sickness has its own code. It is normally handled and propitiated by silence. Jim Stynes seemed to do it a different way.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reinventing the Aboriginal sports icon

    • Michael Visontay
    • 06 December 2011
    6 Comments

    By showing the wider community that an Aboriginal footballer could be smart as well as strong, Artie Beetson set an enduring example to all Indigenous people about what they could aspire to, on and off the sporting field.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Beating up on football thuggery

    • Frank O'Shea
    • 20 September 2010
    11 Comments

    Police look on benignly; clergymen bless them; politicians turn up to watch. But can any activity where players set out to damage their opponents be called a sport? And should such an activity be allowed to draw on the country's medical resources to mend that damage?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aker sacking an example for political parties

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 July 2010
    3 Comments

    It seems appropriate that Jason Akermanis was sacked in the middle of an election campaign. The tensions between conflicting interests that led to his sacking have also been exhibited in the election campaign. But in politics they have been negotiated much more disreputably.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    World Cup bid looks to Australia's self-serving aid program

    • Evan Ellis
    • 05 July 2010
    14 Comments

    We assume aid is 'helping people'. But the 2006 White Paper on Australian Aid specified its purpose to help countries 'reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development, in line with Australia’s national interest'. We'd be mortified if a church agency came out with such a self-serving clause.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Football racism evokes ugly past

    • Myrna Tonkinson
    • 18 June 2010
    14 Comments

    Timana Tahu left the NSW State of Origin team after racist comments by assistant coach Andrew Johns. AFL heavyweight Mal Brown described Aboriginal players as cannibals. Why is it an insult to call someone black?

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  • RELIGION

    A childish view of Melbourne Storm

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 April 2010
    15 Comments

    When I first heard of the Melbourne Storm tragedy, I laughed. My attitudes to games had remained stuck in an ill-spent childhood in which a little cheating was part of playing games. Even now, I confess, I enjoy stories of cheating done in style.

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