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Keywords: Sport

  • AUSTRALIA

    The real scandal at Essendon

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 29 August 2013
    11 Comments

    The issue is player welfare, not cheating. The turning point was the call to talkback radio from the distraught mother of one of the players who felt her son was being treated like a guinea pig. For one club to gain an advantage over other clubs by cheating is shameful, but for a club to put its own players in harm’s way is unforgivable.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Born-to-rule Bombers glimpse unprivileged reality

    • Brian Matthews
    • 14 August 2013
    11 Comments

    When James Hird, coach of the Essendon Football Club, says his club has a 'right' to play finals despite the ongoing drug scandal, he obviously means that the players have won enough games to qualify. But when you wed his use of the word 'right' to his often proclaimed love for the club and his aspiration to put it back where it 'belonged', 'right' starts to assume the force of due privilege.

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  • RELIGION

    When mines and football clubs betray the common good

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 August 2013
    3 Comments

    The common good can seem a very milky-tea concept — too bloodless for the real world. But it is an important idea, one which we need if we are to make sense of phenomena as disparate as the findings on corruption in the awarding of mining licenses in NSW, the initial report of the NSW chief scientist on coal seam gas mining, and the daily excursions in the drugs and footballers epic.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Labor's performance enhancing drug

    • Michael Mullins
    • 29 July 2013
    14 Comments

    Australian cycling great Stuart O'Grady says using drugs was the only way he could be competitive at the 1998 Tour de France. Graham Richardson — famed for his 'whatever it takes' approach to politics — says Labor's PNG solution is cruel but 'politically brilliant' and has given the party a competitive edge. In years to come, Labor party elders will realise the cost of this competitiveness.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sex and power in football and politics

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 28 June 2013
    5 Comments

    A young writer has crash tackled the ugly questions of non-consensual sex, coercion and the male privilege and misuse of power that can flow from sporting success. Yet when it comes to our football codes — let alone our political arena — a conversation needs to move beyond gender name-calling or the 'us and them' polemic.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pragmatic answers to the asylum seeker question

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 June 2013
    10 Comments

    'I want to outline the contours for a better approach — better than forcibly turning around boats, better than transporting people to Nauru and Manus Island or to Malaysia to join an asylum queue of 100,000 or permitting people to reside in the Australian community but without work rights and with inadequate welfare provision.' Frank Brennan speaks at the Australian Catholic University National Asylum Summit 2013.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Odds stacked against young online gamblers

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 24 May 2013
    3 Comments

    Research indicates online sports gambling is an escalating problem that particularly impacts young men. The South Australian Premier has already made a good start, but there are still practical steps we can take at state and federal level to reduce the risk. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sports fans' idolatry makes monsters of heroes

    • Michael Mullins
    • 25 February 2013
    16 Comments

    The success of elite athletes is often accompanied by narcissistic behaviours that exploit and damage other people. This appears to be the case with Oscar Pistorius and Lance Armstrong. In seeking to curb such behaviour, we can call for greater regulation and surveillance. But we can also examine our own behaviour. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Vegemite interrogation on the Prague night train

    • Anne M. Carson
    • 19 February 2013

    Cash-strapped, post midnight. Transport police rifle our rucksacks, suspicious of backpackers. One prises open my Kodak canister, sniffs, says 'ach!', fires Czech questions at me. 'Vegemite fur frustuck,' I say, trying to convince Vegemite is not hash resin. I smile the smile of someone who doesn't know how bad it can get.

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  • CARTOON

    Bad sports

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 13 February 2013

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Not judging Ned Kelly and Lance Armstrong

    • Michael Mullins
    • 21 January 2013
    16 Comments

    Discussion of whether Ned Kelly and Lance Armstrong are heroes or villains is a distraction from the more important big picture reality such as crime and justice in 19th century Victoria, and performance enhancing drugs in sport today. If we are preoccupied with judging behaviour, we will miss the opportunity to promote better laws that will make our society fairer for all.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The bankable brats and buffoons of Australian sport

    • Michael Visontay
    • 15 January 2013
    10 Comments

    Professional sport is driven by two competing forces: the pursuit of unrealistic achievement and the need to be entertaining. Shane Warne has spent his career playing buffoon-genius, and cricket now celebrates the buffoon over the genius. It remains to be seen if tennis' Bernard Tomic can escape the pressure of his own ego. 

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