Sport’s shoulder season has appeal

A sportasborg. Really there can be no other name for the week just gone and the winter that awaits. There has been all sorts of action, a lot of it legal and some physical. You can watch the AFL complete its first week; watch rugby league. News has come back to us that the A-League is still being played. We have spies everywhere.

And rugby union? The Australian columnist Alan Jones wrote in yesterday’s paper the sport had a big gap in “knowledge of how the game should be played, how it should be coached, how it should be administered, how we recruit players and hold players, how we pay players and, above all, how we are going to get back on top of the rugby world.” Now, that’s a gap.

It does outline rather grimly the job ahead for Australian Rugby Union chief executive Raelene Castle. She is one of several of our leading CEOs fighting against significant odds.

The third Test started between South Africa and Australia. There was much weeping about Kagiso Rabada’s presence after he appealed successfully to avoid banishment from the final two Tests.

The sports editor of The Weekend Australian, Sir Wally Mason, the holy man of journalism, wrote in a strong opinion piece this week: “If Rabada’s shoulder charge is OK, then the next step will be a push, a shove, a punch.”

Sir Wally, we have dropped to our knees in your presence only to suggest humbly, nay weepingly, that cricket has not said the shoulder charge is OK. What the ICC- appointed judicial commissioner deemed was that the shoulder charge (as in the Rabada-Steve Smith case) to be illegal and deserved punishment but not as severe as meted out by the match referee Jeff Crowe.

Rabada should have been stood down for the remainder of the series, no doubt, but not because of his shoulder charge rather his outrageous sledging of the Australian captain. Sledging is merely the spark that explodes the players’ minds.

Unfortunately, Smith cannot hold his tongue and only provoked South Africans after the Rabada reversal with his inflammatory comments that the bump from the fast bowler was much more severe than it looked.

Smith is a modern wonder as a batsman but as a captain he is limited and without presence. He allows his players to act without grace, dignity or respect for the game. South African counterpart Faf du Plessis is no better. That Rabada is so unrestrained in his euphoria points to a South African administration that lacks authority and judgment.

Chief executive of Cricket Australia, James Sutherland, has been the game’s most potent administrator since 2001. Behaviour by the nation’s cricketers has not improved at all yet their pockets are bulging with cash because of ever burgeoning salaries. It remains a heavy mark against Sutherland.

Today at Rosehill, Winx runs in the George Ryder Stakes worth a bridle over $1m. It will be enough to top $16m in prizemoney. She is chasing her 17th Group I and her 24th consecutive victory. It is getting harder to deny the mare is the best horse we have seen. As usual, she will start shorter than Danny DeVito.

There will be more history awaiting Winx’s trainer Chris Waller. He has Performer, drawn badly at 16, and Fiesta, even worse in 20, in the $3.5m Golden Slipper. Favourites Written By and Sunlight are drawn together in four and five. You fancy the double of Winx and a Golden Slipper win would overwhelm the emotionally transparent Waller. Good thing the track is already wet. No one would begrudge a tear.

At Mornington, the Victorian Festival of Racing closes with the listed $300,000 Mornington Cup today. Last night Moonee Valley hosted the Group I William Reid Stakes worth a comparatively miserly $500,000.

The racing boards of NSW and Victoria skirmish publicly but privately the battle for prominence and influence is more serious. It is a title fight. Peter V’landys has invigorated RNSW as chief executive, delivering a thumping right hook with the $10m Everest last October and has upped the ante for this year’s staging. He pushes and prods, too, keeping Victoria off balance.

He has joined the ARL Commission. He is full of energy and ideas and will test the vision and nerve of NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg. The sport’s constitution is yet to be settled. If clubs and states win representation then you may as well tear it up as a workable document.

Giles Thompson is Racing Victoria’s chief executive. It is the toughest job in Australian sport. The competing forces within the state’s thoroughbred industry have overrun many of his predecessors and frightened off the most qualified of possible replacements. Its traditional spring carnival is not under serious attack from Sydney but V’landys is enjoying attempting to unpick it here and there.

On his appointment in April last year, The Weekend Australian’s racing expert Brendan Cormick wrote: “Mr Thompson takes the reins at a time when Victoria’s racing industry is mired in legal action, participants are calling for increased prizemoney, morale is low and major sponsors have signalled the end of their support at a time of global uncertainty.”

And they were the good times. Thompson is now dealing with a new board and chairman, a cantankerous club or two. The biggest investigation yet into illegal doping of horses after more than 270 charges were laid against five trainers, including Group 1 winning Robert Smerdon, and three stable staff starts next month. Most trainers were based with the management company Aquanita. Chairman of the Melbourne Racing Club Mike Symons was a director of Aquanita. There is no suggestion Symons has breached any rule but good governance demands he stand down from the MRC for the length of the Aquanita inquiry. That he hasn’t hurts racing’s image and suggests governance was not rigid and relentless at Aquanita, now renamed Neerim.

This week Thompson briefed media on the performance of RVL from August last year to January just gone. Thompson has done well, overseeing important increases in turnover and attendance. Encouragingly there was a 20 per cent increase in the number of rides secured by female jockeys. Thompson has brought composure to Victorian gallops.

No sport can match the AFL. Chief executive Gillon McLachlan has steered the league to a $60m profit off a $650m revenue. He has not been without his challenges but it is difficult to think the competition could be in a better position. McLachlan, in the job all but four years now, will become hot property.

While the men’s league is just starting, the women stage their grand final today between Brisbane and the Bulldogs. Close observers say the standard of the women’s game has raced ahead and the competition is ready for two more clubs. There is an interesting case which the Bulldogs threaten to take to the Human Rights Commission. Star Katie Brennan was rubbed out for today’s showdown after a sling tackle. In the men’s competition the same circumstances ask only that the player pays a $5000 fine. Equality?

There is sport all around us — some to make you squirm, enough excellence to have you tingling — and at its meanest in the Test at Cape Town. A sportasborg. Oh, you are back Sir Wally. Dear God, holy man. Please no, have mercy … not the synchronised swimming.