Greg Baum is chief sports columnist and associate editor with The Age
When Nick Xenophon and Andrew Wilkie announced their mission to loosen the nexus between gambling and sport in Australia on Thursday, it was not hard to imagine that in the offices of some corporate bookies, the first thing they did was to frame a market on the likelihood of the politicians' success, complete with cash-back options and bonus bets.
Either Roger Federer is the Hawthorn of tennis, or the Hawks are the Federer of the AFL. As in a quinella, either way round wins.
Everyone loves a winner. But what we love even more is a loser, if it is the right loser. There can have been few more ideal losers than England when they crashed against lowly Iceland in the European soccer championships this week. We really, really loved that.
Do great rivalries die, or merely fall dormant from time to time?
Is there anything quite so insincere as the sporting apology?
One of the best sports movies ever made is Bull Durham, a riff on the machinations of a minor league baseball club, starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon. One poignant motif is the moment the manager, Jo Riggins (Trey Wilson) calls a declining player into his office and says with a stagy sigh: "This is the hardest thing a manager has to do." You know what comes next. Eventually, it comes even for the Costner character, Crash Davis.
To plagiarise the Queen on her birthday, this is now officially Collingwood's annus horribilis.
Until now, Brendon Bolton has had such a slight presence in the game that you might easily have the wrong idea about him.
Tom Lynch as good as handed himself in on a striking charge, and still the AFL judicial system didn't put him away.
Port Adelaide ran rings around disjointed Collingwood to claim a 67-point victory in Sunday's AFL clash at the MCG.
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