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Ring the bell - it's time boxing went the way of the dinosaurs

Peter FitzSimons

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Mundine, Green back in the ring

Anthony Mundine and Danny Green will fight again a decade after their epic in Sydney.

Tony Turner of Tuross Heads is rising 80 now, an Australian who spent a little time in America in the 1940s, as the family moved there with his father the academic.

He read the piece I wrote on Thursday, where I thundered unpleasantly that it is morally unsustainable to watch/support/pay for the spectacle of two men in their 40s hitting each other in the head in the hope that one or the other can so damage the other's brain that he will fall to the ground and be unable to rise.

Mr Turner agreed with my notion that that all concussions are serious and it is guaranteed that Anthony Mundine and Danny Green will be exacerbating the brain damage – and I use the words advisedly – they have already sustained. But Mr Turner writes of his own experience with an eloquence I could never muster ...

Dear TFF,

In the late nineteen-forties I sold newspapers on the corner of Fourth and Grand in Los Angeles. I had a little trolley that I parked outside the barbershop with the Herald and Daily News on it and added my voice to the cacophony. It was the end of town where the punch-drunk ex-boxers hung out. They were hard to tell apart: bald, screwed-up little ears, scarred brows, vacant expression, husky voices. The proprietor of the barbershop had a little bell, an exact replica of the bell at the boxing ringside, and on occasion he would ring it and these poor creatures would struggle to their feet and spar at the nearest shadow. Much hilarity would ensue among the "gilded youth" in the barbershop. I have hated the concept of boxing ever since.

I wish I hadn't written this down. I won't sleep tonight.

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Tony

And so I ask again to those who wish to support/watch/pay for this grotesque charade. Do you really want it on your conscience?

Set for a busy summer: Steve Smith.

Set for a busy summer: Australian skipper Steve Smith. Photo: Getty Images

An SOS for the gentleman's game

The race that stops a nation? TFF is so old I remember when cricket used to do the same. Oi, everyone! Gather in! Dennis Lillee is about to unload the first ball of the summer! No more.

Where is the Australian cricket team right now? Who have they just played? Who are they about to play? I have no clue, bar seeing a headline recently that they lost in South Africa recently. I think it was in the one-day version of the game and I think Steve Smith said it was nothing to worry about.

Oh, and I note there is something coming up, where the Australian T20 side is going to shortly be playing at the same time as the Test side. Meanwhile, it emerges from the fallout to the Michael Clarke autobiography that, at least a few years ago, the famed "brotherhood of the baggy green" more resembled cats in a sack.

And that was on a good day! For my money, Australian cricket needs urgent pruning. Cut back. Try to restore the sense – long since lost – that getting into the Australian team is a really big deal, because so few players manage it, and when they play it is, if not a must-watch, at least a must-follow, must-give-a-damn.

The alternative is for it to turn into the video wallpaper of summer. On somewhere in the background, but noone actually cares.

Get out for a good cause

Hold on to your hats sports fans, the "Annual Battle of The Smashers" T20 game in honour of Tibby Cotter – the Australian fast bowler who who was killed exactly 99 years ago on Saturday during the famous charge of the Australian Light Horse in Beersheba – is happening at Pratten Park on Sunday.

One of the participants is former Australian commando Damien Thomlinson, who lost both his legs in Afghanistan, and has since walked Kokoda on his artificial legs. He'll be joined out in the middle by the likes of singer Guy Sebastian, Steve Mortimer, Brad Clyde, Tim Mannah, Wests Tigers coach Jason Taylor, Bronson Harrison and Tyran Smith, while former Test cricketers Nathan Bracken, Daryl Tuffey and Dave Gilbert are also on deck.

Proceeds will go to Veterans Off The Streets Australia who help find emergency accommodation for some of the 3000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who are said to be sleeping rough every night around the nation.

Are you fair dinkum?

Back in 1938, my Auntie Ida was doing the Grand Tour of Europe – as many young Wahroongha ladies did, back in the day – when she met a dashing Scotsman, Alex Wilkie, who she went on to marry and live happily ever after with. When I last saw her in Edinburgh, three years ago, she had so many candles on her birthday cake –100 of them – that she wasn't allowed to light them, as it was against the fire regulations of her retirement home.

Scotland's finest: Euan Aitken.

Scotland's finest: Euan Aitken. Photo: Getty Images

But, here's the weird thing. In all those times of visiting her in Edinburgh, I never came across the tiniest hint of a rugby league comp! Nothing on the fields, nothing in the papers, no discussion at the pub! Imagine my surprise then, to find that "Scotland" is one of the "Four Nations" in the this comp that the Kangaroos are in. A mystery? I should say so – even though Wikipedia tells me there actually are four teams somewhere around Glasgow.

But clever reader Martyn Yeomans points out something even more mysterious, noting the composition of the "Scottish" team to play the Kangaroos, boasts such players as Euan Aitken of the St George Illawarra Dragons, Tyler Cassel of the Wests Tigers, and Billy McConnachie of the Ipswich Jets. All up, seven of the team are Australians playing in the NRL or secondary comps, while all the others play in the English Super League or a secondary comp. "NOT ONE actually plays league in Scotland!" he notes. "Who is the league trying to kid? There is about as much league played in Scotland as there is hurling played in Australia."

What he said. Is it really in the interests of so-called international rugby league to continue with such a transparent farce?

Clowning around

The Michael Cheika rant, after the loss to the All Blacks, about how offended he was by the newspaper caricature of him as a clown? Mistake. Bad mistake. The All Blacks had as much to do with that caricature, as the newspaper did with the ABs' lineout calls. How a coach as experienced as Cheika doesn't get that, I am at a loss to explain.

Under fire: Nigel Owens.

Under fire: Nigel Owens. Photo: Kate Geraghty

What they said

Simon Katich returning fire to Michael Clarke: "I don't want to be drawn into too much because it's old news, but I saw Shane Watson's comments during the week and I thought he hit the nail on the head with it, given I thought it was rather ironic that [Shane] was called the tumour ..."

On the dust-up with Clarke: "I haven't changed my point of view on the matter. I said what I said a few years ago. I guess at the moment he's obviously trying to sell a book so it's amazing how more and more of the story comes out. We've hardly spoken, since it all happened. [Our relationship's] been nonexistent."

Mitchell Johnson on what happened after Michael Clarke took over from Ricky Ponting as captain in 2012: "The dynamics definitely changed. It became more groups in the team. It wasn't a team as so. There was different little factions going on and it was very toxic."

Simon Katich on the Australian cricket team: "When there is so much cricket being played that you are handing out [Australian] caps left, right and centre, it send a bad message."

Meredith Burgmann, at the launch of Larry Writer's book, Pitched Battle, on being arrested numerous times leading to the anti-apartheid campaign against the all-white touring 1971 Springboks, which disrupted the tour and led to the cancellation of the South African cricket series later that year: "My parents backed me. Mum said, 'I don't mind you getting arrested ... but not for bad language', and I never was." Wonderful!

The 85-year-old Richard Treweeke on being a part-owner of Winx: "I still don't believe it. It's true, but I just don't believe it. It's all too much for me. I had horses when I was grazing at Orange and I never saw one of my horses win until we went to watch Winx. I could be waiting for 300 lives and not get a horse like that [again]."

Rod Kafer unhappy with Nigel Owens' performance against the Wallabies: "He should never referee a Test match again. That is disgraceful." Translation: Owens possibly made an error, which cost the Wallabies dearly. He remains, however, the best ref in world rugby.

Michael Cheika after the game: "I'd say they're on top and we're nowhere, that's the relationship between the two teams." I'd say he's right.

Australian Cricketers' Association chief Alistair Nicholson on a Test in India starting the day after a T20 game in Adelaide: "These are very significant decisions that actually change what it means to represent Australia. The player's view is that the best players should play for their country, and this is something we believe is echoed by the Australian public. If that is changing, then it poses the question: what does it mean for the value of the Australian cap?"

Dawn Astle, daughter of late English footballer Jeff claims that heading the ball killed him: "The brain as an organ is the most fragile and complex organ in the body but if it's being pounded all the time and rocking backwards and forwards inside the skull you can only imagine the damage that is being done, Why did my dad die of boxer's brain when he wasn't a boxer? Sports governing bodies should not be protecting the product, they should be protecting the players."

Mitchell Pearce on 2016: "I had a lot of regret and a lot of shame, a lot of stuff going on for a long time and that didn't go away until I started to come back. To be honest I still don't feel comfortable about it. We finished second last, I was a big reason for that."

Kenji Brameld of the University of NSW, on the problems of players at the World Robocup: "Then we put the robots on and half of the robots didn't work at the start – they all shut down, so that was a big problem we had." The match showed that even robot soccer players will take dives on the field. The Australian team lost the final 7-3 to the University of Texas.

Showstoppers: Former Brazil great Ronaldo with 2018 World Cup mascot Zabivaka.

Showstoppers: Former Brazil great Ronaldo with 2018 World Cup mascot Zabivaka. Photo: AP

Team of the week

Anthony Mundine and Danny Green. Are fighting each other at Adelaide Oval in February. It's just not cricket and I ask hands up those who wish to watch two men in their 40s, trying to exacerbate the brain damage already done? Not me.

Winx. Not sure if it's a boy horsey, or a girl horsey, but it is apparently winning, and punters have got back a lazy $100 million or so – against, no doubt, 10 times that in overall losses – from it in the past dozen starts.

World Series. Team that hasn't won in 108 years is playing a team that hasn't won in 68 years.

Wallabies. Now head to Europe till early December. Few months off and then begin again in late February.

Zabivaka. A wolf by this name will be the mascot of the 2018 Soccer World Cup in Russia.

Chloe McCardel. Has set a new record for the number of English Channel swims by an Australian – 20.

Carlos Alberto Torres. Captain of Brazil's World Cup-winning team in 1970 and scorer of one of the sport's most iconic goals passed away aged 72.

National Team Power Rankings. Wallabies have fallen off a cliff, the Australian cricket team are sliding down a slippery slope and becoming irrelevant, the Kangaroos are pretending to a relevance they do not have, the Socceroos are going well, ish, but languishing badly at youth level.

Twitter: @Peter_Fitz

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