The 2015 Ice Hockey Classic between two invitational teams from the USA and Canada, featuring some NHL guys and a group of AHL players. Pretty amazing to see a full arena of hockey fans in Sydney!
Thirty minutes before face-off. Half the crowd was still in the queue for beer!
That's why we're here!
Team Canada
National Anthems
Brent Burns (far left)
Zenon Konopka and Team USA
Hard to believe this is Sydney!
Team USA pre-game warm-ups
Team Canada pre-game warm-ups
Ready for the opening face-off!
Game on!
Hockey fans!
Stepan and Kane
Yours truly chatting to Eric Nielson of the Syracuse Crunch
Did you see the reaction on the face of Tom Brady when Russell Wilson’s goal-line pass was thrown into the waiting – and very receptive – arms of Malcolm Butler, the undrafted defender out of Western Alabama? It was the throw that sealed New England’s fourth Super Bowl championship in fourteen years, and it effectively erased the crazy defensive play that ended as a Jermaine Kearse catch for Seattle after bouncing off various body parts of two New England defenders, and Butler lastly, before somehow ending up in Kearse’s arms.
When Brady saw the ball in Butler’s arms, he jumped so high that he could’ve just about landed in the corporate level of the University of Phoenix Stadium. There was genuine surprise in his eyes. Or was that shock? Either way, the reaction suggested that Brady had, if not yet resigned himself to losing a third consecutive Super Bowl appearance, was at least mentally preparing for a last-gasp attempt to steal back a lead. He couldn't believe the call.
When Kearse made his ridiculous catch – right up there with the David Tyree ‘Helmet Catch’ and Mario Manningham’s ‘Sideline Catch’ in terms of outright implausibility – Seattle had the game for the taking. They ran Marshawn Lynch, and he nearly went into the end zone, but was dragged down at about the one.
Still time, and Beast Mode was able to sniff a second-straight Super Bowl championship. Run him again, right? Maybe straight ahead, or off to one side to maybe eat a few seconds and give Brady less chance for a Hail Mary-type answer. It was almost inevitable. Lynch has scarcely been stopped from that close in his career. Not just this season – but ever.
Then, Pete Carroll or Darrell Bevell or whomever it was in the Seattle brains trust who dreamed up the next play became the most infamous man in Seattle sporting history, if not the history of the Super Bowl. Credit to Pete Carroll: in post-game interviews, he took full credit, but if there’s one thing I’ve noticed about the Seahawks coach in the many years I’ve watched him at the NFL and, before, when he was coach at the University of Southern California, it’s that it isn’t his style to throw someone under the bus. Perhaps Pete was covering for his offensive coordinator here.
Maybe it was Carroll or maybe it was Bevell who made the fateful call. At this point, though, it hardly matters, does it? What matters is how the play unfolded. What matters is that the short Wilson throw into a tiny bracket, the ball that was eventually lifted away by Butler, and with it Seattle’s chances at a rare back-to-back Super Bowl triumph melted away.
From the jaws of near-certain victory – or, at least, reassuming a lead with very few seconds left on the clock – somehow the men from the Pacific Northwest managed to snatch the worst and most extraordinarily cruel defeat. But it is the play calling circumstances under which the Seahawks lost that make this such a tough pill for all Seahawks fans (and anyone who can’t stand New England) to swallow.
Why, when the field is compressed, would you make such a dangerous throw? Sure, if you didn’t have a guy the calibre of Marshawn Lynch lined up in the backfield, maybe you’d call it. But the fact is, Seattle do have Lynch, and you’d just about put your life on the fact that, on any of the remaining downs, Beast Mode was gonna cash in. That’s what he does. That’s what he’s always done. It’s why the rabid fans chant “Beeeeeeeeeeeeast” up in Seattle. Lynch is a cult figure because of exactly the sort of barrelling run that was required in the dying seconds of Super Bowl XLIX.
In the immediate aftermath, NBC’s Cris Collinsworth started the parade of analysts panning the Seahawks call. You know that it’s pretty bad when, Collinsworth, the world’s most positive football analyst, says it’s bad.
Deion Sanders called said it was “the worst play-call in Super Bowl history,” and, you know, he wasn’t far wrong. Rodney Harrison and Tony Dungy said post-game on NBC that Seattle had made the wrong call. Later on ESPN, Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young looked perplexed, laughing awkwardly at replays. Tom Jackson said he’d have run the ball. You and me both, TJ. You and me both.
Word leaked out via Twitter that players were openly ripping the final play call – at least, those who could talk over their grief – in the locker room doesn’t come as a huge surprise to me. It’s such a horrible way to lose, and those players must be feeling absolute gut-wrenching despair at the moment. How sick must Russell Wilson feel right now? Beyond that, I feel. He’s probably inconsolable.
And with good reason, because there’s so much to question. It was a monumental brain-fade that will likely be one of the most talked-about Super Bowl moments a hundred years from now.
Pete Carroll’s words in post-game press conference about how he was trying to have Russell Wilson throw the ball in order take advantage of whatever formation the Patriots were showing on that down and try to run it with Lynch the down after made no sense to me. Honestly, as confused as the explanation was, I’m not even sure I got the gist of it properly, but as Steve Young said on ESPN, if, at any time, you don’t like the defensive formation in front of you, call a time out and think about it come more. Especially given the gravity of the situation.
Alas, the Seahawks did not, and after being defeated thanks to some rather miraculous plays in two previous Super Bowl appearances, the Patriots received a little luck the other way, and win their first championship in ten years – congratulations to them, for coming back from ten down, a championship-worthy effort. They celebrate and Seattle commiserate, but it could have been so much different.
Generational change in the fanatically-supported NASCAR Sprint Cup Series ranks has been quiet in recent years. Not since the retirements of former standouts Rusty Wallace and Dale Jarrett retired, leaving the race track for the ESPN commentary box. Since then, the upper echelon of drivers – those most successful either in recent times, or over the course of long careers – has been in a status quo.
Until a few days ago, when Jeff Gordon announced that the 2015 season would be his last full-time campaign in the No. 24 Chevrolet SS for Hendrick Motorsports.
One of the most polarising figures in a sport chock full of drivers with personality, Gordon’s absence on the grid will be keenly felt next year. Why? Because, love him or hate him – and, it seems there is little middle ground where Jeff is concerned – Gordon is and will remain one of the most successful drivers in the long history of NASCAR.
The kid from Vallejo, California, who had grown up racing open-wheel machines in the state of Indiana and seemed destined to become an IndyCar driver, was instead snapped up by NASAR – surely, not finding a ride for Gordon it is one of the greatest mistakes open wheel racing in America has ever made, and there have been plenty – racing for Connerty Racing and Bill Davis Racing in the second-tier Busch Series, before being promoted into the NASCAR Winston Cup, as the top-tier series was then know, by Rick Hendrick, beginning at the 1992 Hooters 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Many raised their eyebrows, but Hendrick, a canny and wily operator if ever there has been one, knew he was on a good thing. Sure enough, he was, despite a placing of thirty-first in his debut race, and, despite an uneven 1993 season where, despite winning a Daytona qualifying race, he saw the wall often, suffering from a tendency to push too hard, thus earning too many DNF (Did Not Finish) classifications.
1994 brought Gordon’s first race win, in the Coke 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and the same year won the inaugural Brickyard 400 at the bastion of open wheel racing, the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was a landmark victory for Gordon on what was a landmark day for stock car racing, who had never before raced on the hallowed ground of Indy.
Then, a year later, 1995, the NASCAR world realised that Jeff Gordon was a star. He won seven races and the Winston Cup Series championship. A year later? Ten race wins and second in the championship. Back-to-back titles in 1997 and 1998 cemented him as one of the all-time greats. So did a fourth championship in 2001.
Three wins in the famed Daytona 500 – 1997, 1999 and 2005 – further enhanced his legacy, and Gordon’s success as a relatively young driver paved the way for a future generation of stars (especially those not from the traditional NASCAR talent hotbed, the southern American states – this California Kid was viewed with some suspicion early on, because he’d been born out west and raced in the Midwest rather than the deep south) to get their shot at the big-time much earlier than was previously the case.
Aside from his own racing endeavours – they are far too numerous for me to mention them all here – Gordon played a major role in bringing into NASCAR a little-known Californian off-road racer named Jimmie Johnson. Debuting in Cup racing in the No. 48 Chevrolet, a number signifying the partnership of Gordon, who drives the No. 24 and Rick Hendrick, as co-owners of the car. Of course, Johnson would go on to win an almost-unprecedented seven Cup Series titles (including 5 in a row, to smash Cale Yarborough’s previous record of 3), and there is no telling how many more Johnson will win.
Perhaps, the fact that Gordon, a sort of polar opposite to the king of NASCAR racing at the time, the late, great Dale Earnhardt Sr. and disliked because of it, has advanced Johnson’s similar lack of popularity from most sections of any given racetrack on any given weekend, but it is hard to deny Gordon’s influence on the sport over the last two decades has been immense.
Even if you loved Earnhardt Sr. and now love Earnhardt Jr. and hate Gordon like you hate the plague – and there are many who feel this way, particularly if you measure this by the amount of anti-Gordon t-shirts you see at the track; they’re everywhere! – you still must admit that Jeff will leave behind a glittering legacy, and admit that, as the beginning of the recent youth movement, the sport might not be the same had he not been given his first shot by Rick Hendrick.
It’s paid off for Gordon and for Hendrick, too. We may never see the trailblazing likes of Jeff Gordon in NASCAR again.
Although it – mostly – isn’t anything I hadn’t read before,
the latest book (which will be the first of many about the Gallipoli campaign
in this it’s centenary year) on the fateful campaign that opened Australia’s
involvement in the First World War, is good. And this from someone who didn’t particularly
like the way FitzSimons wrote when I opened his Ned Kelly book last year.
Count me as one of the converted now. The former Australian
rugby representative – who’s done pretty well for himself, all things
considered – has written a brilliant and easy-to-understand (for those who aren’t
military historians or tacticians) account of the Gallipoli campaign, and does
wonders in making the confusing geography of the Peninsula much easier to
understand.
Crucially, and because there’s always another side to these
events, the Turkish response is examined in fairly good detail, particularly Mustafa
Kemal’s experiences. For example, I had no idea that the famous Turk, who would
go onto greater things post-World War One, had been evacuated from the battlefield
before the Anzac evacuation. Nor did I quite understand just how many Turks
were killed defending their homeland. For all Australia’s losses (more than
8,000 by the time all was said and done), they were nothing in comparison to
the death toll suffered by the Ottoman armies, more than 86,000 dead. Those are
horrific losses.
FitzSimons does a good job preserving the ANZAC legend, and
also shining light onto little-known aspects of it, like the fortunes of the
midget submarines AE1 and AE2, British operations at Suvla Bay, and the back
room political wheeling and dealings in London, particularly involving Lord Kitchener
(a distant relation, I’m led to believe) and Winston Churchill.
Watching – T20 Big Bash League Cricket
This is a great month for sport. We’ve got test cricket, one
day cricket, tennis of all sorts – including that Fast 4 thing that I never got
into – and the culmination of both college and pro football in America. But
last month, barely a night went by when I wasn’t watching the T20 Big Bash
League cricket. It’s great to be able to turn on your TV pretty much any given
night between the middle of December and late January and catch a game.
Sure, some people – particularly the cricket traditionalists
– will thumb their noses at this new concept, but you can hardly deny the
excitement and tension that these twenty-over concepts seem to produce every
single game. Nor can you deny the crowd numbers and television ratings. The
fourth season of the franchise-based league has provided wonderful
entertainment from beginning to end, even if my chosen team, the Sydney
Thunder, has been pretty bad ever since the first.
Channel Ten’s coverage has been sensational. Their
commentary team is a serious breath of fresh air from the inane dribble that
Channel Nine provides.
I even took myself out to ANZ Stadium to watch the Sydney
derby between the Sixers and the Thunder. Not the result I wanted, and
potentially the least-interesting game of the season, but still good fun. I can
see expansion in the League’s near future. Can’t wait for 2015-16!
Listening To – Dee Jay Silver
Stick with me on this one. Dee Jay Silver is a Nashville
native who’s made a pretty nice career for himself mixing popular country songs
with dance and RnB tracks. He has a nationally-syndicated radio show called ‘The
Country Club’ that goes to dozens of stations across America every weekend, and
is a regular at big-time country concerts, particularly genre superstars Jason
Aldean, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley.
When I first heard what the guy did, I thought it sounded
ridiculous – I mean, who wants to hear Run DMC’s ‘Walk This Way” mixed in with
Alabama’s “If You're Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have A Fiddle In The Band)”?
Apparently people do, because his live shows absolutely bring the house down,
and fill in those long intervals between sets at concerts.
Halfway through January, I started listening to excerpts
from ‘The Country Club’ via SoundCloud on the suggestion of a friend who was
born and raised in the American south – and is responsible for getting me into
a lot of country music – and although I wasn’t sure, I kept an open mind, and,
you know what, it was pretty cool.
Silver’s remix of Alabama’s classic “Dixieland Delight”
features rap group Nappy Roots, and I find myself playing it often on my iPod.
