“You cannot be serious!”

Okay… so I didn’t tip the winner of The Cup, with So You Think finishing a valiant third. The thing is, while I had my main go at the former Cummings champion, I also backed first and second… and the quinella… and the trifecta. And to top it all off, I picked Americain in the Double Drummer office sweep! (So I’ve been too embarrassed to blog ever since.)

Isaac Luke performs the Haka

And now the sporting year is coming to a close. The Four Nations tournament is over with refereeing again the absolute loser, three of the four tries in the Final scored illegally! (If I never see another try allowed off a forward pass it will be too soon.) We snuck past the All Blacks in the dead Bledisloe Cup rubber, then got hammered by the POMs.

We missed the chance to have an Aussie Formula 1 Champion… Mark Webber came close, but missed it by that much. And now we have the worrying prospect of an Ashes loss to England to nervously await.

The Champions Downunder Tour has been and gone and while the tennis was for the most part brilliant, the marketing of the event was a disgrace. Whether it was the mob at PPR or Geoff Parmenter’s Events NSW I’m not sure, but to charge $89 a ticket to see 2 mid-week pool matches (best of 2 sets, super tiebreaker at 1 set all) and then $129 for Finals Day (add one doubles pro set to the schedule) was patently ridiculous. Few would pay those prices, even if they knew about the event! For half that (or less) you can watch the current stars at the Medibank International… in fact Ground Passes to the January tournament start at just $10!

It wasn’t until Tennis NSW and IMG were asked to get involved that the event was even properly advertised and

McEnroe - as intense and passionate as ever

promoted… and in the end, the former organisation had to give away thousands of tickets to members to ensure these legends of the sport weren’t playing to empty houses. As it was, the Olympic stadium was never more than half full… which was a damn shame and disrespectful to champions like Rafter, McEnroe, Ivanisevic and Willander. They’ve got another two years to get this right or lose it. It’s a great concept, people love to see these former greats in action (and believe me, they’ve still ‘got it’)… but they have to make the tickets affordable and promote the event properly.

Let kids in for free to see the way tennis was played… with less bash and more skill. Offer group discounts to every tennis club in NSW. And price the tickets so that sports fans who are not necessarily ‘tennis nuts’ will want to come along and be entertained by madmen like Henri Leconte.

The Frenchman’s matches were pure, unadulterated, exhibitionistic FUN… with some amazing shots thrown in for good measure. But McEnroe was as intense as ever, the desire to win just as great as when he faced Borg over the net on Centre Court at Wimbledon. He is a nut case… an arrogant ratbag who was up to all his old trademark antics, barking at the umpire, telling him he was full of s*#t, purposely serving a bull at full pelt at the head of a linesman… but he was also brilliant!

The sublime followed the ridiculous as he deftly placed winners into the corners past lunging opponents, picked up half-volley after half-volley off his toes and quite often hit them for winners too, served with that unmistakable action and the same venom as he had in the early ’80s and volleyed incredibly. The man is a flawed genius, but a genius nonetheless.

"You cannot be serious!"

Hopefully the decent weather will stay around longer than a day at a time and we can all enjoy summer on the beach.

Decent weather… this Spring? “You cannot be serious!”