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Boxing Day Test – Melbourne

Written by James Clark on December 30, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Boxing day in Australia means two things on the sporting calendar – The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne.

Cricket is the most popular summer sport in Australia. It is remarkable that the game has remained popular considering that Test Match cricket goes for 5 days and still doesn’t guarantee a result.

I like how it involves playing teams from places like Pakistan and the West Indies. I also like how the captains wear blazers before the start of play, even on a blazing hot day.

Pakistan Captain Mohammad Yousuf

Categories: Travel Blog - Tags: australia, cricket, melbourne, sport

63K at the G

Written by James Clark on December 27, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Boxing day in Melbourne means the Boxing Day test. Over 63,000 people were in attendance on the first day.

[MCG Boxing Day Attendance]

That’s a big crowd for any sporting event in the world, but it can look small at the MCG (the G) as the ground can hold 100,000.

[Australia vs South Africa at MCG]

Categories: Travel Blog - Tags: australia, cricket, melbourne, sport

English footballs cultural hegemony

Written by James Clark on March 26, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Travel throughout Southeast Asia and you will soon notice that English Football shirts dominate over all other European leagues.

I don’t know enough about the game to tell the difference between the quality of the national leagues of Europe, but whenever I meet a football purist they will tell you about how the Italian or Spanish league is better quality than the English league. This may or may not be so, but in terms of popularity English football is miles ahead.

Here is a good article about English Football at Time Magazine.

[English Football Live]

[Knock-off Football Shirts - English Clubs Dominate.]

Categories: Travel Thoughts - Tags: sport, thailand

The Australian Open: Everybody loves Roger

Written by James Clark on January 24, 2008 · Leave a Comment

The Australian Open is on in Melbourne and for $20 AUD you can get an evening outside courts pass, which gets you into all courts except the largest two.

[Bryan Bros - Margaret Court Arena]

Not only do you see tournament games, but you can watch players practicing on side courts. I found one small court with more people surrounding it than at some of the games in progress. It could only mean one thing – that Federer was there. The world’s number one tennis player is such a popular figure that he could have practiced on one of the show courts and filled it.

[Roger Federer Practicing]

Categories: Travel Blog - Tags: australia, melbourne, sport

The Boxing Day Test, Melbourne – Australia

Written by James Clark on December 28, 2007 · Leave a Comment

The Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground is an institution on the Australian sporting calendar. The first Boxing Day test was in 1950, and it has been played every year since 1980.

[Australia v India - MCG]

Categories: Travel Blog - Tags: australia, cricket, melbourne, sport

Blood in the Water – The most infamous water polo match ever

Written by James Clark on October 27, 2007 · 1 Comment

This week was the 61st anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, which began on October 23rd, 1956. This day is now a public holiday in Hungary, and as it fell on a Tuesday this year it made for an extra long weekend as many people took the Monday off as well.

Reading up on the events of that time I stumbled upon the event known as the Blood in the Water match. This was the meeting of Hungary and the USSR in the Pool at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics (it is known in Hungarian as the “Blood Bath of Melbourne”).

A documentary was made about it in 2006 called Freedoms Fury, which was produced by Lucy Liu and Quentin Tarantino.

Categories: Travel Blog - Tags: hungary, sport

Medieval football pitch – Rhodes Old Town

Written by James Clark on June 11, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Everywhere in Europe you see kids playing football in the most unusual locations due to the lack of urban space. Here the space between two fortified walls has been put to good use as a football ground.

[Football Ground - Rhodes Old Town]

Categories: Travel Blog - Tags: greece, rhodes, sport

Do you know Ricky Ponting?

Written by James Clark on March 4, 2007 · Leave a Comment

India is a land of an uncountable amount of Gods. Ricky Ponting (Australian cricket captain) apparently is one of them.

I have had a stream of Indian men approach me to talk cricket. I don’t know if it is always like this or if it is because the Cricket World Cup starts this month.

[Cricket World Cup Advertisement]

Before I came to India I had planned to read up on who’s who in the Indian cricket team, which I forgot to do. I need not have bothered as everyone wants to talk to me about the Australian team. So the days on the couch watching cricket in the summer just gone has paid off.

You are usually asked where you are from, and when you say Australia, the gushing praise of Ricky Ponting commences.

Here are some Ricky Ponting moments so far:

- Ricky Ponting is my favourite player. He came to our town and I have a picture of me and Ricky Ponting. It is my favourite picture and I have put it up in my room.

- Ricky Ponting is my favourite player. Do you like Ricky Ponting?
(me) Yes, of course. He is magnificent.
Do you know Ricky Ponting?
(me) No, sorry.
Ohh… (conversation abruptly ends)

- Ricky Ponting is my favourite player. I am so happy when Ricky Ponting makes 100 runs. I bet every game that he makes 100 runs.

[Men watching cricket]

[Azad Maidan]

Categories: Travel Blog - Tags: cricket, india, mumbai, sport

Kangaroo's for K-Town

Written by James Clark on June 24, 2006 · Leave a Comment

Woo Hoo!! Australia is through to the last 16 after another come from behind effort. I was in Earls Court London watching the game. Earls Court used to be known as Kangaroo Court in the 60′s when it was inhabited mostly by Aussies. They have long since been pushed further west from this prime inner London location, but you can still find many hostels and budget B and B’s here, as well as the pubs that Aussies congregate at for major events.

No one took me up on my offer for the Kangaroo deal. Well we have another chance now populate a pocket of Germany with inflatable kangaroos when we head back to Kaiserslautern to play Italy. The blow up kangaroos rated a mention in The Independent this week, so imagine the great press thousands would create.

Categories: Travel Blog - Tags: germany, sport

World Cup: Australia vs Brazil – Munich

Written by James Clark on June 20, 2006 · Leave a Comment

Guten Tag everyone

München

I went to Munich knowing I wouldn’t see the Australia v Brazil game live, but I wanted to be there in support anyway. Apparently there were over 50,000 Aussies in Munich, with the numbers made up from those that made the trip from Australia and a large contingency of UK based Aussies. It was impossible to tell though who had the biggest support base as both Australia and Brazil have the green and gold as their colours, so the streets of Munich was mostly a sea of yellow.

Being more nomadic than tribal, I don’t own any items that align me to a nation. Today was the one day I wanted to wear an Aussie shirt. Of all the shops I searched in Munich, none of them had any Australian gear. You could pick up shirts from Togo or Tunisia but the only green and gold was truckloads of Brazil T-shirts.

The Brazil T-shirt must be the third most popular shirt in the world, coming in behind the Che Guevara and Ramones T-shirt. People who wear these shirts usually have no revolutionary or leftist tendencies, or have listened to a Ramones album, and so too most people wearing the Brazil shirt weren’t speaking any Portuguese. I’m all for adopting a team if your country isn’t in the finals, but how obvious to choose Brazil!

Business Opportunity of the Week

Most of the Aussies, sensibly, came more prepared than I did. The most popular item of the day was the troop of inflatable kangaroos. They brought joy and merriment to non Australians everywhere they hopped. And why wouldn’t they? I would have bought one if they were on sale. I reckon I could have sold a thousand that day. Imagine how good it would have looked on worldwide television to see a stadium full of blow up kangaroos when (if) Australia scores a goal.

[Skippy waits for Munich's famous Glockenspiel show]

So, here is a business proposition for you. If you can deliver to me 1000 inflatable kangaroos to Stuttgart by thursday in time for the Australia v Croatia game, help me sell them and we can go halvies in the profits. I’m sure I’ve seen them at $2 shops and you could sell them here easily for €15.

While we have our comical zoo of animals that make us popular around the world, Brazil’s appeal most probably lies in its parades of scantily clad carnival girls.

[Friends From Brazil]