Yes, the authorities sending out a really strong message!

While it is naturally enjoyable to see Kangarooshire in a bit of bother, you can't help thinking what a self-inflicted injury this is. Just before The Ashes the squad picked to represent Australia was widely and heavily ridiculed in their home country. They then prove everybody wrong by thoroughly outplaying England. From no-hopers to a powerful team with only good to come it seemed. And now this. My heart bleeds.

Ball tampering is only a Grade 2 offence .... I think a three match ban is the harshest penalty they can administer

BUT ......by initially saying he wouldn't stand down ; Smith has made matters far worse . He's made the whole of Australia a target for the snipers .

It wont stop there , he will be sacked along with Warner , lose whatever sponsorship deals .... he'll face a sh*t storm when he returns to Australia .... the one match ban will be the least of his worries .

I generally admire the toughness Aussies display in playing international sport, although I'm not a big fan of sledging from any team - and think that stump mikes and 3rd umpires should be used to punish excessive abuse. Cheating however I despise, whether it's diving footballers, doping athletes or ball tampering cricketers. It all demeans sport.
I enjoy watching my son play for his youth team more than top level football these days as the kids play hard but fair.

The reaction in Oz to all of this has been quite refreshing.

Yes I saw Simon Doull and Mark Richardson in a tea break NZ v England ......saying all teams had tried different little techniques , scratching one side with your fingernails etc etc

After all continually polishing one side is an attempt to do just that ........ but to sit down , have a committee meeting to cheat is slightly different

The other difference is those Kiwis you talk of ...... weren't caught

Ageed. Also, how dim are the Aussies in thinking they could get away with it, given all the TV cameras employed? Astonishing stupidity to compound the cheating!

Out of Wenger bunker he emerges with actually a sensible comment.

Kiwi is correct - this team have no idea what is waiting them in Australia. Time and again it has been mentioned how this damages all our sports teams and our country as well. The term that keeps coming up is overprivileged.

Hoy, I am sure you will join with me in saying Warner out, Smith out and Wenger out.

Let me see how would you summarise he fiasco.

A leadership group hatch a plot to cheat - something most of their own countrymen do not like
The execution of the plan is so childish that it alone is open to ridicule
they get caught
the leadership group actually admit they made a plan
the team then totally collapse in the test match
Do the words couldn't organise a root in a brothel with a fist full of 50's ring any bells.

I don't think I have seen so many people in Australia angry about a sports team as the current issue.

As an example at the newsagency this morning. The woman owner who has never spoken about sport to me or within my hearing is asked by the customer in front of me is asked 'how was your weekend'.
Reply 'I have never been more disgusted and annoyed by anyone than the cricket team'. discussion ensues.

Coffee shop mentioned by a number of people. Every news channel led it again today. The Aust Sports Commissioner on telling us he wants action and it is a time for a reset of the culture of the cricket team. The damage to the countries other sporting teams is immense.

There have been calls for all players involved plus coach plus any others working with the players to go.

Cockhead Michael Clarke who loves to be in the news back on hoping Smith does not feel like he is a prisoner in his own home when he returns. Personally Smith, Warner, Bancroft the coaches would all go. 2 year suspension from the Aust team for Bancrft Warner and Smith and none would ever be entitled to captain Australia at any level.

Think Smith might want to consider a couple of years in England if he can find a club.

So how do you tell young players it is not okay to cheat, it is not okay to verbal players when you get them out, it is not okay to put your shoulder into a player you have just got out after this current test series. The whole series has failed to dish out appropriate punishments and the game is the poorer for it.

I wasn't particularly over enamoured with Smith in the first place but I'm now starting to feel quite sorry for the bloke .

Okay he made a mistake ; a terrible judgement call ; but now his every waking thought is filled with " How could I have been so stupid ' ....... Pretty tough .

Rumblings of that *%^@ Michael Clarke returning .

Carrying on with the cricket theme .... the poxy little country have just this minute beaten the Poms only the ninth time in a hundred years but we're happy .

I though the weather was going to save them at one stage. Did you see in he NRL Manly have been caught for salary cap breaches. Released today to take the heat off the NRL.

Yes there was a story that Clarke was willing to come back as captain. I never want to see him anywhere near an Aust team ever again. The only person he is interested in is himself.

As for Smith, the cricket team have been seen as prima donnas for a long time and people are more than happy now to slip in the boot. Me included. Should never have admitted anything. Tell them nothing take them nowhere.

Steady on you old guanaco

... you blokes aren't so sweet smelling , why just ta other day Douglas Jardine and 'Arold Larwood were hatching a scheme to cripple Don Bradman ... much worse than ball tampering .

Tune for the second test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=282N-EvZtXI

No didn't know about Manly .... saw they got smashed by the Rabbits . Have been really enjoying the league this year with so many players changing clubs .
I support the Roosters ... Cooper Cronk was a master class last night .

However low your opiinion of Arsene, he surely can't be bracketed with those two reprobates!

It will be interesting to see what happens when the Australian cricketers get back home. Like Tottenham fans the Australian public are ever ready to turn on their own when they lose. This could be messy, or fun, depending where you come from. Most poignant moment so far for me was listening to Adam Gilchrist's reaction to it all. One of the greatest ever sportsmen absolutely confounded by it.

Yes, well done. You have had the most sporting cricket team for years, and talented too. I recently spent a month in New Zealand. What a beautiful country it is.

Warner not getting banned is actually funny, considering he admitted being involved.

The episode comes across as amateurish, but it seems very likely that the bungling Bancroft was given the job because Warner was under such scrutiny. There was intense suspicion that Warner was up to no good from the beginning of the series such that by the 2nd test he couldn't pick his nose or scratch his nuts, let alone heavily bandage his fingers, without the cameras being on him every time the ball came to him.

This does throw some suspicion on Starc's ability to extract reverse swing so early on. Reverse swing was notably diminished in the 3rd test ...

Also, I wonder if Smith's feet of clay as a batsman have been exposed? His captaincy has also been mediocre.

Nice one. Have this! Anything can happen in the second Test!

https://youtu.be/HL42PhXpf9g

Smith is a tremendous batsman, rather in the Cook run-compiler mould. Whatever damage is done to his reputation by this affair should not diminish his batting record. He averages over 60 in getting on for 120 Test innings - a remarkable achievement by any measure. And he is not yet 29 years of age. If he ever plays Tests again he could rewrite the record book. He has had a lean run in this present series but South Africa's attack is fearsome enough to unsettle anybody.

Well I hope he and Warner do not get lengthy bans from CA. The rules against ball tampering should be tightened up and made more stringent by the ICC, but it seems there is a large dollop of hypocrisy in the Ossie outrage and wanting to scapegoat Smith and Warner, I think.

Nobody else happy about Elneny extending his contract?

Can we have some other emotional options please?

I'm happy and would be even more happy if he could partner up with Mkhi in midfield.

I am waiting with baited breath for American Gooner's view on the cricket. I feel sure he has an opinion.

Indeed. He doesn't block Hoy so it will be on his radar.

Odds on Thomas Tucel being manager after he turned down Bayern.

Would represent replacing one defensively incompetent manager with another.

Not according to Sky Sports who say he isn't keen on the Arsenal job because he doesn't see us as an elite club, and that he would prefer the Bayern job.

http://www.skysports.com/amp/football/n ... to-arsenal

Should have PM'd me prior , could have met for a coffee ... I'd have been on my best behaviour .


"Beautiful country " ... on the surface and in the tourist brochures YES

Behind the facade anything but ... introduction of oppossums , rabbits , stoats , rats , deer , pigs and weasels has devastated native forests , and native wildlife , the poisoned baits [ banned in the rest of the world 2-4 - 5 T we still use it ] pollutes the land .


Each cow has the excrement capacity equivalent to 14 humans ...we have 10 million ...cr*p , urine and farm fertiliser a magic cocktail of viruses , hormones etc heads unrestricted into the waterways .
This has lead to a rise in giardia , campylobacter and massive increase in weed which fouls the lakes ; algae bloom has made the same unsafe to swim in .

Some idiot released koi carp into rivers which has multiplied off the scale to the detriment of all other species .

They are going to allow GM crops .

Plenty of waffle about curing the problems ; so expensively funded Think Tank puts forward this and that but nothing happens .... farming is the country's main earner ; so we really have painted ourselves into a corner .

We are fed this bullsh*t rhetoric by the big corporations of the benefits of meat , butter , cheese and milk ....shoot the poxy cows grow organic soy beans , carrots , greens ...we'd be far healthier.

Sorry for the gloomy post but in reality the future is quite bleak .

If there is any semblance of truth to this, please, please let it happen.

https://www.yahoo.com/style/arsenal-rep ... 00382.html

German newspaper Kicker has reported that former Borussia Dortmund boss Thomas Tuchel will take over at Arsenal this summer.

The 44-year-old German would follow a number of senior hires that have arrived in recent years and loosened Arsene Wenger’s iron-grip on the North London club.
While Wenger is determined to fulfil his contract, which runs until 2020, it is thought that even a Europa Cup win will not save the 68-year-old Frenchman from an early exit.

Tuchel's potential appointment doesn’t come without controversy. He famously fell out with Arsenal’s Head of Recruitment, Sven Mislintat, during their time at Dortmund.

A power struggle over transfer targets and recruitment became so toxic that Tuchel eventually banned Mislintat from the training ground.

It was one of the reasons why Mislintat joined Arsenal after a decade at the German club, and he soon proved instrumental in attracting Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkjitaryan to the Emirates – two players he had previously scouted and brought to Dortmund.

Despite reportedly rejecting Bayern Munich for the role, Arsenal fans aren’t too keen on the potential appointment – and the drama it could bring.

The thing is, even if Welbeck dived (as certainly seemed the case when I saw it), it was a decision in the moment, directly influenced by his opponent's movement to partially block his path (a bit like Pires vs Portsmouth all those years ago, rather than that South American one doing the rounds recently). The Aussies in this case, chatted, planned and coerced the new boy into a premeditated action that took place over a period of time and then took turns at attempting to cover it up until it was clear there was nowhere to hide.

Its closer to Pocchetino semi-admitting that he coaches his players to dive in advance...if he made his new youth player the diver in chief.

It's Smith's attitude, and the fact they got Bancroft to do it that I find so galling. Gutless too.

Warner really is a scumbag. It doesn't get printed for fear of libel without recorded evidence, but its pretty common knowledge that he goes after players, their wives, their kids, their race, alleged sexuality etc etc, but squeals like a piglet as soon as he gets any stick back. It must be very tempting just to beat seven shades out of him and take the punishment.

Its just cowardly and the players in question have rightly decimated their reputations.

Indeed. It just makes him look as though he lacks courage, awareness, maturity and a clear moral compass. If he'd been willing to step down, he could have very easily put the whole thing to bed "Under the pressure of an ill-tempered series, I allowed myself to contemplate and agree with a course of action I've never previously considered.....blah blah". Now it makes us all wonder how long its been going on, and whether that's why the Aussies have spent the last year taped up to the nines. I mean England were toast in the ashes anyway, but this, along with the images of Bancroft scooping sugar granules into his pocket during that series does raise the question, 'how long have this lot been at it?', particularly with how their general on and off field behaviour has in recent times sunk some way below that of their immediate predecessors (Though Clarke and Ponting were hardly saints, they could take it as well as give it).

When he gets in, he is so good to watch. He can look so totally unruffled when on his game, as if he's doing a spot of gardening.

Will deffo say that the Aussie reaction back home has been both refreshing and revealing. I mean as a nation, Aussies can be just as hypocritical as anyone else, and certainly the rampant racism I witnessed in various parts of Oz was a shock that stuck with me, but if there's three things the Aussies always hate, its a poppy grown too tall, a coward who won't take the cop, and a cheat...and there's a few in the current side that hit all three strikes.

The fact that the struggling youngster was put up to it, and that the whole thing was so bungled AND the subsequent attempt to cover up via walkie-talkies, just makes so many people look so so bad simultaneously.

I'm not even an Aussie, but I found myself getting angry and upset about it. The simple cheating was a relatively mild annoyance, and up to a point quite funny that they were caught, but the attitude of Smith and the silences of Warner and Lehmann, and the other elements that surround the actual incident itself, have left me feeling very angry. Certainly it makes the soon to be ex-captain look like a remarkably ignorant and naive man-child, and the lack of any offers of resignation or expressions of understanding the gravity of things is fairly contemptible to be honest. You can't be a leader if you refuse to show leadership or take proper responsibility when tested.

Ah, you lot are pretty good at home these days, and that bowling attack has been underrated for a while (partly to not often enough all being fit simultaneously). And Williamson is obviously class.

Definitely made it hit home harder. Gilchrist was a player you wanted to dislike because he was so utterly destructive against a decade of English bowlers, but his on-field conduct and off-field manner meant you couldn't help like and respect him. He never got involved in the nasty stuff, walked when he edged a wide one or missed a straight one, and owned up if he didn't quite make a catch, and still managed to be the guy who totally revolutionised the wk/batsman role. Proved that if you are good enough you don't actually have to get particularly close to the line.

Hearing Jim Maxwell so cut up about it, touched me too. As did one online interview with a random aussie bloke in his 50s who was literally holding back tears.

When it means so much to the great, the good and the everyday man, it makes it all the more stupid.

I'm happy. He's not a player one gets excited about, but he's a decent squad player, capable of playing with some discipline, can fulfill a couple of roles and is willing to try to do some of the heavy lifting for some of our more delicate types. Plus I think he's improving.

Indeed. Besides the story is nonsense. Given that we've just handed the scouting keys to Mislentat, hiring the bloke who forced him out of Dortmund by banning him from the training ground would be incompetent even by Arsenal standards.