Hey Robert Craddock...

Being chief sportswriter for the Courier Mail does not give you an exclusive license to comment on racing if you don't understand the sport. Being chief sportswriter for the Courier Mail means you are the chief sportswriter for a god-awful publication, but nonetheless, one that actually has people that know a little something about racing, unlike yourself. Don't write about racing ever again, because on your one racing masterpiece, it's clear you know nothing about racing, maybe less than you know about cricket. You are a fucking nonsense Craddock, how you are chief sportswriter of anything, even the abomination that is the Brisbane Courier Mail, I have no idea, and I hope sincerely you cop a sharp kick to the balls from both Luke Nolen and Nash Rawiller. I will be lining up right behind them. Oh yeah, right to the fucking ghoulies you clown...   

Johnson Watch

1st ODI, Australia vs Pakistan

Pattinson:  9.1 overs 3/19

Starc:  10 overs 5/42

Johnson: 9 overs 1/43

Thankfully for Australia, Johnson was able to pick up the absolutely crucial wicket of Tanvir.

Johnson goes nuts after picking up Pakistan's dangerous no. 9...

QLD Make It Eight/Nine Straight

QLD has been gifted a (record) eighth and (record) ninth straight Origin series victories today, after NSWRL conceded the 2013 and 2014 series, appointing Laurie Daley as Blues coach. Daley, a culpable selector for the Blues five consecutive, uncompetitive series losses between 2006 and 2010, takes over from Ricky Stuart, an actual coach, who still couldn't get the job done. 

Oh fucking hell, is that a fucking Maroons shirt already?!? If you can't beat 'em join 'em eh Loz!

 His head coaching CV includes five games at the helm for Country Origin (two wins), and three games in charge of the Indigenous All Stars (one win).  Despite a lack of coaching experience and success, and the fact that no Blues fan holds any hope for the next two years, Daley remains optimistic. “I think I know what is required. Phase one is working together as a team. Phase three is winning the Origin series." 

 Former Maroons halfback Allan Langer praised the decision. “I know Laurie is still very passionate about the NSW side and he'll do a very good job,” he said, trying to stifle a cheeky chuckle.

 A regular in the commentary box for Foxsports, Daley has shown great insight into the game of rugby league, particularly with classic predictions like "the team who comes out and scores the most points in this game will win", "what a competition we have, on any given day 1st can beat 16th" and on Origin, "New South Wales will need to score tries if they are going to beat Queensland".

 Daley reportedly beat out the actively job-seeking pair of Stephen Kearney and Nathan Brown for the position.

Can we expect Mitchell Johnson to get better?

It's an article of faith in Australian cricket circles that there is a well of untapped potential somewhere under Mitchell Johnson's mega-tough tattoos. The argument tends to run along the lines of:

• Mitchell Johnson is a 'once-in-a-generation' bowler (top pick Dennis!);
• All we need to do is wait for Mitch to realise his full potential.

This was highlighted by Chairman of Selectors, John Inverarity who noted that:

`We know how well he can bowl. That Test match against England in Perth when he got his action just right. It is in there somewhere, if we can provide the support and he can deliver than he is an outstanding player. Mitch has x-factor and of course.... Now he has to perform.'

So, can we expect a renaissance from Mitch? By awarding a contract to Johnson, Cricket Australia seems to think so. Rather than speculate on Mitch finding his X-FACTOR, I thought a more robust approach would be to see what the top fast bowlers over the last 20 years can tell us about what we can expect now from MITCH, and whether CA can expect much of a return on its investment.

I've gone to cricinfo and taken a sample of the highest wicket taking fast bowlers of the last 30 years. Effectively, to make this study, a bowler needs to have taken more than 200 test wickets and bowled a test match delivery in the 1990s. That gives a sample of almost 40 quick bowlers.

I'm interested in how many wickets that each bowler has taken by year of age. What I've come up with is a very rough aging curve for fast bowlers. This is what it looks like.

What does it tell us?

• Fast bowlers tend to enjoy some success at a young age, some of the better quick bowlers were showing a lot of promise in their late teens to early twenties.
• Fast bowlers have an 'injury nexus' at around 21/22 years of age. This isn't relevant to this post but it's really interesting information in light of Australia's ashes hopes being pinned to young bowlers like Pattinson and Cummins.
• Fast bowlers peak between the ages of 25 and 28.
• Fast bowlers tend to fall off gradually until they hit 31, and then decline much more rapidly from that point.

Mitch is 31.  His last two seasons have been disasters. So based on this rudimentary analysis, we could quickly make the case that perhaps Mitch is unlikely to get better. I'm happy to finish it there, but perhaps we would be well served to have a look at the data in a touch more detail and see whether these is still hope for Mitch. As such, I have broken the sample into three sections:

• bowlers who had long, stable careers (about half of the sample); 
• bowlers who found another gear in their early 30s (about 10 per cent of the sample); and 
• bowlers that declined rapidly from their peak years (about 40 per cent of the sample). 

Mitch can't fall into that first category given his performance over the last 2 years. 

These are the business as usual quicks, that keep on going into their early thirties. They don't get better, and they don't get worse in a hurry. These guys don't really match the profile we have seen with Mitch to date, so we've thrown them out (or at least I haven't bothered putting together a chart for them). Some of them start awesome, and stay awesome into their late thirties (McGrath, Ambrose). Some start out mediocre and continue to be mediocre (Vaas, Caddick, Martin). Anyway, they don't fit the profile that we are looking for so we'll move on to the two groups that do. 

So the career profiles that we have left are the guys that got better, and the guys that got worse.

The late bloomer

The career path that we could hope for in the best case scenario, and the one that CA appears to be banking on given Johnson's inclusion in ODI squads for both England, and now Pakistan appears to be that Mitch will improve at age 31.
Out of our sample of almost 40 bowlers, only four found another gear in their early thirties as it were.

The late bloomers effectively amount to:

• Two of the greatest fast bowlers of all time - Courtney Walsh and SIR Richard Hadlee;
• Alan Donald who took 80 test wickets at age 32; and
• A toiler who had the best season of his career at age 33 - go Merv!

There isn't a particularly good comparison for Mitch on this list. The first two guys on the list are two of the smartest bowlers that I have watched play the game. Bowlers who lost yards of pace and still found ways to get an ass-load of batsmen out. Alan Donald's body was spared the grind of test cricket until Apartheid was lifted in 1991 which may have helped delay his peak a bit. And Merv. I have no explanation for Merv.

The rapid decline 

This is the other category that Mitch can fit in to given his profile to date. Bowlers who fell off dramatically from 29 to 31 years of age. The sample is full of bowlers that fit this profile, but I've picked six for the chart below. These guys were good (Hoggard) to excellent for their peak years, but all of these guys were completely spent forces by 30 apart from Waqar who was gone by 31.

These careers look like good comparators for Johnson, in fact one bowler in particular has looked pretty similar.

Yep, Mitchell Johnson is a poor man's Steve Harmison. You would hope in a post-Argus world that CA would undertake this kind of analysis, but Johnson's continuing presence in the squad and my Ashes nightmares means that they probably haven't.

Ashes 2013. Get excited!

Johnson Watch

Well Mitch Johnson is all fired up and ready to go for the final ODI, that incidentally, means nothing. Talking the talk for the dead rubber he is:

"There's maybe a bit of fire missing in our one-day side. My role in the team is I want to have that fire in the belly, get really aggressive, show them that we're serious and get on top of them. It could take a few games, it might be the next game where it all switches back on for me."


Is this guy fucking for real?!?

For more extensive bollocks, some of the most extensive bollocks imaginable:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/current/story/571697.html

Fucking laughable. I was not really watching an AFL game at the weekend and heard Dermott Brereton even taking a potshot at Johnson's wayward bowling. So more of the same I'm boldly predicting:

The Great Debate: Who Sucks More?

Arriving home from Suncorp Stadium, after yet another Origin series loss, all I could think about was how much I fucking loathe Ben Creagh. So much so that I stunned the Qld bogans sitting around me at the game when I unleashed a stinging torrent of abuse at him after he went down like the softcock he is. After directing him towards the bench, questioning his commitment/skills/ticker/sexuality, hollering "You're nothing but a waste of a fucking interchange!" and wondering why this pussy is taking game time off a courageous cover tackle merchant like Luke Lewis, I pointed out to the rednecks that I realised he was "on our team" but I didn't care because he's shit, and a girly-man. Here's what I'm fucking talking about:

NB: Thaiday, who picks exclusively on Mitchell Pearce because he's small, senses that Creagh is a cat and moves in for some bullying...    

I was just as disgusted when I flicked on the 2nd ODI in England the other night to see Mitchell Johnson named in the side. So let me get this straight...a guy bowls pies all summer and takes no wickets despite the fact we are smashing the Indians, then gets injured and doesn't play for 6 months, and not only do we find a seat on the plane to England for him, we rush him back into the side as soon as possible? He's been fucking terrible for as long as I can remember and this has been well-documented here. Not to mention that last time he was in England he had a fucking meltdown because his Mum said she doesn't like his girlfriend. And bowled overs and overs of fucking garbage. At the top of his run, all this bitch could think about was how Mummy could be so mean rather than how he was going to knock over the Poms. And he even fucking admitted it. Fucking weak as piss. To be fair, he bowled particularly well for his 0/43 off 7 overs the other night, with a career low of only 2 wides. Promising stuff. If the Poms were smart, they'd tank the rest of this ODI series and deliberately throw their wicket away to Johnson. All of their wickets. The selectors will see 10/66 and he'll be thrust into the Ashes series. Think about it England...you know it just as much as I do:

     

So who sucks more? Two useless, weak-minded deadshits, that know just how to rub up the selectors. I can't split them...and the debate will rage on.....

Posted without comment

Things That Suck In Sport

The McIntyre System. The drawing of lots. The AFL Rulebook circa 2012. The 2-3-2 NBA Finals System. Just to name a few...

What is with the 2-3-2 system? The rest of the playoff series' are 2-2-1-1-1. But the Finals become an absolute joke when Lebron James races to a 3-1 lead, I mean Miami race to a 3-1 lead, with a chance to close out the championship on their home floor. Which of course would mean that through 5 games they have played more games at home than the higher seeded Thunder...that just should never happen. Ever. What's the point of the Thunder being top seed if they don't even fucking make it back home?!? You'd rather be seeded lower, pinch one of the first two on the road and never look back! Bullshit!

  The scene for Game 6 if the Thunder don't get their shit together!

Pictures Tell A Thousand Words

I don't feel I need to really go on too much about this but I must say:

In *slow motion*, Farah "kicked" the ball. Into Inglis' hand. The ball went backward off Farah's boot/forward off Inglis' hand. The ball hit the ground. Knock on. Any day, any time, anywhere, anyhow, no matter how much piss you've drunk or how many lines of coke you've snorted. Knock on. Period.

Worst call ever.

*At full speed, there is no way known Farah had time to deliberately play at the football, it is an impossibility of physics to suggest he did so. He was stepping back to the inside and looking nowhere near where the ball was. It shouldn't have mattered anyway because, like I said, the ball went forward off Inglis' hand. And that is an undeniable fact to everyone other than that fucking faggot who manned the video ref's box...*

Anyway, watch the replays. Judge for yourself ...

Worst call ever.

That is all.

NSW Origin 2012 - Same Old Fucking Nonsense It Seems...

  The first thought that came to mind when looking at the 2012 NSW team on paper was "What the fuck is Bird doing at fullback?". The second thought I had was "What the fuck is Uate doing on the bench?". To Sticky and Bozo, announcing a 17-man squad in alphabetical order and in no particular postion might seem really clever, but to the Captain it's completely stupid, incredibly annoying, unnecesarily confusing, and quite frankly, it's just fucking amateur hour.

  Now down to business. Trent Merrin is an okay player. Ben Creagh is a fucking sissy who ran away from Sam Thaiday and Justin Hodges. Anthony Watmough, I'll grant that he's dumb as a fucking post, but he is an Origin player in every sense of the word, has played inspiring football in every Origin he's played, and I actually doubt that he's ever played a bad game of footy in his entire life. So this is a fucking disgrace. Why an okay player and a fucking pansy are picked over Watmough, I'll never know. And more to the point, I don't want to know. Because I'll just want to fucking hit someone. Unlike Ben Creagh who is scared of Sam Thaiday and Justin Hodges, and probably his own shadow. Fucking cat...

  I also have no idea why Robbie Farah circa 2012 is a more tantalising proposition than previous versions. The 2012 Tigers have been shit, he's been pretty fucking average, and quite frankly, he has never given me any indication that he's an Origin player. Ennis was solid as a rock in the Origins he has played, and to boot, Qlder's hate him. So why change it? The only reason you would change the starting hooker is if you would want the second best hooker in the country (unfortunately for him, the second best hooker at the Melbourne Storm), Ryan Hinchcliffe in the side. No disrespect to Jamie Buhrer, I quite like the kid, but I find it pretty fucking frustrating when NSW pick two hookers and neither of them is in the top two hookers in the land, or a proven Origin player...

In summary: No Watmough = fucking outrageous disgrace. Farah = untrustworthy/not in top 5 hookers in the country. Merrin = 1/10 x Watmough. Creagh = homo/not even close to as good as Watmough/pussy/not an Origin player/scared of unscary people like Hodges and Thaiday (who picked on Dugan/Soward/Pearce exclusively last year...you're a fucking tough cunt Sammy.....).

I love the Blues and would happily eat my words for a long awaited series victory, so I just hope these fuckers prove me wrong...