Still in the realms of colour and movement in the oft too antiseptic world of sport, an interesting thing has happened at St George Illawarra, and that’s not something we say often.
See, despite their two successive losses to start the season, the Dragons’ winger Christian Tuipulotu – who is off-contract at the end of the season, and looking for a contract – has done well, scoring three fabulous tries against the Bulldogs and a thrilling four-pointer against Souths to be the NRL’s leading try-scorer as we speak.
The “problem” has been his post-try celebration. It is a combination of thumping his chest, and rubbing his fingers together on both hands in the manner of Jerry Maguire shouting “Show me the money!”
It is outrageous, narcissistic, hot-dogging and … fabulous. A flash of brilliant colour in the otherwise flat, grey sea, a gong of song in an otherwise monotonal dirge.
But the coach, Shane Flanagan, has unilaterally announced he will put a stop to it.
“He won’t be doing them again, trust me,” Flanagan has said. “He will be told, ‘don’t you worry’. I don’t know where it’s coming from but it won’t be happening anymore. We’ll address it.”
Christian Tuipulotu’s try celebrations are on the nose at the Dragons.Credit: Getty Images
Mistake, coach. Big mistake.
For starters, look at his contract. You get to control, true, how often and where he trains, and obviously whether you pick him or not. But show us the part in the contract where you control how he does or doesn’t celebrate tries?
Clause 3, paragraph 4. After scoring a try, the player agrees to do no more than two fist pumps horizontally, neither lasting more than a second, and four high-fives. It is agreed he can point to the sky and mouth thank you Jesus, and do one sign of the cross, but he may not do both high-fives and sky-pointing.
Please.
Doing things his way, he has scored four tries in otherwise underwhelming performances from the Dragons. But you want to peremptorily crush the way he does things, and have him do it your way? Do you really think that might deliver five tries in the next two matches?
Beyond that, two things.
What chance creativity and confidence will flourish under a coach with such a my-way-or-the-highway attitude? I’d take the highway, and I’ll bet Tuipulotu will, too.
And secondly, compelling teams deliver great sporting theatre. In this theatre, Tuipulotu may be something between a clown and a leading actor, but characters like him, doing stuff like that, are precisely what sport needs.
Let him get on with it! Let him try stuff and if he stuffs tries in so doing, then berate him. But, right now, with four tries in two matches, I’d be inclined to say “I don’t what the hell you think you’re doing, Christian … but can you please do more of it?”
In the meantime, coach Flanagan, while I have your no doubt rapt attention, another thing.
After the loss to Souths, you publicly blamed your halfback Lachlan Ilias – who is coming back from a broken leg – for the defeat.
Seriously? In what world is publicly humiliating a young player the way forward to build a team your players are proud to play for, and have them firing on all cylinders?
This, even more than your ban on try celebrations, felt like bullying – even if you did subsequently apologise – and totally counter-productive. Lighten the hell up!
Australian Dyson Daniels in action for the Atlanta Hawks.Credit: AP
Great Barrier Thief. Now, that’s a nickname
TFF, as you know, has long bemoaned the poor state of Australian sporting nicknames. Back in the day, they were so clever. What else were they going to call Reg Gasnier, the magic Dragon, than “Puff”? And from the first moment someone called the Newtown Jets fullback Phil Sigsworth “Whatsapackata”, it was game over. Ditto, “Waltzing” Matt Hilder, and Chris “Howya” Phelan, and even the soccer player known as “Jigsaw” – because “he used to go to pieces in the box” or the rugby coach of my own acquaintance, known as “tow-truck” because at any given moment he was on his way to a breakdown.
By and large, these days, there seems to be bugger-all creativity used in nicknames, as they simply add an “-o” or a “-y” to the last name – “Benny”, “Sheensy”, “Jacko” etc – and call it a day-o.”
At last, however, a breakthrough, coming – from all places – from the USA, where Australia’s own Dyson Daniels is tearing them up in the NBA for the Atlanta Hawks. Daniels has recorded the most steals in an NBA season since 2009. So what do they call this leader in the field of stolen stats?
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the … “Great Barrier Thief.”
Star-spangled awesome
Love this.
See, a little over two decades ago, when she was just thirteen years old, Natalie Zito was granted the supreme honour of singing the American national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, before an NBA playoff match between Portland and Dallas.
Alas, alas, somewhere between “the dawn’s early light”, and the “twilight’s last gleaming” – with all the crowd, and the cameras and the lights – she gets completely lost, and freezes, feeling “hopeless and helpless.”
Her voice warbles off into nothingness.
But what now?
A hand on her shoulder. It is Portland coach Maurice Cheeks. As a player himself, he had been credited with 7392 assists. Call this his 7393rd and most important.
“It’s alright,” he says, “it’s alright … We’re not gonna do this … you’re going to finish this song.”
And now, Cheeks starts singing with her and encourages the crowd to join in. She is saved, and forever grateful to him.
“She finished to a rousing ovation and melted into Cheeks’ chest,” a contemporary account runs.
This week, she was given another chance before Portland played the New York Knicks. Who should be the assistant coach of the Knicks? None other than Maurice Cheeks. The two met before the game and talked about that night, and then she went out and nailed the anthem.
“This moment changed my life,” she said afterwards, referring to what had happened all those years ago. “And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I would not go back in time and change it at all. Seeing him and seeing that he’s still the stand-up guy today that he was back then, it’s amazing.”
Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer do battle in Yugoslavia in 1992.Credit: AP
Spassky’s Australian adventures
TFF received an amazing response to my piece on the death of erstwhile world chess champion Boris Spassky, a fortnight ago. The famed ABC producer David Salter tells me that back in 1989, he helped organise for the Russian to visit Sydney, at his instigation.
Salter’s son Michael was a keen player at the time, and good enough to win the Australian Junior Lightning (5-minute) chess title. In return for $5000, airfares and accommodation, Spassky arrived and played a number of “simuls” – a match in which one grandmaster plays up to 20 others simultaneously, moving from board to board.
The Sydney simul was in Sydney at the David Jones store in Chatswood and among those Spassky played that night was ABC boss David Hill, who swears he put up a good fight! The 12-year-old Michael Salter, wonderfully, managed a draw.
“Boris,” Salter tells me, “was a lovely, gentle man and not your typical chess obsessive.”
He further notes, “Strictly by the rules of the match he should have won that 1972 world championship. Fischer refused to play at least one early game (a forfeit counts as a loss), but Spassky sportingly convinced his team to accept them as null-and-void ‘no scores’.
Another Sydneysider, Nick Pronin met Spassky in 1974, while on a world backpacking tour and staying with his Russian uncle in New York.
“Uncle Mike announced one night we will have some dinner guests tonight. Boris, one of his wives, and an interpreter. This is not long after the whole Bobby Fischer game which transfixed the world. I was informed the ‘interpreter’ was in fact a KGB operative keeping an eye on Boris, so ‘be careful what you say’.”
Spassky proved to be “absolutely charming, and spoke perfect English”, so the interpreter was a little beside the point. Much of the evening is a blur, for the fact that the vodka came out shortly after his arrival. The least that can be said is that the interpreter didn’t cramp his style, for Pronin remembers many toasts to the “Tsar”, and “Tsarina” – both dead for over 50 years, courtesy of the Commies.
Bizarre, I know. But if you only truly die when people stop talking about you, Spassky appears to have a good time to go, yet!
What they said
Gout Gout on his primary emotions as he hit the final turn of the 200m at the Queensland Athletics Championships, on his way to being the first Australian to break the 20 second barrier for the 200m, even if this one was wind-assisted: “I felt literally free. I had 80-metres left to go, and I thought, let’s just send it. And only from then did I believe I had a chance of going sub-20.”
Parramatta Eel, Shaun Lane on their start to the season, which has seen nearly a century of points scored against them: “It’s only two results out of a long season … We’re not sure how long it’s going to take. It could take the full season until we’re up and running.” As a serious point, Shaun, nup. It will take the full season and more if you take that attitude. Those first two performances either revolt your soul, or they don’t. If they don’t, you’re wasting everyone’s time.
Sharks coach Craig Fitzgibbon on his star player: “Nicho Hynes is probably criticised more than most world leaders… he was very good tonight, what did you think?”
Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir: “It’s not the brand of footy we want to be playing.”
James Tedesco after the Roosters defeated the Panthers: “I reckon that was our greatest win as a club, given the amount of players we have got out. To do that against a full-strength Panthers, that was our greatest win”. Nup. Greatest wins as a club, come in finals series, and maybe even final matches to get into finals. They don’t ever come in round two.
England captain Maro Itoje cheering for Scotland against France in the Six Nations: “Maybe I’ll start singing ‘The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond’.”
French captain Gregory Alldritt after they won the Six Nations: “All we wanted was to see Antoine Dupont lift the trophy. It’s done. We’ve had difficult moments in the past. To say that it’s behind us we’ll have to wait for [the] 2027 [World Cup]. See you next year, we want more.”
Bellarus tennis star Aryna Sabalenka. Credit: AP
Aryna Sabalenka still processing her Australian Open final loss to Madison Keys after defeating her last week: “I wish I would play like that in Australia.”
Oscar Piastri after he tried too hard to win the Australian Grand Prix: “Yeah, tried to push a bit too much I guess. In those conditions, it’s very difficult to judge just how slippery it’s going to be. I think from one lap to the next it had really changed a lot and I could see Lando going off in front of me, but I was also already in the corner basically, so there wasn’t much I could do to slow myself down at that point.”
Eels coach Jason Ryles after another bad loss: “It probably doesn’t look like it but there’s a lot of good signs there in regards to some individuals.” No, it doesn’t look like that.
Tigers centre, Adam Doueihi on how turning to Jesus healed him – no really – after rupturing his ACL for the third time: “It’s hard to explain to people who are not of faith or follow Catholicism or Christianity, but by me turning to Him and speaking to Him one on one, if it wasn’t for Him, I wouldn’t have come back from this injury. I truly believe that.” And good luck to him, I say! I’d rather Jesus worked his magic for the kids in war zones, but daren’t say so. Oh, wait.
New IOC president Kirsty Coventry.Credit: Getty Images
Team of the week
Kirsty Coventry. The Zimbabwean becomes the first woman to hold the post of IOC president, first African, and easily the youngest at 41. She is a five-time Olympian, having competed in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016, winning seven medals, two of them gold. She beat out Lord Sebastian Coe and Juan Antonio Samaranch jnr.
Socceroos. Had a huge World Cup qualifying win over Indonesia. Now head to Hangzhou to take on China on Tuesday.
Waratahs. Take on the Brumbies on Saturday night and need to bounce back from a disappointing loss last week to the Reds. (Too many box-kicks, but don’t get me started.)
Roosters. Let that be a lesson to everyone. Nobody, and especially not the Panthers, beats them eleven times in a row.
Illawarra Hawks and Melbourne United. Play the decisive fifth game of the NBL finals on Sunday. The first four have all been won by the team on the road. Good luck to both.
South Australia and Queensland. Contesting the Sheffield Shield final.
Twitter: @Peter_Fitz
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