I am sorry, but every time Ange Postecoglou enjoys a stunning success – as he did this week with his Tottenham Hotspur team winning the Europa League – I do wish he’d credit me.
Listen, Ange, I made you, and I can break you!
For, Mr Postecoglou has long insisted, it was a question that TFF put to the then Socceroos coach eight years ago on Channel Nine’s Sports Sunday, if you remember it, which became a catalyst for his decision to leave the post.
“I hope [the Socceroos qualify for the World Cup],” I began, “and I think you will get there – and I don’t mean this in a nasty fashion – but if you don’t get there and you don’t qualify, would you resign to save them the trouble of sacking you? No, seriously … ”
(Oh, stop it. The Age’s soccer writer at the time, Michael Lynch, supported me. “I don’t think @Peter_Fitz knows a lot about football,” he tweeted, “and I don’t think he cares much about it either.” (To that point, I thought I’d pulled it off.) “But asking Ange if he would quit if they failed to beat the UAE was a legitimate question, if one that was, at that point in qualification, rather pessimistic.”
Well, Ange did see the Socceroos through to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and then he quit.
Tottenham head coach Ange Postecoglou holds up the Europa League trophy.Credit: AP
The way he told it to Fox Sports, the question I’d asked “jolted me a little bit … I thought after everything we’ve achieved and the journey we’re on, qualification in our hands, I said, ‘I’m not going to go down that path again where I allow external forces to decide my fate’.”
So he was out, OUT, do you hear me?
The rest is history. A great one. Sincere congratulations to him. And Tottenham would be insane to sack him, after he guided them to the club’s biggest success in 40 years. I made no apology for the question then, or now, and would like to think it was his turning point to the stars!
You’re welcome …
LIV and let die
I am sorry everyone, I am just going to have to go with me on this one. My dear friend Malcolm Knox made a case for LIV golf being successful last week, writing, “The bonus for LIV is that it has proved its credibility as a sporting competition. You only need to watch it to see how seriously competitive the players are.”
Sure, LIV Golf is competitive. But credible? Yeah, nah.Credit: Getty
As courteously discussed with him – ‘cos I dinkum love Malcolm – I respectfully beg to differ. I’ll take Malcolm’s word for it that when you crunch the numbers, the players’ games haven’t fallen away, but don’t care particularly. That the LIV players are competitive and good is no surprise whatsoever. If you pay billions of dollars for the best players in the world in any sport, and put them together, then of course they’ll be brilliant – and seriously competitive. But to prove its credibility as a sporting competition? Call me crazy, but I reckon, Malcolm, you’d need people to turn up, or at least care?
Neither is the case with LIV. Apart from the Adelaide tournament, the people who turn up at their shoot-fests are by and large so thin on the ground they look like “confetti in a graveyard,” to use John Arlott’s felicitous phrase. And the ratings are so abysmal, on some obscure cable channel in America – which was the only outfit they could get interested – that they stopped publishing them!
Beyond that, when do you ever hear anyone talk about a LIV result, a putt, a tournament, something that happened there? If you said never, you’d be right. Truly, the only time the LIV players come into frame when they emerge from the money mists to take their place in a major, before returning whence they came, wherever that is.
“Credibility as a sporting competition”? Yeah, nah.
It is an international joke of a thing, with billions of dollars put forward by a murderer to “sportswash” his reputation – and it has achieved nothing but renew the focus on whom that murderer is, anyway.
Malcolm points out, and fair enough, he wasn’t remotely defending the brutality of the regime, and in his piece noted the Saudi regime as “repugnant” and that “it will take more than a golf league to sportswash Riyadh.”
But I am equally firm that when it comes to a sporting competition being “credible”, you can’t go past no-one watching or caring, And nor can you ignore that the prime mover behind it,
Well, seeing as you ask, it was Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who, according to the CIA, approved the operation in which a 15-member team of Saudi operatives ambushed the uppity journalist Jamal Khashoggi and dismembered him with a bone saw.
Credibility as a sporting competition should be built on sterner stuff.
Oh boy, Danny …
Danny Care is the English Campo. He played 101 Tests for England across 15 years and had many stunning moments, and was very much liked by his own rugby public and teammates. He announced his retirement this week and so, of course, was asked his greatest memory.
Fearsome: Jonah Lomu.Credit: AP
“I played against Jonah [Lomu],” he replied immediately, recalling a match when he was 17 playing for Cardiff, and the great All Black winger was playing for Leeds. “Yeah, tackled him. I say, ‘Tackled’. I remember him bursting through. I was 70 kilos, and I remember he looked up at me and genuinely started smiling … started laughing, and he could have gone like either way. He could have run straight through me.”
Go on ….
“This is why I love Jonah. He just ran, like, as softly as he could to one of my shoulders. I grabbed one of his thighs, slipped down to his knees, slipped further down. I literally pulled him down by his shoelaces, by his bootlaces, and he just offloaded the ball quite nicely.
“And then I was lying on the floor, and he, I remember, picked me up and rubbed my head, and he went, ‘Well done, mate,’ and patted me away. And I was like, ‘Jonah let me tackle him’. I remember after that game just being like, ‘I played against Jonah Lomu’ and I actually say, “I tackled Jonah’.”
(Tears emoji.)
What They Said
The world’s most highly regarded sports television impresario, David Hill – no, not him, the other one, an Australian who lives in Los Angeles – was asked by Michael Koziol this week what he made of the NRL’s venture to Las Vegas. “If it happened, it totally didn’t touch the Los Angeles market. I didn’t see or hear anything about it.” Odd. Maybe it was “100 million homes … less one”. His.
Ange Postecoglou after guiding Tottenham to victory in the final of the Europa League: “It’s hard to put into words the emotions. Super proud of the players. To quote my favourite Australian prime minister, Paul Keating, after an unlikely victory,‘This is one for the true believers’.”
Ange on whether he will survive as manager into next season, after the team only finished just above the relegation zone in the EPL: “Even when I signed, Daniel [Levy] said, ‘We’ve gone after winners, and it didn’t work, now we’ve got Ange’. Mate, I’m a winner; win is what I do most. I’ve been a serial winner my whole career. It is what I have done more than anything else. All I have done my whole career is win things.”
Postecoglou with his victorious Tottenham players.Credit: Getty Images
James Magnussen, at one time “The Missile”, tragically telling the Herald’s Tom Decent what he injected into himself to take part in next year’s Druggie Dome “Enhanced Games” in – where else – Las Vegas: “We tried a few different things … The base of it was testosterone and then peptides. We used BPC-157, CJC-1295, Ipamorelin and Thymosin.” As discussed, Magnussen is a good man gone wrong.
James O’Connor on his growth: “Obviously, I was a part of the last Lions tour and I was a quarter of the player I am now. I had young legs and I was full of energy and bravado and confidence, but in terms of playing in that position at 10, I knew nothing compared to what I know now.”
Golfer Tyrrell Hatton at the US PGA not happy with his driver: “Piece of shit c–t.”
Hatton, afterwards: “I was running hot in that moment. I’m pretty good sometimes at saying the wrong thing.”
Waratahs coach Dan McKellar, after the loss to the Crusaders, on what he told his players at halftime: “I’ve been here a while now, a number of months now, and I think there are some things that are going to take time to change. There are some people that are too comfortable, and that needs to change. Because if you’re too comfortable, just happy to be here and wear the tracksuit, that will change. It’s the whole organisation.”
West Coast Eagles captain Oscar Allen on winning their first match of the season the day after former player Adam Selwood died: “It’s great to win a game of footy, but we’ve lost a legend of our club. We’re heartbroken and we just want to offer all the love and support we can to the Selwood family in this time. Today was more than just footy for us, this is about the West Coast community and we have lost one of our own.”
Broncos coach Michael Maguire on his side’s hot and cold, and getting colder, form: “We’re a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde team at the moment. We show such great stuff, and then we go the other way.”
Dragons coach Shane Flanagan after his side finally won a close one: “I was saying to myself, ‘Surely this can’t happen to us again’. There must be some sort of football god out there.” There is. But Wally retired a while back.
Oscar Piastri has come a long way when third place in a Formula One race is disappointing: “I just braked too early, and a good move by Max as well. Disappointing, and we made a few mistakes after that; not a great Sunday. Well done to Max and Red Bull, they had a great race pace today.”
Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the US anti doping agency on the Enhanced Games: “We desperately wish this investment was being made in the athletes who are currently training and competing the real and safe way. They are the role models this world so desperately needs and they are the ones who deserve our support – not some dangerous clown show that puts profit over principle.”
Team of the Week
Mark Nawaqanitawase. The former Wallaby – and don’t you forget it – scored the try of the century for the Roosters. At least the leaguies think so. For us of the union, just another try!
Lachlan Galvin. Told yers. The wunderkind appears to have been told by Wests Tigers he can leave. So much for having him locked down until the end of 2026. So how did that press release work out for them?
Ange Postecoglou. “I will tell you one thing, irrespective of tomorrow, I’m not a clown and never will be.”
West Coast Eagles. Finally won a match!
NSW Blues Women. Have the chance to wrap up a 3-0 State of Origin clean sweep in Newcastle on Thursday.
Bec and Will Waugh. The mother and son combination are running 84km across Bali for 84 to raise money for the Bali Children Foundation, which supports education for the wonderful Balinese people. They’ve been training for 20 weeks, and you can support them here.
Keaon Koloamatangi. On Sunday, for South Sydney against the Tigers, the prop ran with the ball for 282 metres in attack and made 49 tackles in defence. Still didn’t make the NSW Origin side!
Crystal Palace. Won the FA Cup for the first time in their 119-year history.
Central Coast Mariners. Won the A-League Women grand final on penalties.
Melbourne City. Good luck to them in the Women’s Asian Champions League final on Saturday night.
