Download or read book A Thoroughly Unhelpful History of Australian Sport written by Titus O'Reiley and published by . This book was released on 2017-11-20 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When it comes to sport, Australians are mad. Completely, irrationally insane. It's the closest thing we have to a culture. From Don Bradman's singular focus to Steven Bradbury's heroic not falling over, sport has shaped our sense of self. But how did we get here? Part history, part social commentary and a lot of nonsense, Titus O'Reily, Australia's least insightful sports writer, explains. Covering Australian Rules, League, Union, soccer, cricket, the Olympics and much more, Titus tackles the big topics, like: How not to cheat the salary cap The importance of kicking people in the shins The many shortcomings of the English Titus takes you through the characters, the pub meetings, the endless acronyms, the corruption and the alarming number of footballers caught urinating in public. Sport is important - gloriously stupid, but important. To understand Australia you must understand its sporting history. With this guide you sort of, kind of, will."
Download or read book A Thoroughly Unhelpful History of Australian Sport written by Titus O'Reily and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it comes to sport, Australians are mad. Completely, irrationally insane. It's the closest thing we have to a culture. From Don Bradman's singular focus to Steven Bradbury's heroic not falling over, sport has shaped our sense of self. But how did we get here? Part history, part social commentary and a lot of nonsense, Titus O'Reily, Australia's least insightful sports writer, explains. Covering Australian Rules, League, Union, soccer, cricket, the Olympics and much more, Titus tackles the big topics, like- A How not to cheat the salary capA The importance of kicking people in the shinsA The many shortcomings of the English Titus takes you through the characters, the pub meetings, the endless acronyms, the corruption and the alarming number of footballers caught urinating in public. Sport is important - gloriously stupid, but important. To understand Australia you must understand its sporting history. With this guide you sort of, kind of, will.
Download or read book A Thoroughly Unhelpful History of Australian Sport written by Titus O'Reily and published by Michael Joseph. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Covering League, Aussie Rules, Tennis, Cricket, Football, Swimming, Netball, Union, Quidditch and many more, Titus looks at how sport has united Australians and given them something to do in their spare time. Part history, part social commentary and part the ravings of a madman, Titus examines- League vs Union, what it says about you as a person ; Why it's the AFL's fault that Victorians are so awful ; How soccer is the biggest threat to Australia since Communism ; Can you not like sport and be an Australian? ; The etiquette of watching sport ; Cricket, is not boring, OK Sharon? ; Horse racing, not just about betting but mostly about betting ; The Olympics or why Australia is only important every four years."--
Download or read book A Sporting Chance written by Titus O'Reily and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2018-10-29 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In sport, the term ‘good bloke’ doesn't mean what it says. Like ‘fun run’, it often actually means exactly the opposite. Titus O’Reily, the sports historian Australia neither needs nor deserves, examines why our nation’s sportspeople are so readily forgiven for doing terrible things. With ridiculous tales from Australia’s chequered sporting history, A Sporting Chance dissects the scandals big and small, the mistakes made in covering them up and the path athletes tread back to redemption. From the Essendon supplements saga and the sandpaper-loving Australian cricket team to whatever it is Nick Kyrgios has done now, Titus reveals the archetypes at the heart of our greatest sporting scandals. There’s the corrupt cop who gave us the race that stopped a nation and the boxing champion who refused to train. There’s the cashed-up businessmen who bankrupted clubs and the commentators who can’t get their foot out of their mouth. And of course there’s the good blokes, like Wayne Carey, Matthew Johns and Shane Warne, who it seems we’ll forgive for absolutely anything. In his rambling and at times incoherent style, Titus asks the question: are Australians really that forgiving of their sporting heroes? With the rise of social media, women’s sport and the drive towards greater equality, are the good blokes of Australia’s sporting landscape an endangered species?
Download or read book Cheat written by Titus O'Reily and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where there's sport, there's cheating. No sport is immune; athletics, swimming, rugby, American Football, cricket, baseball, badminton, motorsports, tennis and curling. Yes, even that sport on the ice with brooms. Almost as soon as humans started playing sport competitively, they started to cheat. They cheated to win, for the fame, for the money and sometimes for reasons that are hard to understand. From the fiendishly clever to the outright hare brained, the borderline to the blatant, Titus O'Reily takes us through the many and varied ways athletes and countries have tried to cheat over the years. There's the winner of the New York marathon who was driven in a car part of the way, the male basketballer whose drug test revealed he was pregnant, the Tour De France where many of the riders took the train, the Spanish Paralympic basketball team who faked being intellectually disabled to win gold at the 2000 Paralympics. As well as sharing an alarming amount of tales involving swapping bodily fluids, Titus takes you through doping, illegal equipment, bribes, playing dirty, faking injuries, wearing disguises, dodgy referees, ball tampering, eye gouging, itching powder, licking an opponent to distract them and sending a dwarf out to bat to shrink the strike zone. Just as sport has become more sophisticated, so has cheating in sport, from state backed doping programs to tiny motors in Tour De France bikes. What does this say about us, that we cheat with such regularity and creativity? Will technology help stop cheating or will it only make it worse?
Download or read book Golden Boy written by Christian Ryan and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2009 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shedding new light on the 'club' of Lillee, Marsh and the Chappells, 'Golden Boy' examines the most tumultuous era of Australian cricket through the lens of the story of flawed genius, Kim Hughes. Kim Hughes was one of the most majestic and daring batsmen
Download or read book Rise and Fall of Australia The written by Nick Bryant and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2015 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A forensic look at the Lucky Country, from the inside and outside. Never before has Australia enjoyed such economic, commercial, diplomatic and cultural clout. Its recession-proof economy is the envy of the world. It's the planet's great lifestyle superpower. Its artistic exports win unprecedented acclaim. But never before has its politics been so brutal, narrow and facile, as well as being such a global laughing stock. A positive national story is at odds with a deeply unattractive Canberra story. The country should be enjoying The Australian Moment, so vividly described by the best-selling author George Megalogenis. But that description may turn out to be inadvertently precise. It could end up being just that: a fleeting moment. At present the country seems to be in speedy regression, with the nation's leaders, on both sides, mired in relatively small problems, such as the arrival of boat people, rather than mapping out a larger and more inspiring national future. In The Rise and Fall of Australia, BBC correspondent and author Nick Bryant offers an outsider's take on the great paradox of modern-day Australian life: of how the country has got richer at a time when its politics have become more impoverished. In this thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking book, dealing with politics, racism, sexism, the country's place in the region and the world, culture and sport, the author argues that Australia needs to discard the out-dated language used to describe itself, to push back against Lucky Country thinking, to celebrate how the cultural creep has replaced the cultural cringe and to stop negatively typecasting itself. Rejecting most of the national stereotypes, Nick Bryant sets out to describe the new Australia rather than the mythic country so often misunderstood not just by foreigners but Australians themselves.
Download or read book Great Australian Sporting Stories written by Ian Heads and published by Macmillan Publishers Aus.. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Heads and Tasker, legends themselves, set out to write a book that would continue the trail laid by early-days sporting scribes of long ago. I could not put it down.' John Coates AC, President of the Australian Olympic Committee 'I know readers will enjoy the many stories and anecdotes that Heads and Tasker have accumulated over more than a century combined in journalism.' Ian Chappell, former Australian cricket Captain. Australia enjoys a rich sporting heritage. Our small population has yielded a disproportionate number of champions. These sports stars have become known worldwide as fierce combatants and honourable competitors, achieving soaring victories, but also heart-pounding near-wins and humbling defeats. Veteran Australian sports journalists Ian Heads and Norman Tasker have seen it all. In these 65 original stories, we hear of the explosive introduction of World Series Cricket in 1977, which turned a genteel endeavour into a high-octane contest, and the clash of the titans as Packer and Murdoch squared off over the Super League war. We see Rugby Union become a battleground for race and the Olympics an arena for sublime acts of courage and achievement. We get an insider's perspective on every kind of sporting endeavour - from boxing to tennis, cricket to AFL, athletics to rugby league - and not just the action on the field, but the change room gossip and clubhouse politics as well. Written with wit, insight and a wealth of knowledge, Great Australian Sporting Stories is an enthralling expedition into the combative, collegiate, entertaining and always exciting world of Australian sport.
Download or read book Australia s Toughest Sports People written by Mick Colliss and published by Affirm Press. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From AFL, rugby union and cricket to aerial skiing, equestrian sports and speed-skating, Australian sport has produced some of the toughest nuts around. They are the people who played on through injury or overcame potentially catastrophic setbacks to inspire a sports-loving nation. Through a series of revealing interviews, author Mick Colliss explores the extraordinary character of these outstanding athletes, and reveals the mental and physical fortitude it took for them to carry on when the rest of us would have been carried off
Download or read book Red or Dead written by David Peace and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Editors' Choice "[T]he stuff of great literature." —The New York Times | "Red or Dead is a winner." —The Washington Post The place where the swinging sixties started – Liverpool, England, birthplace of the Beatles – wasn’t so swinging. Amid industrial blight and a bad economy, the port town’s shipping industry was going bust and there was widespread unemployment, with no assistance from a government tightening its belt. Even the Beatles moved to London. Into these hard times walked Bill Shankly, a former Scottish coal miner who took over the city’s perpetually last-place soccer team. He had a straightforward work ethic and a favorite song – a silly pop song done by a local band, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Soon he would have entire stadiums singing along, tens of thousands of people all dressed in the team color red . . . as Liverpool began to win . . . And soon, too, there was something else those thousands of people would chant as one: Shank-lee, Shank-lee . . . In Red or Dead, the acclaimed writer David Peace tells the stirring story of the real-life working-class hero who lifted the spirits of an entire city in turbulent times. But Red or Dead is more than a fictional biography of a real man, and more than a thrilling novel about sports. It is an epic novel that transcends those categories, until there’s nothing left to call it but – as many of the world’s leading newspapers already have – a masterpiece.
Download or read book Footy Passions written by Joy Damousi and published by UNSW Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extraordinary stories and recollections dominate this energetic glimpse into the hearts and minds of the die-hard fans of the Australian Football League. Based on interviews conducted with 50 football supporters, this account takes the roller-coaster ride through the passions of triumph and despair, mourning and melancholy, joy and fulfillment, and sacrifice and resurrection. With a keen ear, this study listens to the fans talk about the emotions associated with the game, how it gives meaning to their lives, and shows that football is much more than just a game.
Download or read book Please Gamble Irresponsibly written by Titus O'Reily and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Australians lose more money gambling than any other country. But how did we get here? In his inimitable, hilarious style, sports historian Titus O’Reily charts the rise, fall and rise of sport gambling in Australia. We’ll gamble on anything, from two flies crawling up a wall to less important things like federal elections. And thanks to the internet, phones and gambling-tax loving governments, these days Australians can indulge their love of a punt no matter what they’re doing. Aussies could be at the birth of a child or performing open-heart surgery and still put a bet on. It wasn’t always this easy. Once, you could only gamble on sport illegally. Which, it turns out, was actually also pretty easy. But over the last thirty years gambling on sport has been legalised, first slowly and then very quickly. Now almost every ad on TV is about sport betting, and even some of the players are getting in on the wagering. Please, Gamble Irresponsibly traces the history of gambling in Australia from horseracing in the colonial era, through the rise of SP bookies and organised crime, to the commercialisation of the industry and its impact on communities and the integrity of sport. With billions of dollars involved, what are the odds of putting the genie back in the bottle?
Download or read book Bad Call written by Harry Collins and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-10-07 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How technologies can get it wrong in sports, and what the consequences are—referees undermined, fans heartbroken, and the illusion of perfect accuracy maintained. Good call or bad call, referees and umpires have always had the final say in sports. Bad calls are more visible: plays are televised backward and forward and in slow motion. New technologies—the Hawk-Eye system used in tennis and cricket, for example, and the goal-line technology used in English football—introduced to correct bad calls sometimes get it right and sometimes get it wrong, but always undermine the authority of referees and umpires. Bad Call looks at the technologies used to make refereeing decisions in sports, analyzes them in action, and explains the consequences. Used well, technologies can help referees reach the right decision and deliver justice for fans: a fair match in which the best team wins. Used poorly, however, decision-making technologies pass off statements of probability as perfect accuracy and perpetuate a mythology of infallibility. The authors re-analyze three seasons of play in English Premier League football, and discover that goal line technology was irrelevant; so many crucial wrong decisions were made that different teams should have won the Premiership, advanced to the Champions League, and been relegated. Simple video replay could have prevented most of these bad calls. (Major League baseball learned this lesson, introducing expanded replay after a bad call cost Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game.) What matters in sports is not computer-generated projections of ball position but what is seen by the human eye—reconciling what the sports fan sees and what the game official sees.
Download or read book Pattern Recognition written by William Gibson and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2004-06-24 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Part-detective story, part-cultural snapshot . . . all bound by Gibson's pin-sharp prose' Arena -------------- THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE BLUE ANT TRILIOGY - READ ZERO HISTORY AND SPOOK COUNTRY FOR MORE Cayce Pollard has a new job. She's been offered a special project: track down the makers of an addictive online film that's lighting up the internet. Hunting the source will take her to Tokyo and Moscow and put her in the sights of Japanese hackers and Russian Mafia. She's up against those who want to control the film, to own it - who figure breaking the law is just another business strategy. The kind of people who relish turning the hunter into the hunted . . . A gripping spy thriller by William Gibson, bestselling author of Neuromancer. Part prophesy, part satire, Pattern Recognition skewers the absurdity of modern life with the lightest and most engaging of touches. Readers of Neal Stephenson, Ray Bradbury and Iain M. Banks won't be able to put this book down. -------------- 'Fast, witty and cleverly politicized' Guardian 'A big novel, full of bold ideas . . . races along like an expert thriller' GQ 'Dangerously hip. Its dialogue and characterization will amaze you. A wonderfully detailed, reckless journey of espionage and lies' USA Today 'A compelling, humane story with a sympathetic heroine searching for meaning and consolation in a post-everything world' Daily Telegraph 'Electric, profound. Gibson's descriptions of Tokyo, Russia and London are surreally spot-on' Financial Times
Download or read book Bodyline Autopsy written by David Frith and published by Aurum. This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1932, England’s cricket team, led by the haughty Douglas Jardine, had the fastest bowler in the world: Harold Larwood. Australia boasted the most prolific batsman the game had ever seen: the young Don Bradman. He had to be stopped. The leg-side bouncer onslaught inflicted by Larwood and Bill Voce, with a ring of fieldsmen waiting for catches, caused an outrage that reverberated to the back of the stands and into the highest levels of government. Bodyline, as this infamous technique came to be known, was repugnant to the majority of cricket-lovers. It was also potentially lethal – one bowl fracturing the skull of Australian wicketkeeper Bert Oldfield – and the technique was outlawed in 1934. After the death of Don Bradman in 2001, one of the most controversial events in cricketing history – the Bodyline technique - finally slid out of living memory. Over seventy years on, the 1932-33 Ashes series remains the most notorious in the history of Test cricket between Australia and England. David Frith’s gripping narrative has been acclaimed as the definitive book on the whole saga: superbly researched and replete with anecdotes, Bodyline Autopsy is a masterly anatomy of one of the most remarkable sporting scandals.
Download or read book The Maddest Place on Earth written by Jill Giese and published by Australian Scholarly Publishing. This book was released on 2018-08-31 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gold-fuelled Melbourne was booming, but dwelling in the fault lines of the proud young colony was an alarming fact – Victoria had the highest rate of insanity in the world. Was it the antipodean sun, gold mania, excessive masturbation, the heady pace of modern life? The true story of colonial Victoria’s quest to cure insanity unfolds through the lives of three English newcomers – a gifted artist, exiled from his homeland for his madness; an ambitious doctor, bringing enlightened treatment ideals to his post in charge of the overflowing asylum; and a mysterious undercover journalist, who sensationally exposed the lunatics’ plight in Melbourne’s press. Amid the clamour of fraught endeavours and maddened minds, the story reveals unexpected hope, creativity and ennobling humanity – and surprising contemporary relevance as we continue to grapple with this ancient human malady. Jill Giese is a clinical psychologist and writer, whose extensive career in mental health encompasses many years of clinical practice and executive roles in policy and advocacy.
Download or read book Yulunga written by Ken Edwards and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sports games from all over Australia; aimed at school children from Kindergarten to Year 12; includes diagrams, background to each game, game rules, variations of the games, and teaching points.
