2011

After a fortnight of painful silence for my passionate and loyal reader(s), they (he) can be assured that I have returned to this bubbling and most thoroughly postmodern of communities, the blogosphere. I found myself taking an unannounced and wholly unplanned Christmas and New Year holiday of gluttony and procrastination. With January upon us though, this arbitrary and unnoticed little page can from now on be relied upon again for semi-regular streams of barely contained ranting lunacy.

The year 2011 has jumped out of nowhere and suddenly become the present day, and after holiday season reflections on another year of sensational sporting action and off field scandal, it is now time to look forward at what promises to be a hectic and spectacular few months. While there is always a great deal of sporting action going on around the world, we are on the threshold of a particularly jam-packed period.

Football's Asian Cup, contested by Australia for just the second time, begins within the next 48 hours when much-maligned hosts Qatar face Uzbekistan. Australia's campaign to win the tournament (a genuine possibility although we are slight outsiders overall) begins at midnight this coming Tuesday morning against the extravagantly out of place minnows India. As the Asian Cup unfolds, Tennis fans will of course be treated to the Australia Open beginning on January 17. The Ashes may be retained by England, but their tour down under is far from over. Two Twenty20 Internationals and seven One Day Internationals will go on right through to the start of February. This may not have the same aura as the battle for the urn, but in any form of the game Anglo-Australian battle remains particularly enticing.

These events all finish just in time for the big daddy of them all, the ICC Cricket World Cup in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh starting on February 19. 2011 is capped off with a bow when a particularly interesting and difficult to predict Rugby World Cup in New Zealand (presuming that the hosts will once again choke miserably) begins in September.

For all this big news, weekly and fortnightly news wraps can anchor my opinions in context and give handy reminders of the major news stories around. But people get enough straight news (however questionable in quality) from existing sources so the focus of this site will be a pattern of regular features taking shape over the coming weeks.

Potential pieces include:

                                * Continuing wraps and general insight into the ongoing Ashes Tour, beyond the now concluding Test series into the limited overs portion of the summer.

                                * News and views on the ongoing Hyundai A-League.

                                * Assorted articles on the European Football winter, American sports winter, Tennis, other local summer sport and anything else that captures my fancy.

                                * Feature Editorials on certain topics and news items, some divisive back-page coverers, some less talked about.

                                * Continuing Mini-features such as Predictions, Looking Back in History, Top 10 lists and looks at the lighter funnier side of sport.

                                * Who knows what else. I'm trying to avoid cliche so although a vague modicum of professional journalism will always remain, there is no limit to anything. If an idea comes to me or an issue annoys my wonderfully cynical mind, I'm sure I'll find a way to write about it. If anyone has any ideas or input for interesting feature ideas, or have any query topics which I might be kind enough to write in my detail about, leave a comment on this post here.

For now the concentration is on finally, if I can bare it, dissecting last week's MCG disaster. After this will come my review of the opening day's play of the 5th Ashes Test in Sydney, from a rather different perspective than I've ever had before (at least since I was 8 years old), as yesterday I had the pleasure of being at the SCG personally.