Jock's Jocks

At one point last summer I had a labouring job building some steps on a farm, and over the course of a few sun-soaked days we’d been listening to the cricket on the radio. However all good things must come to an end and alas the final ball was bowled and the match was over. All was not lost though, as another sport was flooding the AM frequency, not tonsil hockey but tennis. I must admit I laughed when I first heard the description of two sweaty guys hitting a ball at each other.

“Federer hits a forehand to the left-back of Hewitt’s side; Hewitt hits a strong forehand, forcing Federer to stretch, oh Federer’s return has gone into the net.” (This commentary was poorly reproduced courtesy of an AM radio channel that I don’t remember, you know, just to cover any copyright issues)

However before I knew it I was enthralled, and felt my whole body moving like a tennis player, so after a few seconds I was a bit sore.

“Hewitt to serve. He tosses the ball and hits a fault. The ball boy (or girl) runs out and grabs the ball, resuming their position on that little black mat next to the net, undoubtedly scared shitless of a green thing being slammed past her (or his) head at 200 kilometres per hour. Anyway back to whatever Hewitt was doing.”

Ok so that didn’t quite happen but it was great to listen to, and it almost felt like I was getting burnt whilst stuffing my face with overpriced, gourmet hot-dogs at Rod Laver arena.

Is there other radio sports commentary that I’m missing out on? I hope not, although I suspect that a few sports may have made the successful conversion to voice description as well. Maybe one of these is the game of darts.

“Barry’s eyeing of the dart board. He’s got other things on his mind though, and he reaches down and grabs his pint, taking the head off it and a bit more. He looks back up at the board, and throws his dart. He goes through this procedure two more times. His nemesis, Big Slim Jim goes through the same process three times, and they alternate for half an hour unless one of them needs to go the toilet. They do this until someone wins, or passes out; gee it’s tense in here.”

Maybe darts doesn’t sound that fun, but what about cheese rolling?

“Helga stands on top of the hill, nervously shifting her giant wheel of cheese between each hand. She looks sneeringly over at the other cheese rollers, but then turns her focus back to her wheel of cheese. She rolls it back and forth, tensing and sweating which is a little gross to look at. The cow bell is rung and before she knows it, she’s tumbling down a hill after a giant wheel of Brie.”

Only a few sports really succeed on the radio, and although some may have tried to make the grade, just didn’t sound all that interesting, alas I don’t really listen to the radio so I don’t care.
By the way on Friday, John Landy had a bit of lunch with the Opposition leader Robert Doyle at John’s place. The next day John went to the Melbourne Show to no doubt grab a couple of show bags and some fairy floss, and then jumped on a plane to the United Arab Emirates. This was apparently for an official visit although I’m not too sure whether they’d know who he is. While he’s there he might even grab a few litres of discount oil for himself in duty-free, as I’m sure before it gets to our pumps are few little extras have been built into the price. I don’t know what sort of car he drives, but I suspect he has a driver so he’d be able to give him a souvenir of black gold. Before you know it, it’ll be cheaper to run my car on gold nuggets, so I’ll be panning for my petrol at Sovereign Hill in the lovely and cold Ballarat.