I must admit to having huge sympathy with Australian tennis player Samantha Stosur on the subject of women tennis players screaming and grunting loudly during matches.

Her comments came with two of the loudest grunters on tour, Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka, among the eight players at the season-ending tournament in Turkey.

Stosur said she was not bothered by the shrieking when on the court but believed the sound was “horrible” for spectators.  Her coach had more to say:

“You can’t believe how many members of the general public come up to me and say ‘It is great that Sam won because she does not scream’.

“This is people that don’t know tennis, I think it is deeply unpleasant for a lot of people watching tennis.”

“I can see how it would be very unappealing to come and watch a match.

“It is silly screaming, it is after contact and it is in times when the matches are close.”

Damn right – it is fucking horrible, and cheating in my opinion, designed to put their opponent off their shot.  It could and should have been stamped out years ago – by penalising the screaming grunters.  Monica Seles I believe was one of the first – and should have had it penalised out of her game.

In the story I linked to for this post, there is a poll.

I want to know who the 7% who like the screaming and grunting are … maybe this woman?

Congratulations to the New Zealand All Blacks, winners of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, beating France 8-7 in the final tonight.

It was a fitting result, given New Zealand’s dominance in rugby for years.  Tonight’s win breaks a 24 year drought for them in world cups, having missed out several times previously when they were hot favourites.

Well done France too, for making a game of what many expected to be a one-sided game.  They had scratched around in their previous games, scraping into the finals, but did perform superbly tonight when it counted.

As if we needed proof that football is played by boofheads, I give you Manly rugby league player Darcy Lussick.

Last Friday night, in a game between his team and the Melbourne Storm, there was a brawl involving most if not all 26 players on the field and some of the reserves bench.   You can’t actually see Darcy in the photo – he is right in the thick of it at the bottom of the pile of players.

The brawl has been slammed by NRL chief executive David Gallop as a negative look for the game, while both clubs were hit with $50,000 fines and a total of 10 players were charged by the match review committee, most of these players subsequently suspended from playing for one to five matches.

The clubs and the main protagonists involved have issued apologies for their actions.  Not so young Darcy, who said:

“That was the best day of my life, to do that with my mates out there,”

Now, apart from thinking that Darcy needs to get a life – considering being in a brawl is the highlight of his so far, I can imagine the groans from club and NRL officials.  Note to Darcy Lussick – it is good sometimes not to say everything that goes through your mind.

As for the brawl, its a interesting position the NRL finds itself in.  While officials wring their hands in disgust at the damage they believe such behaviour does to the game, its quite clear their fan base is divided, with many loving the violence and believing it is inevitable in such a hard contact sport, but others believing it to be very damaging, particularly from the perspective of parents of young children considering their childrens’ choice of sports and not wanting them to play a sport that is played by brawling thugs.

The league doesn’t help itself here, taking a somewhat fence sitting position on fighting in the game.  They sort of say a bit of it is ok but don’t go overboard.  And then they are inconsistent in how they punish offenders, being mostly quite lenient but occasionally coming down hard on someone.   It sends very mixed messages to players.

The NRL either needs to say fighting is fine and part of the game, which I believe is an untenable position in this day and age, or else say that it is completely outside the rules and spirit of the game.  The latter requires them to punish players and teams who fight severely, so that no matter what the emotions in a game situation the players know enough to think twice about the consequences they will face, this having been drilled into them right from when they started playing junior football.

Congratulations to Cadel Evans on winning the Tour de France cycling race.  Has to be up there with the best Australian sporting achievements in my lifetime.

He’s been close a couple of times before, but fallen just short.  Fantastic to see all his hard work finally pay off.

Really, I reckon when you’re going to bullshit, at least make it vaguely plausible.

But that’s not how they do it in North Korea, which is inviting golf enthusiasts from around the world to tee up at a tournament there.  For around $1,000 you can play in the North Korean Amateur Golf Open, at a course near the capital, Pyongyang.

The price includes accommodation, meals and a 3 day tour of North Korea, as well as the golf.  No doubt it includes a North Korean intelligence officer to make sure you don’t see things the regime doesn’t want you to know about, or talk to any locals or take photos they don’t want taken.

Local legend in North Korea has it that when he opened the golfing complex 20 years ago, Kim Jong-il shot 38 under par, including a miraculous 11 holes in one.

However, surprise, surprise, some are sceptical about this.  A westerner who runs tours of North Korea and has played at the golf course thinks reports of Mr Kim’s prowess could be slightly exaggerated.

“I think you might find there is no real origin for that… the people who run the golf course tell me he has never been anywhere near it.”

Poor bastards who told him that probably wished he’d kept his mouth shut as they were taken away to be shot.

Congratulations England, on winning the Ashes cricket series 3-1.  It was a comprehensive victory in that they outbatted, outbowled, outfielded, outthought and outplanned the Australians.

This is the worst loss by an Australian team that I can remember, and Australian cricket has a long way to go to get back to the top of the pile where it has been for the best part of the last 20 years.

One of the key problems Australia faced is that it allowed ageing champions to hang on too long, and when they continued to fail the team had nowhere to go.  They have a dilemma too, in that there aren’t many young players who are standing up and demanding to be picked by their performances in state cricket.  It would have been much better to ease older players out over the last year – for example Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey, and give non performers fewer chances to come good – I’m looking at Marcus North and Mitchell Johnson here (who survives in the team in the hope he will pull out a match winning performance – which he did once in 5 games this series).  The games played with those older or out of form players could have been used to blood young players and give them valuable experience for the future.  I think it would be far preferable to lose with young players who we intended to build the future around rather than losing with old champions struggling and just obviously hanging on for their paycheques.

Some massive decisions to be made in Australian cricket in the next few months.