The boy showed no serious injury from the blow during the game on Friday but had an internal haemorrhage overnight and died in hospital the next day. 

Police are looking for the umpire, who has gone into hiding.

I’m guessing there won’t be any arguing whether you hit the ball or not, or whether the ball pitched in line or anything with this umpire from now on.

I’m listening to The Waifs – Moses And The Lamb

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?

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.

That’s what England rugby captain Mike Tindall did on a night out in Queenstown in New Zealand.  Mike is of course Mr Zara Phillips, and thus a minor member (by marriage) of the British royal family.

Throw in a bit of kissing and groping with a local blonde woman, including burying his head in her breasts, and it sounds like he had a heap of fun.

Team management has, sensibly, come out and said to the press, basically “move on, nothing to see here”.  Coach Martin Johnson I think also takes a sensible view of things:

"When I started playing rugby at senior level you were dealing with blokes,"

"They treated us like adults and there is no reason to change that now they are professionals and things are far more organized in the game.

"They are there to make sensible decisions — if I can’t trust them, there is a simple choice for us to make."

All very good, and what happens on tour stays on tour etc.

But I wonder if the wife is as relaxed about it?

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.

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

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.

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.

However, I do confess to having a little chuckle on hearing the news this week that motor mouth Anthony Mundine (he of the self styled nickname “The Man”) was knocked out in a fight by Garth Wood, who had won the right to fight Mundine by winning a reality TV show called “The Contender”.

A picture emerged late last week of Monaghan in a very compromising position with a labrador dog – to put it bluntly, it appeared the dog was giving him a blow job.

If you want the uncensored photograph, you can find it easily enough, here for example (WARNING – VERY MUCH NOT SAFE FOR WORK).

It seems that the lads in the local footy team were having some post season celebrations at one of their houses, and that Monaghan wasn’t really getting a blow job from the dog, but it was a prank, a simulated sex act.  Of course, all the boys were well tanked when this happened, and thought it was a great hoot, so much so that out came the mobile phones to take photos of the happy event.  Of course, there is a lesson we should never forget, which is that pissed idiots and cameras should never be allowed in the same place at the same time.  Normally I’d find it surprising that not one person there thought “hey this is not really a good idea” or “you know Joel, there are boundaries to what we should do”, or even “it would be really bad if this got out on the internet” – but we are talking of a bunch of football players here.

Well, you know what happened next, of course.  Surprise surprise it found its way to Twitter, then got mentioned by a radio station in Melbourne, then it was everywhere.

So now, Joel Monaghan, his team the Canberra Raiders, and the game he plays, rugby league, are laughing stocks around the world.  I bet you him nor the team mates who were all part of this prank probably don’t think it’s so funny right now.

To his credit, Monaghan did confess it was him in the photo that leaked – although the evidence against him really didn’t leave him much choice, but I’m sure many people in his situation would have tried to claim it was someone else who looked similar and denied it was them.  It was reported over the weekend that he would resign from the Raiders and go to play in England, to get away from the pressure, and humiliation that he would suffer every time he went out to play football – that plus it was very much a case of quitting before being fired by the club.

However, there seems to be an attempt by other players in his team to save him from being terminated, and to keep him.  Very forgiving lot these footballers.  These efforts undoubtedly might have been better expended in telling him to leave the dog alone at the party where it happened.  His fate is expected to be determined at a Canberra Raiders board meeting tomorrow.

Now, for those who have no desire to see the actual photo – and didn’t click on the link above to it – here is a simulation of what happened, a simulation of a simulated act as it were.

Apparently no dogs were hurt in the making of this video.  Actually I was talking to my daughter today (she trains dogs as part of her work) and she thought the dog wouldn’t have been hurt or distressed at all by having Monaghan’s penis in its mouth – in fact it most likely thought along the lines of “yum, I got peanut butter and this human is laughing and having fun so I’m happy, can we do it some more?” (the peanut butter reference is because it is believed that Monaghan coated his genitals with it to entice the dog to lick it off).

And what is it with these footballers who seem to want to find every opportunity to have their dicks out around each other – a bit of man love going on there?