The Professor and the Gelding give their four red hot best bets for today’s All Star Mile meeting at Caulfield and the Professor’s Parlay that includes two AFL fixtures featuring Greater Western Sydney and Port Adelaide.
Tag Archives: football
Olympic athletes rushed citizenship a big problem, Gina Rinehart’s involvement in Swimming Australia, One Day World Cup & more – Sportzfan Radio #493
The Professor and the panel of the Judge, the Gelding, Coutta and Paul Dalligan discuss rushed citizenship for Olympic athletes and if that is a good thing, Gina Rinehart’s involvement with swimming and netball and whether she is a sponsor or an ‘owner’ given the level of her sponsorship. The AFLW needs an average of 3,500 spectators per game if the AFL is to give them 12 rounds plus finals in 2024 and the panel look at the appropriateness of such a pre-condition. The Gelding reviews the cricket One Day World Cup so far and Paul Dalligan says the Rugby League Pacific Championships has been good for showcasing the game in Samoa, New Guinea, Tonga, Fiji and the Cook Islands.
Brad Johnson talks about his playing career with the Western Bulldogs and Zena Sport
The Professor and the panel of the Judge and the Gelding talk with special guest Brad Johnson about his AFL career with the Western Bulldogs, being in the media and Zena Sport, the company he started with his wife that makes protective vests for women playing sport. The panel also discusses the slow reaction of the AFL to the University of Sydney’s study into female Australian Rules umpires, the ‘Greg Norman golf tour’, the long shot winner of the 148th Kentucky Derby and the number and calibre of the players that have left the Gold Coast Suns.
The ‘ice cream man’ – Dane Roy – punter extraordinaire on the podcast!!
Dane Roy was working as an ice cream sales representative when he won an AFL longest kick competition. That win catapulted Dane into US College football as a punter with the University of Houston. Dane played 50 games for the Cougars, won American Athletic Conference first team honours in 2019 and was a finalist in the prestigious Ray Guy award in the same year.
The red hotties for Thousand Guineas day at Caulfield on 13 October 2021 and the Professor’s Parlay
A big day of Spring Carnival racing today at Caulfield with 8 races on the card and the feature race being the Thousand Guineas. The track is currently rated a Good 4 with the rail out 9 metres for the entire circuit.
Don’t forget to back the tips each way!
Caulfield
Professor’s tips
Race 1 Horse 1 – Rhinoceros (for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Race 4 Horse 2 – Smokin Romans (also for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Gelding’s tips
Race 2 Horse 3 – Floating Artist
Race 7 Horse 6 – Zouzarella
Professor’s Parlay
Race 2 Horse 3 – Floating Artist into Tampa Bay Buccaneers to beat Philadelphia Eagles (NFL) into Manchester City to beat Burnley (EPL).
You can see the latest episode of That’s Racing!! here.
Good luck and good punting!
The Professor
Weekend musing – Cricket, South African tour, Football, Robbie Gray, Racing, Winx….
The much anticipated test series in South Africa started overnight and all the Australian batsman bar Cameron Bancroft got a start and did not go on to get a century. I have always said that 350 runs in the first innings of a test match is par and at the time of writing the Aussies need another 125 runs with 5 wickets in hand. Our bowlers can bat a bit so hopefully one of Mitch Marsh or Tim Paine go on to
make a ton and this would place Australia in a good position to win the test match. Cameron Bancroft must be one of the luckiest players in world cricket at the moment, he has had nine innings at the top of the order and if you take out his 82 not out in the second innings of the first Ashes test he is averaging less than 13 runs. Peter Hanscombe had three failures at the start of the Ashes with one of those innings being a 32 in difficult conditions in Adelaide and he lost his place in the team with an average of 47. He must wonder why someone who hasn’t proved themselves gets more chances than he got. I certainly do!
Earlier this week Robbie Gray from Port Adelaide chose to challenge 
a suspension for a head high hit on Jeremy McGovern. The AFL has changed the process this year and Michael Christian is the sole arbiter on penalties so in my opinion the tribunal was never going to overturn the first challenge to one of his decisions. To my mind this was a complete waste of $10,000 by Port Adelaide.
Winx, the biggest name in Australian horse racing, makes her return 
to the track this weekend and again it is hard to see her getting beaten. The only real chance could be the VRC Derby winner Prized Icon who may have an edge in fitness.
Have a great weekend!!
Weekend musing – Cox Plate, Damian Oliver, Nathan Broad, Dad’s Army…..
I watched the Cox Plate last weekend and saw the overhead footage of Damien Oliver’s ride on Happy Clapper and was not surprised he was handed a twenty meeting suspension from the stewards. He effectively cost Royal Symphony any chance in the race and in turn 
put that horse out of yesterday’s Victoria Derby where he would have been close to favourite. The trainer of Royal Symphony, Tony McEvoy was rightly upset after the race and you wonder if he and/or his owners could take civil action against Oliver in the circumstances. One wonders what Oliver was thinking. It is one thing to have a win at all costs attitude but not when the safety of other horses and riders is concerned.
Nathan Broad was revealed as the post Grand Final photographer during the week and he received a three game suspension from the Richmond Football Club. There has been some debate about the 
penalty and whether it was appropriate. I must say that given the profile of the case, Broad’s behaviour and the potential for police charges it seemed light. I heard a female caller to a radio station after the penalty was announced suggesting he should have also been asked to do some volunteer work in something like a women’s refuge or undergo some sort of training course as well. I thought it was a great idea on top of the three game suspension.
At a time when list managers are intent on injecting youth into AFL sides, Port Adelaide is heading in the opposite direction in their
recruiting of Demon pair Jack Watts and Jack Trengove, Steven Motlop, Tom Rockliff and Trent McKenzie. Watts (26), Trengove (26), Rockliff (27), Motlop (26) and McKenzie (25) are in the veteran class and if rumors are correct and they are to be joined by recently de-listed Kangaroo, 
Lindsay Thomas (29), the Power have clearly thrown any youth policy out the window and adopted a ‘win now’ attitude. That’s all good and well providing it comes off. If not, it places a great percentage of the list in the Dad’s Army category!
Have a great weekend!
Weekend musing – the Brownlow medal, Grand Finals in AFL & NRL……
I was pleasantly surprised to listen to Dustin Martin at his Brownlow 
presentation on Monday night. He came over a lot better than I had envisioned and he seemed like a reasonable bloke who loves his footy. Bruce McAvaney was a little sickening, but he did a good job getting Martin to talk so it worked.
With 36 votes Martin scored exactly the same amount as the entire All Australian back line of Rory Laird (9) votes, Alex Rance (8), Michael Hibberd (7), Sam Docherty (5), Michael Hurley (4) and Jeremy McGovern (3). While I am not suggesting that Martin did not
deserve his votes, it is a little hard to accept that these six champion players could only amass 36 votes between them as most of them are big ball winners as well. The forward line did significantly better with a total of 75 votes, but the forward line included Dane Zorko (14) and Robbie Gray (12) who are essentially mid-fielders and Lance Franklin (22) who seems to capture the umpires eye. With five votes it did endorse my view that Eddie Betts was lucky to make the team.
It was also interesting to see that nine of the 18 clubs had two players that secured half or more of their teams votes and at Richmond, Martin almost did that himself with 36 votes out of a team total of 80. As much as it is great to have a Brownlow medalist from your team, from a team perspective it is better to have a spread 
of vote getters. The two top teams were Adelaide and Sydney who both had 88 votes, but the contrast was that Adelaide’s top four Sloane, M.Crouch, Jacobs & Atkins contributed 51 votes and Sydney’s top four of Kennedy, Franklin, Parker & Hannebery contributed 67 votes with Hannebery only contributing 6 votes. I think the upshot from this was Adelaide had more to handle in trying to control Martin it will than Richmond had trying to control Rory Sloane…and that is how it turned out yesterday. One thing that the Brownlow coverage brought home was how disappointing it is that Jobe Watson is no longer a Brownlow medalist. To see Cotchin & Mitchell lauded as medalists was disappointing whereas I had not thought about it much beforehand.
The Grand Final was a reasonable game and even though I thought Adelaide were the better side going into the game, the Grand Final was played on Richmond’s home ground which, in my view evened
out the contest. Richmond were worthy premiers and it says something for a Club that decided to hold fast in the face of great criticism of their 2016 performance. If the Tigers had buckled at the end of last season and sacked Damian Hardwick, I doubt they would have climbed to the heights of premiership glory.
The Melbourne Storm are my fancies in the NRL decider today. They
have had a great season led by Dally M medallist Cameron Smith. North Queensland Cowboys have had a remarkable run to the Grand Final but I believe they will fall short especially as they are without their champion play maker Jonathan Thurston.
Have a great weekend!
Gelding’s tips for Caulfield races on Sunday 1 October 2017
The Gelding’s attention was briefly diverted yesterday from horse racing when he watched his Tigers win the 2017 AFL premiership. However, being the avid punter that he is, his mind is back on the job today with races at his home track at Caulfield.
As always the bets are on an each way and all up basis.
Caulfield
Race 1 Horse 15 – Special Diva
Race 3 Horse 1 – Hardham
Race 5 Horse 1 – Catchy (for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Race 6 Horse 6 – Kementari
Race 7 Horse 1 – Hartnell (also for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Good luck and good punting,
The Gelding
Weekend musing – Drew Morphett, Nathan Buckley, All Australian team, Chris Scott, Ange Postecoglou
One of things I want to discuss is the tragic passing of Drew Morphett. Drew was one of those classic ABC commentators who 
was comfortable commentating on anything from football to athletics to tiddlywinks. He was always interested in presenting the picture to the audience and not pumping up his own tyres. In a pretty cut-throat industry I think he was universally liked by his peers. He will be missed.
I was also pleased that Nathan Buckley was reappointed as 
Collingwood coach for another two years as this will consign Collingwood to another two years out of the finals. It has to be good for the competition.
It was interesting to see that three of the banned Essendon players made the All Australian team with Hurley the only player to have made the team previously. Unfortunately for Essendon, Paddy Ryder (Port 
Adelaide) and Michael Hibberd (Melbourne) no longer play for the club. What it does show is that a year out of the game is not fatal for a player in his 20’s, but perhaps once you get to thirty it is not a positive experience.
Chris Scott took Geelong into another finals series last night and his fellow coaches recently voted him as the hardest coach to coach against. He certainly has had a lot of success since taking over from 
Bomber Thompson, however, his finals record needs some scrutiny. Since the 2011 finals series where Geelong won three games, including the premiership, but with the loss to Richmond, he has now contested a further nine finals for only two wins and one of those wins was over Hawthorn last year when Isaac Smith had a shot after the siren that could have taken the game away from Geelong. I think a few questions need to be posed as to Scott’s finals coaching record.
Speaking of coaches I cannot believe that Ange Postecoglou has come under so much pressure recently. He got the Socceroos an Asian Cup and in the current qualifiers the Socceroos have only lost 
one game. They do have an issue with scoring, but I put that down to personnel, not system. His system creates scoring chances, but we don’t seem to have the quality of strikers to put the goals away and this was no more evident that the recent game against Thailand. I think Tommy Juric is a good developing striker in the Mark Viduka mould, but we need a Harry Kewell or Tim Cahill at his best to compliment Juric. This is not Postecoglou’s fault, he has tried to develop players, but Australia just does not have genuine strikers playing at the highest level. Let the World Cup campaign pan out and reassess at the end.
Have a great weekend!