MUSIC – Feb 24th – KING CANNONS @ The Espy

The King Cannons are quite simply one of the best “new” acts going around at the moment. Live, they are raw and powerful. If you like The Clash and you like your punk-ska, and moreover if you like it done as if its not wanting to be sold out, then King Canons have it. They say that the only way to make money out of music is through live shows, then these guys will hopefully get what they richly deserve.

A 6-piece combo, complete with effervescent axe-wielding lead singer, a female percussion section that includes bongos and marraccas, and a hammond organ. The sound isn’t so unique, its just not heard that often, and definitely not this well.

Unfortunately the support act Kira Puru was abysmal. Take Portishead and give it a depressing blues feel – probably not the most appropriate support act for an upbeat punk rock band, but hey they’re here now! Apparently Kira is a very talented girl though. Good luck to her I say, follow the dream.

Number of Events	24
Number of Sports	8
Gigs (Bands: Headlines + Support)	4 + 3

FOOTBALL – Feb 18th – Brisbane Roar v Melbourne Victory (Away Trip #2)

When you look at an official website (a-league.com.au) and the kickoff says 7.35pm, what time would you think the game kicks off? 7.35pm perhaps? Not in Australia – 6.35pm depending on what state you are in.

I flew up to Brisbane after my game earlier in the day. My mum and dad picked me up from the airport, we rushed to the ground for what we all thought we were only 5 mins late for. We took our seats only to find out that it was already half time and Brisbane were 3-1 up! Un-be-f**kin-lieve-able!!!

So what did we miss – a goal after 41 seconds. More comical defending from the Victory, a dodgy penalty and ANOTHER Harry Kewell goal.

You know when you get that feeling you have right royally stuffed up and there is nothing you can do about it? I just sat there and thought that it was an expensive 45 minutes of football I was about to experience!!!

However limited it was, it was entertaining. Harry Kewell banged in another screamer from 20 odd yards out after only 5 minutes and the Victory were on the charge. It was end to end stuff and it almost culminated in what was literally 2 inches from being one of the greatest goals ever seen in the A-League (and in a few other places around the world too!)

Brisbane however, had more than enough chances to wrap the game up and didn’t, and proved that even after a bit of a dodgy spell, they are the team to beat in 2012.

BRISBANE ROAR 3 – 2 MELBOURNE VICTORY

Number of Events	24
Number of Sports	8
Gigs (Bands: Headlines + Support)	3 + 2

FOOTBALL – Feb 18th – FFV Pre-Season

Its 31 degrees and its Saturday so am I playing cricket? No, I am refereeing a pre-season game. We had to play quarters due to the heat!

DIAMOND VALLEY 1 – 1 SUNBURY UNITED

Number of Events	23
Number of Sports	8
Gigs (Bands: Headlines + Support)	3 + 2

MUSIC – Feb 11th – The Cat Empire (Scarborough Beach)

I had to go to Perth for work. Me and a mate were actually heading to the pub to go and watch the Liverpool v Man Utd game on TV.

When we got to the pub, there were thousands of people around the Scarborough Beach amphitheatre. We had no idea what was going on. Turned out that The Cat Empire were playing. They had a couple of huge hits a while back.

In between drinks I took in half of their set. “Gypsy experimental folk hip-hop” I would categorise it as, but that may be somewhat narrow!

What I think you have to remember is that the crowd were 95% there just to add some excitement to their somewhat dull Perth lives and not Cat Empire fans, and you could tell that they were just happy to be out of the house.

The football proved to be a little bit more enticing in the end and I didn’t stay for the end of their set.

Number of Events	22
Number of Sports	8
Gigs (Bands: Headlines + Support)	3 + 2

FOOTBALL – Feb 10th – Melbourne Victory v Central Coast Mariners

3 phenomenal goals – Victory came from behind. Thunderbolt from Carlos Hernandez and a sublime volley from Harry Kewell.

1st win for Jim Magilton and Victory’s first win for nearly 2 months. 14,000 + change turned out for a Friday night game.

MELBOURNE VICTORY 2 – 1 CENTRAL COAST MARINERS

Number of Events	21
Number of Sports	8
Gigs (Bands: Headlines + Support)	2 + 2

BASEBALL – Feb 5th – Game 5 ABL Semi-Finals

One day, three sports, twenty two different weather conditions. When you thought you couldn’t take any more excitement, I was driving home from my earlier football game to find out that the Melbourne Aces had given the Sydney Blue Sox a right royal touch-up to force a sudden-death Game 5 playoff game, to start at 8pm that night, literally 30 minutes after the conclusion of Game 4.

I was literally 5 minutes from the stadium, so being the positive person I try to be, instead of thinking “why?”, I thought “why not?” After a minute of ifs and can’t be arsed’s, I pledged allegiance to my cause and coughed up the $ 18 to what I thought would have been a packed house, considering it was Melbourne vs Sydney – 2 of the best teams in the country, Game 5 of a series, with no TV coverage and the chance to play in a finals series that was going to be beamed live into 300 million homes around the world.

So I took my seat amongst the tens of supporters and joined in the fun. If this was the Yankees v Red Sox, this seat would have been in the hundreds of dollars, but lets not kid anyone, it wasn’t and it never will be, so $ 18 to sit wherever I wanted was probably good value. I just wish the baseball was.

A series of errors and poor play saw Melbourne get out to a 13-1 lead after only 4 innings effectively killing the game very early. They had already blitzed Game 4, 14-4 literally 2 hours before, so the momentum was all Melbourne’s.

The ballpark itself is a converted showground and the outfield “Blue Monster” is made up of shipping containers. If you ever drive round the ports of Melbourne, you will quickly see thousands of 40ft containers permanently waiting for the exports that never happen. Tens of thousands come in from China & Asia and nowhere near that amount go back out, so to usea few in this manner is good business. On top of some of the containers they have a corporate area and bar. An Elliot Biddle home run actually landed right in the bar – where the X is on the pic above – and sent the lucky few scattering for cover.

Now talking of Elliot Biddle. Every player comes into bat to his own theme tune, sung by the hard-core group of 20 or so home fans. Elliot Biddle’s is 2 in a Room’s Wiggle It – creatively re-worked to “Biddle-It, just a little bit, I wanna see you Biddle-It”. At 9.30pm exactly an announcement came over the PA, telling everyone that due to noise restrictions and curfews, that no more music or announcements were able to be made. So for the rest of the game, one of the Aces fans took it upon himself to announce the players coming into bat, each time, their stories would be a little bit different. He even did it for the Sydney team too, but their introductions were humourous, but not exactly friendly, but they were entertaining. The crowd reacted with each player’s theme song and to be completely honest, this proved to be the main highlight of the game.

At the end of the game, one player even gave me his glove in the heat of the celebrations! I dont think he realised that this was the only Aces game I’ve ever been to, or will again! Anyway, good luck in Perth boys – do Melbourne proud.

ABL SEMI FINAL – GAME 5

SYDNEY BLUE SOX    3

MELBOURNE ACES     15

Number of Events	20
Number of Sports	8
Gigs (Bands: Headlines + Support)	2 + 2

FOOTBALL – Feb 5th – Victorian Premier League Pre-Season

I had to referee a pre-season “twilight” game between two of the better sides in Victoria’s top tier.

The first half it lashed down to a point where I nearly had to put a halt to the game, and then just after half time, the sun came out and it became so hot and steamy, it was like being in the heart of the Amazonian Rainforest it was so uncomfortable.

Anyhow, for a pre-season hit out, it was hard fought and I think quite a few of the players were trialing for contracts, so who could blame them, for going full bore, even at this stage of the season.

Funniest inceident of the game, in fact it was possibly the funniest thing I’ve heard on a football field for a long long time, if only for the outlandish of the claim, was when I didn’t give a free kick for a technical offence and the spritely Geordie striker shouted at me”Why isn’t that a free kick? It’s a free kick all day, every day in the Premier League… and I should know, because I’ve played in it!”

Well the difference between the EPL and the VPL is only 17 letters, but in reality its about 400 levels of quality. That’s some comedown.

MELBOURNE KNIGHTS 1 – 1 MORELAND ZEBRAS

Number of Events	19
Number of Sports	7
Gigs (Bands: Headlines + Support)	2 + 2

POWER BOAT RACING – Feb 5th – The Melton Gold Cup!

I’m not sure if the Cup is made of real gold, and being Melton, I doubt it is.

It was the middle of summer so I thought I would take my 3 year daughter out to the local Reservoir to see some boats! So guess what, it was cold, it was wet and it was unfortunately windy. So when we saw most of the boats on their trailers, I dreaded that we may not see any racing. I managed to get some pics of her with the boats though which she loved. At one stage I am pretty sure she thought she was going for a ride in one of the boats, and I had to keep her busy before she would have began to ask the unanswerable and inevitably upsetting questions.

So after the photos, and a run around the playground, and looking at a choppy stretch of water for 20 minutes, I feared that we would have to leave race-less. And thena very excitable PA announcer screamed orgasmically that we were going to go racing. There was only a very limited window between weather patterns, so it was all systems go. Boats had come from all over Australia, so they were desperate for one of them to take home the gold. Here’s the race in its entirety:

Yes, they came from all over Australia for 2 laps! I guess that the main things were that there was racing for a decent crowd that hung around to the bitterly cold end and that even in far from ideal conditions, there were no crashes and no-one got hurt and my little girl was able to hear the roar of 1000s and 1000s of water bourne horsepower – a truly unique sight and sound.

1. OUTLAW (TAS)

2. PROFORMANCE (SA)

3. SACRIFICE (NSW)

Number of Events	18
Number of Sports	7
Gigs (Bands: Headlines + Support)	2 + 2

FOOTBALL – Feb 4th – Melbourne Derby v3.0 – Away again though…

Its the hottest ticket in town apparently. The Melbourne Derby is now one of the most anticipated events in the Melbourne sporting landscape.

And it proved so, when nearly 27,000 crammed into AAMI Park to watch two teams that between them hadn’t won for 13 games. SO was it a surprise when it proved that both teams had forgotten just how to win a football match. Even when the Victory went down to 10 men for the last 20 minutes, the Heart still couldn’t manage to snatch a win, such is the momentum of both teams.

MELBOURNE HEART 0 – 0 MELBOURNE VICTORY

Number of Events	17
Number of Sports	6
Gigs (Bands: Headlines + Support)	2 + 2