Spoilt on Sunday

Sports fans in Oz had a treat last Sunday.

To start with, there was the Aussie Rules blockbuster in the afternoon between St Kilda and Geelong, who both went into the game with 13-0 records. For once, the hype was beaten by the occasion itself as the two sides played out a thrilling finale. The Saints made a startling start, piling on the first five goals to romp to a 30-point lead in the first quarter. The Cats then started clawing back and even led briefly in the final term. Scores were locked at 85-85 with just over a minute to go and it seemed we would still have two unbeaten sides after Round 14, only for Michael Gardiner to soar above the pack and haul in a mark just outside the goal-square before kicking what was to be the final scoring shot of a marvellous contest. The ladder-topping Saints are now 14-0. Can they go through the whole season unbeaten? I wouldn't bet against them, although the Cats, who had the gifted Steve Johnson missing for this clash, might be just a tad tougher to beat in September.

A few personal observations on Australian Football for our overseas friends who may not have had the pleasure of watching much of it:

I'll be the first to admit that it's an acquired taste. Indeed, large pockets of New South Wales and Queensland have yet to fully integrate with the rest of Australia, in that they still regard the indigenous football code as somewhat of an anomaly.

It took me a year or two after I settled in Oz back in 1990 to fully appreciate the nuances of the game but I consider myself extremely fortunate that unlike the aforementioned folk from NSW and Qld, I stuck to learning the basics because now, I'd go as far as to suggest that, at its best, a game of Aussie Rules is better to watch than even a hypothetical football spectacular between Barcelona and Brazil at their best.

Other sports stand no comparison. The two rugby codes feature overweight blokes who wear bulky shoulder-cum-chest pads and run into each other under the guise of tackling. The helmeted giants who play American Football - a misnomer if there ever was one; wouldn't American Handball be more apt? - wear even more body armour, while all they seem to do is to make ungainly attempts to block their immediate opponent from making a play.

Aussie Rules footballers, who wear no protective clothing whatsoever, get tackled at high speed from all corners of the compass - not just from in front of them as the rugby and gridiron players usually do. Besides the raw courage that it demands, Aussie Rules also requires all its players to be skilful with both hand and foot. There is no more exhilarating sight in sport than that of Aussie Rules footballers flying high to take pack marks. The sport simply doesn't accommodate unfit, unskilled, near-obese, so-called 'athletes' who appear to find it easy to walk - and walk is the operative word here - into rugby union/league and gridiron sides.

To those who haven't yet discovered the joys of Australian Football, I'd heartily recommend a visit to www.afl.com.au where you'll be able to download highlights of games. Make a start, give it a bit of time and get hooked!

Time to get off the soapbox and look back on the second big event that lit up last Sunday.

So convinced was I that the Wimbledon Men's Singles Final, which started shortly after 11:00 pm on Sunday night (Sydney time), would be a one-sided encounter that I was seriously considering recording it and watching it after work the next day. In the end, I was glad I stayed up to enjoy what turned out to be a pulsating four-and-a-half-hour classic - and sad that I didn't record it!

I've long considered Andy Roddick a bit of a hack - one of the biggest servers in the history of the game but not much chop otherwise. He has certainly proved me wrong over the past fortnight. Take a bow, Larry Stefanki, although I've read elsewhere that Roddick's previous coach, some bloke named Jimmy Connors, might have had something to do too with encouraging him to try and be more aggressive by coming to the net as much as possible - quite interesting because attacking the net wasn't exactly Jimbo's preferred style of play. And where did Roddick's double-handed down-the-line winners come from? It was like watching Marat Safin in disguise! At the end, I felt more than a tinge of sympathy for Roddick. You'd have got astronomical odds against yours truly ever experiencing that emotion about him before Wimbledon 2009.

Roger Federer, the very embodiment of poetry in motion, wasn't to be denied, though, and that record-breaking 15th Grand Slam triumph was duly his in front of the watching - and, dare I say, adoring - McEnroe, Laver, Sampras and Borg.

After enjoying the sight of John McEnroe in action almost two decades ago, I never imagined I'd be lucky enough to watch another tennis player who'd out-do SuperMac in the 'sublime' stakes. Had I been religious, I would've suggested that tennis afficionados have been blessed to have seen two such talents in one lifetime. As I'm not of that persuasion, I prefer to think of it as yet another example of evolution. Each generation gets better than the previous one. The species would die out otherwise, as Charles Darwin theorised with such immaculate vision a century and a half ago.

A St Kilda v Geelong thriller followed by a Roddick v Federer nail-biter. We were well and truly spoilt on Sunday.