Sports Spurts

“Evening sir, evening madam. I am an officer with the North Sydney Council and and you have been pulled over for a random skin, fin and fur check!

May I see your licences please.

Ahh Mr and Mrs Skinner is it? We are not off to a very good start now are we!

Now please hand over that Akubra hat and I will have to take your leather belt as well Mr Skinner, plus of course your RM Williams boots. Ohh and your leather wallet too if you don’t mind!

Now, Mrs Skinner can you kindly pass me you hat with the peacock feathers, ohh, and your crocodile skin handbag, along with your pearl necklace, tortoise shell earrings and leather purse and shoes!

Thank you, now do I see a cricket ball on the back seat? I’ll be confiscating that along with those football boots.

Now while we are looking at the seats you had better whip off those lambs’ wool seat covers and pass them over.

Thank you so much for your co-operation, Mr and Mrs Skinner but unfortunately now I can see that you have leather seats so best we rip them out as well!

Actually, I think the best bet would be for us to impound your entire car, after all it is a Jaguar!

A senior member of our council will be in contact with you within the next 48-hours to assist you in starting the process to change your name because as you know we do not allow skinners in this council!

Thank you and enjoy your walk home!”

•••

Welcome everyone to 2023 and this mad, crazy, woke infested politically correct world!

North Sydney Council are currently leading the way so far this year for absurdity, but me and Me Mate are confident that it will soon be gazumped! In the meantime, if you are intending to be entering the North Sydney Council area, we strongly suggest that you conceal your North Sydney Bears membership cards because surely such membership would be severely frowned upon by the Skin, Fin and Fur Squad!

Crazy world, crazy times!

(Oops perhaps I should not be saying “crazy” because that might be offensive to someone!) Sorry if it is, but here I go for 2023.

•••

So, with crazy in mind and the need to start the new year off in a similar vein the name Peta Bradley comes to mind. You will read about Peta’s ice swimming exploits elsewhere in this edition of The Gilgandra Weekly but all me and Me Mate can do is sit back and admire and applaud her achievements while at the same time thinking “WHAT THA??????”.

How can a girl from the Giladise area (which is not renowned for it’s artic like conditions) end up winning a bronze medallion at the fifth International Ice Swimming Association Championships held in France recently?

Me and Me Mate cannot figure that out but gee it is one big effort which we will contemplate under a warm shower!

Peta came third in the 500 metres but swam in lots of other events and her story makes great reading so suss it out elsewhere in today’s paper.

So, if you happen to see an ice cube strolling around the town it’s probably Peta so, don’t be shy in congratulating her, just be careful after doing so because the footpath might be wet and slippery due to her defrosting!

N(ice) work Peta!

•••

Maybe its just the time of year when impersonators get about as you would well and truly know if you have been to the recent Elvis Festival, but Me Mate swears that he recently saw at a local establishment a snowman playing on the piano “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”.

Apparently, the snowman’s name was Meltin’ John!

•••

Moving on it is time for prospective Gilgandra Panther rugby league players to get moving with training starting next Tuesday (January 24) night for both first grade and the league tag. While the experienced duo of Luke Ritchie and Curtis Carr will be at the helm of the first-grade squad the Pink Panthers are, at this stage, without a coach, which me and Me Mate find rather extraordinary given the high level of talent and the performances of the team in recent years, e.g. semi-finalists in 2022.

Still at the time of typing this, the Panthers are still searching for someone to mould the 2023 team, which once again should be brimful of talented players, and would love to hear from anyone who might be interested in the role. Interim arrangements are in hand for the commencement of training next week, so prospective Pink Panthers need to get themselves to The McGee to get things underway for the 2023 season along with the first graders.

•••

Now this might come as a shock to you, as indeed it did to me and Me Mate and our may Filipino friends, but the Philippines have a side playing in the current Australian Country Cricket Championships being played in Canberra.

If you don’t believe us, then best you ask the very talented Breelong cricketer Matt Everett who is playing in the NSW Country side and who notched a half century plus one against the Filipinos on Sunday.

As I type this up, the NSW side were undefeated having previously beaten South Australia in their opening game.

Me and Me Mate cannot ascertain how Matt was dismissed in the game against the Philippines, but we are surmising that perhaps he might have been bowled by the Filippino version of Shane Warne’s legendary “flipper”, the Flippino!

•••

Not unlike the rest of us Me Mate gets really frustrated when he regularly gets told that he needs to change his password.

The last time he was told that his new password had to be all capitals so he made it CANBERRACAIROADDISABABA.

•••

Me and Me Mate just don’t get it! We don’t get how one football player, that being Cristiano Ronaldo, can be worth $9.80 a second, or $6 million per week or what ever that adds up to a year! Maybe we are very naïve about the ways of the soccer (oops I have done it again, I mean football) world but how on earth can one player be worth so much and how on earth do whoever is paying him that obscene amount of dosh ever get their money back?

Maybe they don’t get their money back! I don’t know but gee it just seems to me to be way, way, way over the top and just imagine what could be done with that sort of money in terms of so many humanitarian projects let alone developing grass roots football.

I am thinking Football Australia would be very happy to be getting $6 million a week to splash around their game!

•••

Why don’t penguins fly?

They are not tall enough to be pilots!

•••

Look between us me and Me Mate reckon that we have racked up about 17 or so holes in one in our lifetime! That would be holes in our socks and underpants, not counting the ones that our Mums used to darn up!

Anyway, we doubt the Rob Hay could match that number, but then again neither of us can match Rob’s hole in one on the golf course so that sort of evens it out a bit!

Rob unsurprisingly won the nearest to the pin at the Gilgandra Royal and Ancient on Sunday when his tee shot on the seventh neatly nestled up against the flagpole, which by the way was still upright in the hole at the time!

Gotta be happy with that, and we dare say Rob was!

•••

My weakly Weekly poetic effort!

Whilst away at Christmas, Me Mate went to this dodgy bar.

It was full of seedy folk, with known crims from near and far.

Still, it was the only one that was handy to where he was staying.

So, he bravely wandered in where the crooks were all playing.

It didn’t take too long, just after he had ordered his first drink

That a bloke sidled up beside him and gave him a wink!

“Hey Buddy, I’ve got a deal for you, one that can’t be resisted!”

Me Mate replied, “No thanks”, but the bloke just persisted.

“I’ve got this ‘sat nav’ that I am selling really, really cheap”

“I admit it’s a pirate one, but the price is a long way from steep!”

Me Mate was in a quandary, what should he do?

The bloke was going nowhere, and Me Mate was in a stew!

So, in the end he bought it so the bloke would go away.

And he went home with that pirate sat nav on that day!

He found it was no good with directions after he installed it in his car

But he says that it is absolutely great, at telling you where you arrrrrrrrrhhh!

•••

Me and Me Mate hope that there will be no brewery droop in the forthcoming games for Gilgandra’s representative cricket team. You see Gil’s Brewery Shield team are thus far undefeated in the competition with one game to play, that being against Cobar at the McGee this Sunday.

Irrespective of the result of that game Gilgandra has won the right to host the final of the prestigious competition, having won the right to do so after a comprehensive victory over Dubbo a couple of weekends ago in Dubbo.

While unconfirmed, me and Me Mate have heard of reports that the Dubbo Rugby Club is seeking some sort of compensation from the Western Cricket Association for the damage caused to the roof of their club house (which is adjacent to Dubbo’s number one oval) by Gil’s captain Ash Hazelton as he bludgeoned his way to 181 runs in Gilgandra’s emphatic victory!

•••

What goes trot, trot, trot, dash, dash, trot, trot? Horse code!

•••

So, Ash scored a century plus four score, which by any measure is a great feat, as indeed was his brother Kieren’s effort in training a hattrick of winners at the Gil races on New Year’s Eve.

Turgenov ($4.60 equal favourite) having its first start for Kieren, got the winnings underway in race three, soon followed up by another first starter in the Hazelton stable with Mamelon ($26.00) taking out race four and then would you believe Sizzling Star ($16.00) claiming race five.

Whilst neither me or Me Mate were at the races on that day we reckon that we heard many a ‘woop woop’ coming from the plethora of local syndicate owner members who were obviously relishing the wins!

It was a touch ironic that Sizzling Star won the Damows and More Benchmark 50 Handicap because the sponsor of that race is none other than Keiro’s brother in law Damian Jordan who is one of the many (syndicate) owners of the horse! Suppose it is nice to keep it in the family!

•••

Me Mate once lived in the big smoke and as was his want he called in to a bar most every afternoon after work for a quick ale before heading home. It just so happened that a specialist, Doctor Jones, was in the same habit, and he (the doc) would enjoy an almond daiquiri before he too would head home. One day, the barman, Dick, ran out of almonds so he used hickory nuts instead.

The doctor took a sip and then asked, “Is this an almond daiquiri, Dick?” Dick replied, “It’s a hickory daiquiri, doc!”.

•••

OK so I reckon that that will do me for my first week back in 2023. You know you have to ease yourself back into things now don’t you. Hang on, just before I go, Me Mate has just come in all upset.

He is about to set out on a camping trip so he went and bought himself some camping insurance but upon reading the fine print when he got home he now finds that if someone steals his tent during the night he isn’t covered!

•••

Sorry about that one folks! I will try to do better next week. Until then have a good one and stay safe and be kind to whoever you should be kind to! Take care.