Australians had turned against bad-boy bowler Shane Warne after yet another SMS sex scandal and the tacky front-page split with his long-suffering wife. Sponsors had cancelled their contracts with him and angry cricket fans had called on selectors to leave the serial philanderer and convicted drug cheat out of the team to face England in the annual Ashes five-game Test series.
Videos are replacing vicars in small town Australia because of an acute shortage of ordained ministers, news reports said on Monday. The Uniting Church already sends DVDs of Sunday sermons to 20 towns considered too small or too remote to have their own ministers.
The all-conquering Springboks on Monday played down their chances in this week’s Tri-Nations rugby clash against a struggling Australian outfit who have been outmuscled in their past three Tests. But forwards coach Gert Smal delivered the first blow in the inevitable psychological build-up to the clash.
The Australian rugby team’s already lengthy injury list got longer on Monday. Wallabies hooker Jeremy Paul has been ruled out of Saturday’s Tri-Nations match against South Africa in Perth. And Australia A flyhalf Lachlan MacKay, set to replace another injured player, failed a medical exam.
New Zealand piled on 30 unanswered points to overturn an early Wallaby flourish and retain rugby’s Bledisloe Cup 30-13 at the Sydney Olympic stadium on Saturday. The All Blacks were irresistible as they came back from a 13-10 half-time deficit to overpower Australia, recovering after last week’s loss to South Africa.
South African rugby coach Jake White was the ultimate diplomat on Thursday when his team arrived in Australia, saying a draw would be his favoured outcome when Tri-Nations rivals Australia and New Zealand play on Saturday. White believes injuries in the Australian and New Zealand camps make squad depth the key factor.
New Zealand coach Graham Henry is bracing for a Wallaby backlash when his All Blacks take them on in Saturday’s Tri-Nations and Bledisloe Cup rugby Test match at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium. The Wallabies are smarting after last month’s disastrous tour of South Africa.
Australia on Tuesday named pace-bowler Stuart Clark as part of its Test squad as fast bowlers Brett Lee and and Glenn McGrath remained doubtful for the third Test due to injury. Clark, who is currently in England where he plays for Middlesex, will join the Australian squad in Manchester later in the day.
New Zealand has delayed until Wednesday the naming of its team to play Australia in a Tri-Nations rugby match due to injury concerns within the squad. Coach Graham Henry said captain and centre Tana Umaga was only a 50-50 chance of taking part in the match on Saturday at the former Olympic stadium in Sydney.
Australians awoke on Monday to the queasy feeling that cricket’s Ashes may be headed back to England after a gut-wrenching two-run defeat in the second Test to square the five-match series. Australians sat on their edge of the seats on Sunday evening watching their team’s compelling tail-end fightback
Pressure is building on Wallaby coach Eddie Jones leading into one of the most important weeks on the Australian rugby calendar with the traditional Bledisloe Cup Test against rivals New Zealand. It all went sour for Jones on a disastrous two-Test tour to South Africa last month, highlighted by the sending home of reserve scrum-half Matt Henjak for disciplinary reasons.
A South African flight attendant was jailed for 18 years on Thursday for trying to smuggle heroin with a street value of up to ,5-million into Australia. Leyakoa Mohlasedi was a crew member on a flight from Johannesburg last year when he smuggled in almost 1,2kg of the drug, national ABC radio reported.
It is guaranteed to raise a cheer among those who enjoy a tipple: moderate drinkers are better thinkers than teetotallers or those who overindulge. Research by the Australian National University in Canberra suggests drinking in moderation boost your brainpower. But none at all, or too much, can make you a dullard.
Australia’s cricket team could decide to abandon the Ashes tour if there are more terrorist bombings in England, fast bowler Jason Gillespie said in remarks reported on Wednesday. Gillespie was quoted as saying the Australian team had been unnerved by the July 7 wave of suicide bombings.
Australia’s highest mountain can’t compete with the stature of Everest, K2 and Kilimanjaro. But Mount Kosciuszko in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains will soon boast something few others can: a state-of-the-art loo. A toilet resembling a hobbit hole is to be built on the freezing rooftop of Australia, 2&nsp;108m above sea level.
Eddie Jones faced suggestions he has outlived his usefulness as Wallaby coach on Tuesday as he arrived home from Australia’s dismal tour of South Africa. Jones put a brave face on the Wallabies’ twin losses to the Springboks, saying the team still have time to raise their overseas performance before the 2007 World Cup in France.
To Cabinet ministers it seemed like a grand gesture, and a way of offering eight homeless elephants a new life in a luxurious enclosure. But the Australian government’s decision to import eight Thai elephants for a conservation project caused derision and an international rumpus.
The stepfather of two children found hanged in a cemetery in Western Australia pleaded guilty to murdering them when he appeared in court on Monday, a report said. The bodies of the 14-month-old boy and his four-year-old sister were found in Pioneer Cemetery at Derby, 2 400km north of Perth, on April 23 this year.
The Wallabies were rattled by playing at high altitude, the ”wow” factor of meeting Nelson Mandela and their historically woeful playing record at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park, the Australian media said on Monday. The Wallabies were ”horrible, playing some of the worst Australian rugby for some time in the opening 30 minutes as they fell behind 20-3,” The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Greg Growden wrote.
Just days after announcing the end of their 10- year-marriage in June, bad-boy cricketer Shane Warne and wife Simone were snapped on a Spanish holiday buying up a storm in local boutiques. According to Stella Minahan, a researcher at Melbourne’s Deakin University, her fellow Australians were engaged in ”retail therapy” to help them forget their cares and woes.
Two of Australia’s top women cyclists are still on life support after being hit by an out-of-control car that also killed teammate Amy Gillett in Germany this week, Cycling Australia (CA) said on Thursday. Three other injured cyclists are in a satisfactory condition, CA said.
Witchcraft, sorcery and fortune-telling are no longer illegal in Australia’s second-largest state after the Victorian state Parliament sitting in Melbourne on Thursday updated the statute book. ”It’s almost 200 years old and is steeped in the language and attitudes of Dickensian England,” Attorney General Rob Hulls said when introducing legislation to repeal the Vagrancy Act.
Australian spin-meister Shane Warne has admitted that his high-profile personal problems, notably the recent break-up of his 10-year marriage, will cut short his career as the world’s most successful bowler. ”I definitely think it will make me play shorter,” Warne told reporters of his off-field dramas.
Lleyton Hewitt and Guillermo Coria will be fined for insults during their Davis Cup clash last week — the Australian for calling the umpire a ”poof” and the Argentinian for spitting, Tennis Australia said on Wednesday. The International Tennis Federation had informed Tennis Australia it would determine the fines at its next meeting, a spokesperson said.
An Australian teenager has had his nose bitten off in a violent argument over the merits of blood-and-guts feature film Sin City, news reports said on Monday. The 19-year-old was outside a cinema in Bathurst at the weekend when he got into a fight with another man over the quality of the film.
Sports fields too hard to play on, gardens that have dried up and plumbing so bereft of water that every bathroom smells — this is the reality of drought in Goulburn, on track to be the first Australian city to die of thirst. Four years into the country’s worst drought in 60 years, the historic township in inland New South Wales is now so dry that its water supply will only last about eight months.
Australian cricket star Shane Warne on Monday spoke of the pain at the end of his 10-year marriage, but assured fans he would not allow his personal life to impact on his performance during the Ashes. Warne took responsibility for the failure of his marriage which has been blamed on several highly publicised dalliances with young women.
The Wallabies were on Monday bolstered by the return from injury of first-team players Daniel Vickerman, Chris Latham and Stirling Mortlock for this month’s two rugby Tests in South Africa — the return Mandela Challenge Plate Test against the Springboks in Johannesburg on July 23 and the Tri-Nations Test in Pretoria on July 30.
The Wallabies haven’t won in Johannesburg for 42 years, but coach Eddie Jones is adamant his team can break through at Ellis Park in two weeks in the second match of the Mandela Challenge rugby series against South Africa. The Australians beat the Springboks 30-12 in the first Mandela game in Sydney on Saturday
Australia continued their home dominance over South Africa, scoring three first-half tries in 10 minutes on Saturday and defeating the Springboks 30-12 in a rugby union Test match. The win extended a seven-year winning streak for the Wallabies over South Africa in Australia. The Springboks’ last win in Australia was in Perth in 1998.
Australian rugby captain George Gregan can expect some antagonistic treatment from his opposite number — rookie halfback Ricky Januarie — in Saturday’s Test match at the former Olympic stadium. The 23-year-old Januarie, a surprise selection for the South Africans this year after missing the entire Super 12 season, aims to do what top number nine’s do well: be annoying.
Australia’s embattled golf circuit received another demoralising blow on Wednesday with confirmation that the country’s richest tournament, the Heineken Classic, has been scrapped. The tournament’s promoter said the Classic, scheduled for next February, was unable to attract sufficient sponsorship.