MARCUS: Off we go for another episode of LTS, boys. I’m sure we all got a bit more sleep than we have on previous Sundays, given the rain interrupted the cricket last night.
DAVE: Not if you’re a golf-lover Marcus; The British Open’s been on!
MARCUS: You sicko. We’ll start off in our traditional format and Jonty, I’ll throw to you first. What was the best bit of action you saw this week?
JONTY: I only saw two goals from my teams this week. I was at Hampton Park and they scored a couple against Murrumbeena, but they had plenty kicked against them. Then I went to Doveton and they had three kicked against them in 10 minutes, so I went back to Hampton Park but didn’t see any more goals. I’ll go with Jackson Dalton’s goal at Hampton Park in the second quarter. There was one play from defensive 50 to forward 50 that you just haven’t seen from Hampton Park, their ability to transition the footy. Dalton got on the end of it and it showed the blueprint that they’re going to have to play for the rest of the season if they’re going to make finals or even win the first final.
DAVE: Has Dalton played all year? He was a talented Hampton Park junior, then played at Cora Lynn and spent a short time at Bunyip. I thought he disappeared off the map, but he’s gone back to his home club.
JONTY: Okay…that’s interesting.
MARCUS: Who kicked the other goal that you saw?
JONTY: Tanner Stanton kicked the other and both were pretty good goals. Stanton’s was from the pocket, and if I was to draw a circle, (Jonty literally draws a diagram of the goal), and the goals are here (points), he’s here (points again), the wind is blowing that way (draws arrow), and he’s somehow slotted it through against the wind. It was outstanding and it got Hampton Park up an about.
MARCUS: Who invited Mr Squiggle to the podcast this week?
DAVE: I was lucky that I had two games close together this week. I went to Cora Lynn v Tooradin first. Tooradin kicked the first three goals of the game, then Jai Rout laid a strong tackle 18 minutes into the first quarter, right in front of the Peter Parker Pavilion. He then nailed the goal on a very tight angle. He got the first on the board and it really energised his team. Then down at Nar Nar Goon, the Goon had a slim lead over Inverloch-Kongwak at three-quarter time, and one their stalwarts, Brent Hughes, who was a gun midfielder back in his early days and a defender the last few years, they put him back in the midfield. He drifted forward and kicked the first of the last term, and given he’s a stalwart of the club, it really pumped-up Nar Nar Goon and led them to victory over a previously undefeated side. So Jai Rout and Brent Hughes are my heroes this week
MARCUS: My best action was watching Pakenham against Mt Evelyn and seeing the tenacity that Jake Barclay brings. He didn’t play in Pakenham’s last contest because of the concussion protocols, and then they had a bye, so he was charged-up like a caged animal wanting to get amongst it. About eight minutes into the game, no one had scored. He came from 20 metres away to run down a Mt Evelyn defender trying to rebound 50, and then hit Jayden Silva in the pocket with a dart, who kicked Pakenham’s first. I love watching Barclay play his footy, he’s in-and-under and loves getting into the thick of it. He’s probably one of the most influential players to any team in this competition.
ASHES RETAINED
MARCUS: So, Dave’s night was a bit different, but Jonty and I both awoke to the news that the Ashes are in safe hands. I think we all agree that we’re pretty lucky, given how far behind we were in that contest, but when you win the first two matches, you put yourself in the right position when the rain comes. Jonty, what were your main takeaways?
JONTY: That you need a spinner. I think that was really obvious. Even going back to day four when England got that late wicket, they were forced to bowl the spinners in tandem. I think Todd Murphy is a better bowler than Moeen Ali, I think we should have gone in with a spinner, we just wanted to force Green in there somehow. I’ll be interested to see how we juggle selection for the next Test, I’d love to see Michael Neser in there. The other thing is, there’s an old saying that the Australian captaincy is the second most important job in Australia. What’s the ratio of responsibility, for a captain, between tactics on-field and social service off the field? I don’t want to write him off on the back of one bad series, but if 6-12 months down the track he has another bad series and doesn’t seem to have learnt from this one, is his job expendable, or is the stuff he does off the field, which is second-to-none, enough to keep him in the job?
DAVE: For me, his number one role is to captain the team on the field. If you think of the great captains, there’s tactical nous and a hard edge. Allan Border, Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting. I think there’s a certain style of cricketer that has led Australia well in the past. You blokes can probably talk more about the evolution of the role better than I can, because you’re of Cummins’ generation more than me. It probably has changed since those guys. But I’m not a big fan of Cummins’ captaincy. I love him as a cricketer but not huge on him as a captain. But who else would be captain in that side?
JONTY: Travis Head, but we don’t want to take away from instincts, that’s his major strength. Everyone else is over 30 other than Marnus Labuschagne, but it’s not going to be him.
DAVE: We had a good one before the sandpaper incident.
JONTY: Now he’s too old.
MARCUS: It seems like Cummins is always having to do a bit more than other players to get the approval of the Australian public. We can admit that he hasn’t had a great series from a captaincy point of view, but he’s entitled to a little bit of leeway as a captain in his first away Ashes series. If you look at his credentials as captain, he was one or two bad sessions away from a huge result in the India series, he’s won in Pakistan and they won the World Test Championship. It doesn’t seem like there’s much more he could have done. But given the spectre of the whole Justin Langer removal and having Langer’s mates in the commentary box all the time, it feels like he’s going to have to do a bit more to get ahead.
JONTY: Being a bowling captain too doesn’t help.
DAVE: There’s no blueprint for captaining against ‘Bazball’ either. It’s a whole new style of test cricket. There’s one-day cricket that he could fall back to, but in a test match, no captain has had to deal with what the English are throwing at Cummins. You’ve got to allow some leniency there as well.
MARCUS: As far as off-field stuff goes, Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh both did extensive charity work during their times as captain. All captains have got roles to play off the field, so it is possible to do both, and that’s something Pat has to work to.
DAVE: Back to the actual cricket, I think in the first innings Australia had seven players get to 20. I thought they wasted the opportunity to bat first on a good pitch, finally, and in good conditions. I think they were 200 runs short on the first innings, they needed five or six hundred.
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
MARCUS: Last week we had the unfortunate news that the 2026 Commonwealth Games, which were to be hosted in Victoria, had been cancelled. Before we go any further, do we think that ‘doing a Commonwealth Games’ is going to become part of the vernacular, if someone says they’ll do something and then not follow through, in the same way that we have ‘doing a Bradbury’ ?
DAVE: Done a Dan Andrews?
JONTY: That will lose us all our Labor supporters!
MARCUS: That will get us our clicks this week! But I want to make ‘doing a Commonwealth Games’ part of the vernacular, and that’s on the record now. Anyway, the event was going to be in our backyard, and it was going to be great to see some local athletes compete. Depending on the sport, it could be their pinnacle, but now we’re not going to get that chance to see it up-close, which is a shame. Who were some athletes we were excited to see on the world stage?
DAVE: Shooting was slapped in the face and didn’t get a run at the 2022 Games, so I know the local shooters were keen to shoot in Victoria. So I feel sad for Laetisha Scanlan, this is the second Commonwealth Games she won’t be competing in in a row. Even if it does go ahead, it won’t be happening in her home state, which was motivational and a pick-me-up after Birmingham.
JONTY: One we wrote about on the back of her performance in the Super Netball Grand Final is Matilda Garrett. Netball isn’t played at the Olympics so this is netball’s biggest event. To have that taken from her in her home state, when she would have been hitting her peak, is quite sad. From an Australian perspective, how good would it have been to see Ariarne Titmus swim in 2026? She broke the world record in the 400 metres freestyle at the world championships last night. I think Titmus is going to go down as a generational swimmer and it would have been great to see her swim.
MARCUS: Staying on netball, I thought of Eliza Molino. The goalkeeper is arguably the pride of the Pakenham Netball Club at the moment. She’s made representative squads all throughout her career to date, including the 2023-24 National Under 17 squad back in April, and would only be in her early 20s when the games came around. The other I thought of is boxer, Riek Chuol. He’s only been competing for just over 12 months but is already a national champion in the Under 57 kilogram weight division. Given his potential and what he’s achieved so far, he was certainly someone I was keen to see on the big stage.
JONTY: Nathan Ephraums, on the hockey front, is one to mention, too.
CRYSTAL BALLING
MARCUS: Part of being a sports journalist is about making predictions and we’re going to do exactly that, now. I’ve asked you to both predict the end of the season to see how the ladders will shape up, and the first week of finals, as a result.
JONTY: Southern Division One (1-5) – Cheltenham, Cranbourne, Dingley, Springvale Districts and Port Melbourne. So week one would be Cheltenham v Cranbourne, Springvale Districts v Port Melbourne. Division Two: East Brighton, Murrumbeena, Highett, Doveton, Hampton Park. You’d have East Brighton v Murrumbeena and Doveton v Hampton Park, a good local derby.
DAVE: West Gippsland (1-6): Inverloch-Kongwak, Phillip Island, Tooradin-Dalmore, Nar Nar Goon, Cora Lynn, Warragul. Week one would be Nar Nar Goon v Cora Lynn, the ‘Dusties’ against Tooradin-Dalmore and Inverloch Kongwak v Phillip Island in the second semi. And Inverloch will win the netball!
MARCUS: Outer East Premier (1-5): Narre Warren, Wandin, Woori Yallock, Pakenham, Mt Evelyn. So Wandin v Woori Yallock in week one and Pakenham v Mt Evelyn, which will be two belters.
Thanks boys, we’ll do this again next week!
