NRL, A-League and AFL games will be played in empty stadiums but there is still a lot more time to kill in between those games on the weekend and what do we do during the week?

Conversation has been touted as one option but without sport what really is there to talk about other than coronavirus and toilet paper jokes.

The answer is of course sports books and sports movies.

Each of us will have our favourite sporting tome, but venturing into the domain of favourite sporting films not only gives us something to watch but plenty of conversation starters to boot.

An important starting point is why does Australia produce so many world-class athletes and sporting teams, but is so crap at making sporting movies and even worse TV series.

Mick Molloy's classic Crackerjack aside, what sporting cinematic or TV gems can you think of from Down Under?

Phar Lap was an absolute shocker about our most loved horse and should have been put down at the first script reading. Bodyline - a multi-part TV series about the infamous Ashes tour of 1932-33 by Douglas Jardine and the Poms was marginally worse.

The trouble with making films about Australian sporting greats is that we like our memories of them to be comfortably one dimensional heroic.

Club Maitland City bowls director DJ Dilworth like so many others finds it hard to go past Australia's own Crackerjack and a British favourite Blackball when it comes to lawn bowls and comedy.

We also had to agree with Maitland Golf Club captain Rick Marsh's assessment of The Legend of Bagger Vance starring Matt Damon and Will Smith as being a stand out in terms of golf and probably in our view along with baseball's The Natural in sporting movies full stop.

Marsh's No.2 Tin Cup is one of several Kevin Costner movies in our personal top 10, along with Bull Durham and Field of Dreams.

Damon's Invictus with Morgan Freeman about South Africa's 1995 Rugby World Cup campaign is another favourite, however, Smith's Ali is just OK. For the seminal film on Muhammed Ali it is hard to go past the documentary When We Were Kings about the Rumble In the Jungle fight against George Foreman.

Two British contributions to the list are Mean Machine with Vinnie Jones and a young and very psychotic Jason Statham and the wonderful Bend It Like Beckham

We would love to hear your thoughts on the sporting movie greats.

Here are our top 10 sporting films.