Again, still no sport happening, with one notable exception - which I'll get to later. Content starved columnists everywhere are turning to recounting glories of yester-years in order to fill their required column inches, and broadcasters are re-running old matches on our screens in order to keep us entertained.
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It's not too bad really. It beats reading about the latest round of antics amongst the footballers, and seeing the undeniable quality of the old games serves as a worthy reminder of something we've 'lost somewhere, somehow along the way' - to quote Kris Kristofferson.
The current situation is just so desperate, and it's not only due to the fact that everything has had to shut down for a bit while we get this virus under control.
It is just so utterly incredible that a simple suspension of play across all our codes has revealed what a dire situation Australian sport, in its entirety, is in. All of our top line sports are in real trouble.
Bluntly: They're all broke; all of them.
How can this be so?
We all know that the questions about the state of Rugby League finances are predominantly about fecal depth, but the Rugby Union is also in need of a defibrillator. The A-League is a good distance up the proverbial creek, entirely paddle-free, and then there's what is possibly most surprising - the cricket: Australia is the number one test side in the world. Financially? Stuffed.
Related links: How did we end up in this disaster?
There should be some sort of commission into all of this. These are huge operations, generating enormous revenues, and they're all in trouble. Something is seriously wrong here.
Amongst all of this wades Peter V'landys whose approach appears to be to just bulldoze his way through. The Storm heading to Albury is a fine example. V'landys and the League seemed to just assume that it'd be fine to simply relocate The Storm to Albury, NSW.
Albury council decided otherwise on the grounds that an out-of-state football side, no matter who they are, should not be allowed to access facilities that are currently being denied to their own citizens. And then, to the rescue, came the Albury Tigers, an AFL organisation who have decided to allow The Storm to train on their (non-council managed) ground.
It's a strange situation - an NRL club being bailed out by a Victorian based code.
It's made stranger when you consider the overt hostility that the Victorians more generally direct towards V'landys.
V'landys himself has acknowledged that he is the number one face on the Victorians' dartboard. As head of Racing NSW V'landys threw the bomb that is The Everest directly into the Melbourne Cup.
He gets things done, V'landys, but he has no respect for tradition. It's a little worrying.
GO THE HORSES
The one thing that is ticking over quite nicely, spectator free, is the horse racing. You could put its resilience down to Australia's general propensity for the punt, but then you have to consider that, these days, you can bet on all the other sports as well.
More likely a large part of it is the simple fact that jockeys aren't paid like football players. You are paid a fairly frugal fee for donning the silks and sitting astride a stampeding steed. The bonuses, which can be considerable, are drawn from the prize money and are straight-up performance based.
It's an interesting contrast to what you get for beefing up and lacing on the boots.
'Of all the human wonders of the world perhaps the jockey is the greatest,' Banjo Paterson (pictured below) once wrote. He also penned: 'There was Harrison, who made his pile when Pardon won the cup.'
Trivia question: Which cup did Pardon win? (the answer will be at the bottom)
'Pardon,' according to Paterson, was an actual horse. Whether it was 'the Son of Reprieve' as stated in another of Paterson's poems is harder to ascertain. It was most likely poetic license, but they're great names - evocative of a story now lost.
There is a process to naming a racehorse. You have to submit it and have it approved by the racing authority in whichever country you're in. There are fairly strict guidelines but every now and then a ripper makes it through. 'Hoof Hearted' would have seemed reasonable enough on the application form. Spoken aloud by a race caller it becomes an entirely different affair ...
'Harass' is another that would've seemed innocent enough on paper but assumed a different context as callers described its movement amongst the field.
The salacious 'Fiftyshadesofhay' made it through, as did 'Geespot.'
There is a horse with a deformed ear called 'Evander' and another called 'Lapfonac', which is 'can of pal' spelt backwards. 'Big Tits,' however, was denied upon application in England. The owners instead registered it in France where 'Big Tits' is just a nonsensical arrangement of letters. They then brought it back to race in Britain where callers, controversially, now have to call it.
A cynic once said, before the discovery of the North Pole, that the way to go about it would be to advertise a race meeting there, whereupon, without doubt, a couple of dozen Australians would turn up with their horses ...
* 'We swooped down on Menindie, to run for the President's cup.' Banjo Paterson - Old Pardon the Son of Reprieve.
