The Examiner’s Rob Shaw, Brian Allen and Ben Hann unpack and discuss the sports news across Northern Tasmania.
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00:00 Welcome to episode 33 of the Pressbox Examiner's weekly sportscast.
00:11 We're down to three this week.
00:12 It was no Josh Partridge, he's done his best.
00:14 Riley Meredith in precedent pulled up lame this morning.
00:17 We'll be talking about the Big Bash league game from last night.
00:20 We'll give you an Aiden O'Connor update.
00:22 That's a bit of a weekly story at the moment.
00:24 And the latest on footy saga going on in the north.
00:26 We'll start with the Big Bash league game which is played in Launceston on Monday night.
00:30 Ben you were there, how was it?
00:31 Hey, it was a mixed experience I think for me, Rob.
00:34 The Sixers got the chocolates by six wickets.
00:39 Daniel Hughes doing the majority of the damage.
00:41 A 60-nod out performance.
00:42 For the Hurricanes the best on the field was probably Caleb Jewell who hit a pretty quick
00:48 fire 42.
00:49 And I thought, despite pretty lacklustre in-court performances, Corey Anderson was a spotlight
00:56 with two wickets and a handy 17.
00:59 Nice.
01:00 Yeah, I think we all watched the game, mate.
01:02 And I suppose my take was it was a bit slow going.
01:06 There weren't too many boundaries.
01:08 And yeah, it was just a long night.
01:10 I didn't actually get through all of the game at home.
01:13 But I heard Aaron Finch say, you know, he's pretty much synonymous with Big Bash cricket
01:18 in Australia, that he just thinks the games are just ridiculously long at the moment.
01:23 What's your take?
01:24 Yeah, I completely agree.
01:25 So there were 6,289 officially attended last night.
01:29 There had been plenty less there by the time the final ball was bowled.
01:33 I didn't get out of the ground until 11.15pm.
01:35 It's a Monday night.
01:36 Most of the audience is families, kids.
01:40 They're not going to stay up that long on a Monday night on a school night.
01:43 School night?
01:44 Yeah, they've all got school the next day.
01:45 So it's really long.
01:46 It's really slow.
01:47 It wasn't helped by the fact that the Sixers didn't have to play an aggressive style cricket.
01:51 So it did feel like a one-dayer, effectively.
01:53 There weren't many bans being scored.
01:55 And it was just, you're just sitting there, it was just drifting, effectively.
02:00 And I think a heap of opportunities to speed up the game.
02:04 They just need to make sure it happens because, yeah, that was my main takeaway from the game.
02:10 It was just, just drifted.
02:14 And it's not a really good start for the BBL.
02:15 They've had now two abandoned games, and the games that have been played have not really
02:19 been that exciting.
02:20 So they need the BBL to work this year with a terrible test summer.
02:24 It isn't working so far.
02:26 I will say, though, there was one highlight of the evening.
02:31 It was on the field, but it wasn't on the pitch.
02:34 It was late in the day when the spectators had clearly had enough of what was going on.
02:40 A drunk old man, I'll say, did a bit of dancing around before a young, fit security guard,
02:48 which there was only one on the field apparently, sprinted a good 200 metres to tackle him,
02:53 much to the eye of the crowd.
02:54 And then a younger fella decided to do a similar thing, doing handstands and cartwheels.
02:58 Not only did he get chased across the ground by that same security guard, he got chased
03:02 out of the stadium, which was, I thought, quite funny.
03:06 And was the only time I really heard the crowd.
03:08 So, says a bit about the contest itself.
03:11 But, yeah, no, that's sort of really...
03:14 What was the play-by-play, though, mate?
03:16 Apparently, you were saying the young fella was darting one way and then he saw this speedy
03:22 security guard coming at him or something or other?
03:24 Yeah, so he'd seen the first bike get tackled pretty aggressively.
03:27 So after he did his little handstands and dancing around, he saw the guy bolt straight
03:33 towards him.
03:34 So he sprinted back 180 degrees towards the outer wing.
03:38 He's jumped over the fence.
03:39 He's only in his jocks, I should just mention.
03:42 And the security guard is sprinting right after him.
03:45 Not only does he chase him over the fence, like leaps over the fence at full speed, you
03:49 see them both disappear behind the stand.
03:52 The security guard clearly going at a faster rate of knots than the young fella.
03:57 I don't think his evening ended up very positively.
04:00 I thought I couldn't see the end result because the big stand was in the way.
04:03 But I can only imagine what would have happened.
04:07 I think it speaks volumes for the contest that we spent far longer talking about this
04:11 bloke than we have Caleb Jewell or anyone else.
04:13 Ben, you mentioned that you felt the game could be sped up in different ways.
04:18 I know you watched it as well, Rob, so I might just bring you in here.
04:21 What do you feel the Bebash can do to speed up its matches?
04:25 Yeah, I think the cynic in me would say that the TV companies like it at this time slot
04:29 and they like it going on all evening because it keeps the viewers in and the advertising
04:33 dollars ticking over.
04:34 But I totally agree with Ben.
04:35 You can't take kids to a game that finishes at 11 o'clock when they've got school the
04:40 next morning.
04:41 It just kills the audience.
04:42 It's worth remembering that with the tournament going down, I think you said to eight games
04:45 this season, so four home games each, obviously three in Hobart.
04:48 That's our only game.
04:49 So the BBL has gone for this year now in the home system.
04:52 Yeah, absolutely.
04:53 So if you have to improve on it next year, which feels a long way away.
04:57 But yeah, the Hurricanes need to pick up their game if they're going to be a contender this
05:04 year and hopefully the import curse can get lifted for once and for all.
05:08 But ominous signs early.
05:09 Yeah, I just stick with cricket for a bit.
05:12 We've got an update on our Riverside cricketer Aiden O'Connor.
05:15 Yesterday he was named in the Australian team for the upcoming Under-19 World Cup.
05:20 We seem to do a piece about Aiden O'Connor every week at the moment, but he's just going
05:23 from strength to strength, isn't he?
05:24 Yeah, absolutely.
05:25 So fresh off the back of the Under-19s National Championships, we got player of the tournament
05:30 and got all Australian honours.
05:32 Averaged over 50 with the bat, took seven wickets with the ball, two runouts.
05:36 Pretty much an all-around performance, you could say.
05:38 It was a really impressive tournament for him.
05:40 It really has come on the back of a Tasmanian second XI debut where he made it 50.
05:47 He's dominated every time he's played for Riverside and Cricket North.
05:50 He's in unbelievable form.
05:51 He's only 17 years old.
05:53 I think we have a seriously talented cricketer on our hands.
05:56 I went to the press conference and his big strong lad, Aiden, I don't think he was that
06:00 comfortable with the media spotlight.
06:03 And he said that it was his second media thwong and he was still getting used to it.
06:07 But yeah, he's clearly got a good future ahead of him.
06:10 Absolutely.
06:11 I think he's got a good head on his shoulders.
06:12 So I think you just want to see him do well, really.
06:16 We're going to move on to footy next and a lot of talk at the moment about how footy
06:21 is going to look in the next year and beyond.
06:23 Give us an update, Brian.
06:25 Yeah, so AFL Tasmania on Friday basically announced what the restructure is going to
06:31 look like.
06:32 So we're just ahead of the AFL and AFLW Tasmanian team coming in.
06:38 I think we're at the belief that it's about 2028 that the men's team comes in and the
06:42 women's team would come in earlier.
06:44 Then you have also the VFL that's going to be coming in underneath the AFL.
06:48 So yeah, the proposed year for that has been 2025 for some time now.
06:54 So yeah, it's sort of like we were in limbo land this year across the NTFA season and
07:02 then into this summer.
07:04 Now we just weren't quite sure what they would do.
07:08 We knew it was going to be a three-pronged sort of regional model with the South, North
07:13 and Northwest each having competitions that basically the TSL teams would come back into.
07:21 So yeah, we've got a bit of an opportunity for discussion here.
07:24 Essentially the equation is there's going to be six clubs in what is going to be called
07:29 the Northern Premier League, which is going to be, it's going to sit above the current
07:36 NTFA Premier and Division One men's comps.
07:40 And I believe that basically the women's competition will probably be three-tiered as well.
07:46 So to start with Rob, we're going to have two NPLs in this state.
07:50 What do you reckon?
07:52 Just to confuse things, it's hard enough with the expression football and which code we're
07:57 referring to all the time and now we've got NPLs in both.
08:00 But also I wrote a column about this in today's paper that both football and soccer are kind
08:07 of reinventing what they're going to do in the next couple of years.
08:11 And it's interesting that football is persisting, sorry, soccer is persisting with the state
08:16 league model in both men's and women's.
08:20 Footy has ditched the women's state league in the last couple of years and now they're
08:24 ditching the men's state league and they're going more to the regional, the three regional
08:28 areas, which is how soccer used to be.
08:31 So it's a bit murky and we don't really, whichever way they end up going, history would suggest
08:38 that it'll probably change in a few years anyway.
08:41 Yeah, well this is all coming about because of the VFL ban, as you said.
08:45 The TSL disbanded effectively in line with the VFL coming in on the basis that they couldn't
08:50 sustain both.
08:51 Look, I think it's really interesting.
08:54 I've likened it this summer to a game of musical chairs.
08:58 It does feel like the music's going around, teams are trying to jostle for the league
09:03 they want to be in, the position they want to be in come 2025.
09:07 And by March, the music will stop and we'll see where every team's at.
09:13 Obviously along with North and Launceston, there's going to be four NTFA teams make that
09:17 jump.
09:18 Expressions of interest have already come out.
09:20 The decision's going to be made by March, so teams have a clear understanding of how
09:23 they need to set up by 2025.
09:27 And we've had our first team confirm that they have fielded their expression of interest
09:31 and will be making a bid, and that is Bridge North.
09:34 Obviously brought in a couple of Launceston players, really strong women's team, really
09:38 strong under 18s program.
09:40 And we have a bit of an idea of who might come in next, but I want to know, Brian, who
09:46 do you think?
09:47 Yeah.
09:48 It's basically, mate, it probably comes down to the criteria, which I guess my criteria,
09:54 because I don't know what the AFL-TAS criteria is, is that basically looking at an example
10:01 of Bridge North and also we've got the Robins, which is the Brighton Football Club in the
10:06 Southern League.
10:07 So just as context, a lot of this news came out last week because Brighton was accepted
10:12 into what's going to be called the Southern Premier League, which is going to sit as a
10:18 new competition for them with their TSL teams, then formal ones.
10:24 So the Robins are a team that also has a women's side.
10:30 So basically I feel like the criteria is that you're going to need a women's side, but I
10:35 also feel for teams in the North that you're going to have to be pretty much in town to
10:42 basically attract the best players and they won't have to travel as far.
10:47 So I think those are the two key things for that reason.
10:51 I feel it will be Bridge North, South, Wanceston and Longford.
10:58 The fourth team is yet to be determined.
10:59 I probably personally think Old Scotch should go for that, given that they're so solidly
11:06 well-rounded with their women's and men's programs and also their women's play in the
11:12 Premier League.
11:13 So those would probably be the four that I'd pick out, but that might not necessarily happen.
11:18 I've got a feeling we're going to be writing more stories about this than we are about
11:21 Aidan O'Connor in the next 12 months or so.
11:24 Can you believe it's not even winter, mate?
11:26 It's the middle of summer.
11:27 You must be loving it.
11:28 Yeah, absolutely.
11:29 Okay, thanks for tuning in.
11:32 We'll have more on all of those, I reckon, next week.
11:35 Thanks for tuning in.
11:36 See you next week.
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