BANS FOR AUSSIES
ute to the man who used to wear a yellow bucket hat when playing. Lyle’s great friend Robert Allenby said Lyle was his hero, a man with a huge heart, a generous spirit and a larrikin attitude.
“In life, you don’t have too many top-quality friends, ones you can trust, ones you can call upon. You can count them on one hand,” Allenby said. “Jarrod’s on that hand for me. There’s a bond and a trust that I will cherish forever.”
The 30-year-old became the champion again in the seasonending Maui Pro event after American Lakey Peterson made an early exit.
Only American male Kelly Slater sits ahead of Gilmore with a record 11 titles.
Gilmore played down her chances of catching Slater, but said after winning her seventh crown: “Surfing means everything to me – it’s given me everything. I’ll never forget being a young girl and just surfing all day long. It’s all I could think about.”
Julian Wilson missed out on a first world men’s title when he was pipped in the season-ending Pipe Masters in Hawaii by Brazilian Gabriel Medina.
At the same event, 2012 world champion Joel Parkinson’s 17-year professional career came to an end when he was bundled out in the heats. THE basketball World Cup qualifier between the Boomers and the Philippines in Manila was supposed to be a regulation win for the Aussies, but it became so much more after a brawl erupted and 13 players were ejected from the game.
Elbows, punches, kicks and even chairs were thrown as all hell broke loose. After the Boomers’ Chris Goulding was pushed to the floor, a stray elbow from Daniel Kickert sparked a retaliation the likes of which had not been seen before. Even the father of one of the home players entered the court to bring a chair down on the back of Nathan Sobey, but amazingly received no sanction.
Kickert (five games) Thon Maker (three) and Goulding (one) all received match suspensions from FIBA, which in all banned 13 players from both teams. The Philippines had 10 players rubbed out for a total of 35 FIBA games and were fined $337,000. THE remarkable run of wonder mare Winx continued in 2018 with seven successes, including a fourth-straight Cox Plate victory, stretching her winning run to 29.
She became the first horse to win the prestigious race four times – moving ahead of Kingston Town, who won the silverware in 1980, ’81 and ’82. Winx also took her third-straight Australian Racehorse of the Year award, joining fellow champions Black Caviar and Sunline as the only horses to achieve the feat.
Winx finished off the season by winning the 2018 Secretariat Vox Populi Award, the top choice among race fans in a record 60 countries. NOT since the Greg Chappell underarm bowling furore of 1981 has something rocked Australian cricket as much as what happened during the third Test in Cape Town in March. The series had already been clouded after an offfield altercation between South African wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock and David Warner as on-field sledges allegedly went too far. But that paled into insignificance after what happened next. Opener Cameron Bancroft was caught on TV appearing to rub the ball with a yellow object. After realising he was caught by cameras, Bancroft attempted to hide the evidence in his trousers. At the press conference after the close of play, Bancroft admitted using sandpaper in an attempt to alter the condition of the ball. Captain Steve Smith also revealed at that conference the leadership group was part of the plan, without mentioning names. Subsequent investigations by Cricket Australia found David Warner was responsible for the development of the plan and instructing Bancroft on how to carry it out. Smith was found to have known about the plan but failed to take steps to prevent it. Teary press conferences followed on the players’ return home, with all three apologising to teammates and fans for their part in the saga. Warner and Smith were subsequently banned from international and state cricket for 12 months, with Bancroft handed a nine-month suspension. Coach Darren Lehmann fell on his sword along with CA chief executive James Sutherland, CA chairman David Peever and CA high-performance director Pat Howard. Tim Paine took over from Smith as captain and Justin Langer replaced Lehmann as coach. CA also rejected a call from the players’ association to end the bans.