Dolphins are focused
MINOR premiers Gold Coast Dolphins are aiming to go all the way to the women’s Katherine Raymont Shield title and will use their loss in an earlier final as their motivation at home to Ipswich in Sunday’s semi-final.
The Dolphins topped the T20 competition qualifiers but lost to Wests in the grand
final. After heading the ladder in the 50-over tournament, they are eager to earn a place in next weekend’s decider against the winner of Wests and Sunshine Coast.
“We beat Ipswich a couple of weeks ago and had another good win against Sandgate last week so we have players coming into their best form at the right time,” coach Garry Lovett said.
Coast gun Georgia Redmayne will be away on Queensland Fire duties, a hefty loss given the former international has harvested 878 runs at 73.
Ipswich, though, will also be without top scorer Ellie Johnston, who has 856 runs to her name, albeit at an inferior average.
“All we have to do is concentrate on the task in hand,”
Lovett said. “You can’t win a grand final if you’re not in it. But we are pretty confident.
“The players have done a great job all season, and it’s been a long one, what with COVID, and shutdowns.”
The squad put in an extra session at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane midweek, an exercise Lovett has used with good results in previous finals campaigns.
The semi-final at Bill Pippen Oval starts at 10am.
AUSTRALIAN squad member Michael Neser is in the men’s side for day two of the Round 19 Queensland Premier clash with Wynnum-Manly at Albury Oval on Saturday.
Queensland selectors are looking to him to prove his fitness in readiness for the closing stages of the Sheffield Shield.
AFL players caught with cannabis in their system could face bans of as little as four matches under changes in line with the WADA code adopted by the league this year.
West Coast forward Willie Rioli’s 18-month nightmare finally ended on Thursday when he was handed a twoyear suspension for three doping breaches.
They included Rioli topping up or substituting a urine sample with an energy drink, presumably to avoid detection for cannabis use that was eventually discovered in a September 2019 in-competition test.
But the AFL’s anti-doping code now gives much more discretion to allow a more appropriate penalty for the use of cannabis and other illicit drugs that are not performance-enhancing.
As of January 1, the penalty is three months if the athlete can show he consumed the drug out of competition and it was not of a performanceenhancing nature.
There is also discretion to reduce it to as few as four weeks if the athlete is prepared to have rehabilitation for the drug issues.
Even if the test is on matchday and not out of competition, the athlete can attempt to prove he did not actually consume the substance on the day of competition.
Rioli’s urine-tampering charge would still receive a hefty ban but presumably he
would not have tried so hard to avoid detection if the penalty was much lower.
West Coast football boss Craig Vozzo said this week the Eagles had ramped up their education policies around antidoping in the time since Rioli’s breaches.
Rioli’s initial urine substitution breach came at a training session – not on match-day – so he would have received no penalty under the WADA code.
The AFL will this year review its own illicit drugs policy.
The AFLPA and the league through its legal boss Andrew Dillon will work on continuing the policy, which sees players only suspended for a second illicit drug strike.
Critics say players who have been named and shamed for illicit drug use separate to the policy have quickly altered their behaviour.
But the AFLPA is adamant that the anonymous nature of the code’s model, which sees players handed suspended fines and counselled but not named, allows them to change their behaviour without public scrutiny.
four from their cross-town rivals, one of whom is former Knights boss Grae Piddick.
“Grae’s a winner,” Mckay said. “Our identity will be ‘hard to beat’ … a combination of lots of goals and, hopefully, a tough defensive unit.
“For me, top four is definitely our aim.”
The Knights won’t settle for top four – not again.
After bowing out at the semi-final stage in 2020, Brown said the goal this season, under Adem Poric, was all-or-nothing.
“We’re here to win the league, it’s that simple,” Brown declared.
“The skeleton of our squad is the same as last year. That’s where a lot of our strengths are. The more we play we’ll only get better and get better results to last year.”