With the Olympics now over, it seems a good time to reflect on what’s happened to the enormously expensive venues that recent host cities have built. Not surprising, really, that hardly anywhere is interested in hosting the Olympic Games any more. There can be some benefits (like the Brisbane 2032 bid apparently was motivated in part by local mayors wanting better train services, and this article says Athens got greatly improved transport infrastructure too) but how overshadowed is it by the cost of unnecessarily large venues and flattering IOC officials’ egos…

The article does also suggest that greater use could be made of pop-up venues (like Pyeongchang’s $101 million disposable stadium – which despite that price tag was less than 15% what Sydney’s Olympic Stadium cost) or else that that the Games could get a permanent home, or maybe that different Olympic sports could have different permanent home cities, although at that point you’d have to wonder what would distinguish the Olympics from existing world championships.

Tasmania and the Northern Territory deserved teams well ahead of the Gold Coast and Western Sydney. Existing football areas should always have taken precedence ahead of rugby league heartland that already had local AFL teams to back anyway… at this point it feels like AFL is purposely snubbing them.

Really sad to hear that Naomi Osaka has quit the French Open. Her reasons for not giving press conferences made perfect sense to me – and this article, from a sports journalist, backs that up – and I’d hoped she’d do well and stick it to those tournament organisers. Alas 😢

The European Super League would be a disaster for football, but it hasn’t come from nowhere – it is the end of a long road of commercialisation which has torn the game away from the working-class communities that built it.

Interesting piece. As an outsider to soccer, much as I enjoy watching it, it’s always seemed a very profit-driven sport to me (I mean, compare it to the AFL, where private ownership of clubs was mostly phased out after disastrous experiments in the 1980s – largely at the expense of my club! – and salary caps and draft rules tend to mean no club is just stuck in the doldrums forever any more). The AFL is far from perfect anyway, “commercial concerns” are still a big thing, but even that kind of model would be a huge step forward for most soccer leagues (including our A-League), it seems. Would love to see it.

Blacklock recalled an old story from a friend, whose son - a Swans and Waratahs fan - was turning 10. He contacted both clubs to see if they could send him any memorabilia.

“The Waratahs sent out a couple of posters and a signed footy. The Swans sent out two injured players to his birthday party,” he said.