What a Pell of a man: And he's a Bishop:)

2008 First nomination for the Channel Seven anti-football award: National Section.

And it's a Bishop, yer man Pell.



Full article here

The Bishop, I'm no fan let's get that bias out straight away, goes on about the behaviour of cricket and the gentleman's game as he calls it. Don't make me laugh. Like this stuff never happened years ago under Steve Waugh or even Allan Border's teams.

Many, many much bigger fans of cricket than me, have been criticising the behaviour of the Australian cricket team for years. And that's just the Aussie fans.

But yer man Pell, a hell of a guy:), starts discussing cricket, the game, it's ethics and the like. Fair enough. He wouldn't want to talk about the ethics of the priesthood in his weekly article would he?

And at the end of the 500 word article, he nicely diverts to soccer and gets a nice dig in there. No mention of Rugby League, Union or AFL and the problems those codes and their super heroes have.

No mention of Australian football, where until now the Socceroos, Matildas and A-League Clubs have hardly done anything to enable the likes of Ben Cousins, Ricky Ponting, Wendell Sailor and others opportunities to say, "but what about the footballers."

No Pell the Bishop, has a noice wee dig at Soccer in the midst of his beloved cricket.

Our crowds are up, our games are making headlines in the cricket season, cricket is introducing mickey mouse twenty twenty stuff, cricket is grabbing the headlines for all the wrong reason, but Pell has to have a dig.

On yer Bish. How about you say something positive about the growing acceptance in the country and positive influence of the game of football on men and women in our community.

His sentiment about soccer doesn't go unsupported here. It's just why say something about soccer at all.

Here's what our man of the cloth had to say towards the end of his article:

It is inevitable that cricket changes with the times, but Test teams should not make things worse among the youngsters who admire them.

Modesty in victory, dignity in defeat, traditional courtesies are lessons worth learning.

Racing around the field doing high jinks would not be tolerated in children, even if rich, spoilt soccer stars perform like that for the T.V.

Ponting and Kumble need to lead their teams away from the brink. Too much off and on the field in Sydney wasn't cricket.