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I have been absolutely spoilt for sport on TV this weekend.

Last night, Venus beat Serena in the Wimbledon ladies final and the Tour de France got away in 2008 for the first stage, a non prologue stage for the first time since 1967. A fascinating race as the breakaway group was reeled back in and the race won by Valverde in an almighty sprint.

Tonight I had a massive problem. 3 different channels broadcasting major sports events simultaneously. The Silverstone British Grand Prix, a very eventful race in the on and off again rain. Lewis Hamilton drove a very safe race to come out eventual winner. His tyre choice could have been questioned but proved the right combination in the end.

The second stage of the 2008 Tour de France was as interesting as yesterdays first stage and saw Thor Hushovd win in a close sprint.

Finally the men's Tennis. I didn't watch most of the first set, only switching over occasionally, but Roger Federer lost the first set to Nadal. The unthinkable continued with a second set taken by Rafael.

Roger came out firing in the third set knowing he needed an early break and to win 3 sets in a row. The last time Roger dropped the first two sets at Wimbledon was in 2002.

I am really enjoying this years tennis at Wimbledon. Roger Federer is playing usual metronomic game and hasn't dropped a set as he has progressed now to a semi final with Safin. His game against Ancic tonight was just precision tennis, his usual style. He is on a 69 game or so winning streak. I thought Lleyton Hewitt had been playing well but his 3rd round match against Federer was a foregone conclusion. Marat beat Lopez in a very tough game. Lopez lost it mentally at the end when the linesman made  call on a point that Lopez thought he had won and the umpire replayed the point. From there he threw it away and actually lost the match on a double fault. I think Marat will prove no problem to Federer. Safin is ranked 75, and not playing his best tennis while Federer is just working in his lounge room where he has won the last 6 tournaments in a row.

Sometimes it feels like so much has happened since the last time I wrote on here that I don’t have time to stop and get it down. And that makes it worse because then there is even more that has happened.

So this is not so much an attempt at a catch up as just a rambling post covering various things that have happened to me recently.

Football

We played a night game Saturday night. We won in the last few minutes after a pretty tough contest. They got an early lead and then we had to peg them back. I played defence for 3 quarters with one entire quarter off the ground. I did give away a 50 metre penalty in the last quarter with a few minutes to go and we were leading by 5. Fortunately he missed his kick at goal and we rushed it through for a behind. We ended up winning by 4 points.

I had to get up at 6:35 this morning. Was on the road by 6:45 and at the ground by 7:15. We stood around talking for a few minutes then headed into the change rooms to get rubbed, strapped and dressed. Coming  out on to the ground we discovered it was still quite wet with dew, and very small for an AFL ground. I think it was probably 30-40 metres short and probably 20 metres less wide. This made for an interesting game as 36 blokes got very close together – not a lot of room for kicking.

I was put at fullback for the entire game. The first bloke I had to mark up on playing full forward was way too fast for me. He got in front of me and took an easy mark. So I played a little in front of him for a it and spoiled the next couple of marks he ran for, and then a ball cam spiraling down toward us – I held him off and the ball sailed over my head and he grabbed it. Very annoying. Two goals scored on me. The next ball that came our way was way out on the sideline and was being tussled over by the forward pocket and half forward for their team and our back pocket and half back flank. My man went running there looking for the ball and as he got there I hit him hard. He didn’t come back for the rest of the game and I had a succession of other players rotate through full forward. One was a good 8 inches taller than me, but he was the easiest to mark. All though he ran hard he wasn’t too fast and i was able to keep body contact on him long enough to spoil his runs. I was also able to hold him away from the ball and stopped him getting involved in numerous passages of play. I did have one other chap that subbed for him who kicked two easy goals on me which was also annoying, but the rest of the guys who came in I either blocked them from marking or punched the ball away.

I had never played in the back line before the last game, and now I have had 2 games at full back, got coaches award for one and was mentioned second today. I didn’t think I had that good a game, but the other blokes all reckoned I did. Maybe I am just too hard on myself.