HPN will be covering this AFL Trade Period with daily posts, as a roundup or with progressive updates through the day. Watch for updates on social media. It may still be a public holiday in half the country, but that hasn’t stopped the trade period beginning in earnest. Welcome to
Continue reading »Nick Daicos is worth two “Pick 1s”?!? Introducing the 2025 Trade Calculator
Shortly after every AFL season finishes the off-season begins. For some, it’s even more competitive than the actual season itself. The media landscape is flooded with loosely sourced speculation and rumour, much of it intended to benefit one party or another. Tim Finn sung about six months in a leaky
Continue reading »Why is Australia’s Olympic team so large? Or: How did Raygun make it to the Olympics?
Everywhere you look in Paris there are the green and gold uniforms of Australian athletes. Australia is represented in nearly every sport with the exception of fencing and handball. Overall Australia is fielding more competitors than any country except the hosts France and the behemoth that is the United States.
Continue reading »Paris 2024: Day 7 – Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter: What’s the most Olympic sport?
Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter Those words – in Latin – don’t really get around much in common conversation these days. But for two weeks every two years they tend to take a bit more prominence. They might resonate a little more in English these days. Faster, higher, stronger –
Continue reading »Paris 2024: Day 6 – The life of an athlete – part duex
Reports have come back from Paris breathlessly about what the Olympics is lacking. The accommodation is substandard. The food isn’t up to scratch and unsuitable for athletes. It’s hard to get around, and the city is too distracting. Paris sounds like a good idea on paper, but in practice it
Continue reading »Paris 2024: Day 4 – The forgotten precursors of the Olympic canon
While it’s fair to say recent decades have seen a fairly stable core of Olympic sports, a surprising number of now mainstay sports were pre-figured by related games which in a slightly different world could have come to be the canon, default version of those games. Whether as fully competitive
Continue reading »Paris 2024: Day 3 – How the water became the star of the Olympics
HPN will be covering the 2024 Paris Olympics, with something coming here every day before or during competition. The Olympics has a way of finding early stars that shape the nature of the Games. Usually it’s an athlete with a breakthrough performance, or a moment of light relief taking away
Continue reading »Paris 2024: Day 2 – Busy early, then late
HPN will be covering the 2024 Paris Olympics, with something coming here every day before or during competition. Australian sports fans woke up to slightly unexpected news this Sunday morning. There were hopes that Australia would do well early in Paris, but leading the medal tally after day 1 was
Continue reading »Paris 2024 – Day 1: It’s over before it starts
HPN will be covering the 2024 Paris Olympics, with something coming here every day before or during competition. It’s over before it starts Getting to the Olympics – and competing – is often the realization of a life’s worth of hard work. But what if an Olympic appearance is essentially
Continue reading »The 2023 AFL Consensus Phantom Draft
Consensuses are often tough things to swing. There’s usually a few flies in the ointment that prevent a strong decision one way or another – free radicals acting against the tide. HPN has been tracking draft prospects through the thoughts of others for a decade now, trying to follow where
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