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
Continue reading »2023 AFL Trade Period final countdown – featuring Koschitzke, Chol, Ryan, Gunston, Billings
Jacob Koschitzke to Richmond Jacob Koschitzke has played 48 games since breaking into a rebuilding Hawthorn side. In 2023 he found himself edged out of the best 22 by Mitch Lewis and Fergus Greene, playing 12 senior games and 13 at VFL level and usually only getting games when one
Continue reading »2023 AFL Trade Period Final Day featuring Esava Ratugolea, Elijah Hollands and Jordon Sweet
Jordon Sweet to Port Adelaide Each year there’s a ruck merry-go-round where clubs switch options to fill the precious position. Jordon Sweet has played 11 games for the Dogs in three years including zero this season. But Sweet did star in the VFL in 2023, leading the league for hitouts
Continue reading »2023 AFL Trade Period Day 9 – the day of the mini mega trade
The four team trade for Dow and Coffield Last year’s trade period saw a blockbuster four team MEGATRADE involving the first few picks of the draft and some big names who were very likely to play good senior footy every week changing hands. This year, the penultimate day saw a
Continue reading »2023 AFL Trade Period Day 8 – Nyuon, Schultz and Henry on the move
HPN will attack this AFL Trade Period in one post a day, either as a roundup or with progressive updates through the day. It’s likely that a rapid cavalcade of interlinked deals drops any time on Tuesday or Wednesday to close out the final two days of the trade period.
Continue reading »2023 AFL Trade Period Day 5 to 7 – a weekend lull
HPN will attack this AFL Trade Period in one post a day, either as a roundup or with progressive updates through the day. Tom Fullarton becomes a Demon For a long time Tom Fullarton was more likely to leave a legacy on the hardwood and not a footy field. As
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