australia Page 9 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Australian MP's Brain Goes On Short, Strange Journey
Australia has been recently gripped by a heated debate over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. Last week, the majority of Australians voted to legalize same-sex marriage, which apparently caused MP Bob Katter, who had previously opposed the legalization of gay marriage, to soften h...

Honduras Accuses Australia Of Spying With A Drone Before World Cup Playoff
Australia and Honduras are currently in the midst of a two-leg playoff for one of the last available World Cup spots. The two sides played to a scoreless draw in San Pedro Sula last week, and they’ll meet again in Sydney on Wednesday for the rubber match. Tensions are obviously high between the two ...

Jockey Punches His Horse, Gets Two-Week Suspension
An Australian jockey has been suspended for two weeks for jumping off his horse and punching it in the stomach before a race on Wednesday....

Australians Have Once Again Gone Wild At The Melbourne Cup
Today is Melbourne Cup day, the most wonderful time of the year, the designated and officially sanctioned horserace/alcohol drinking competition when thousands and thousands of Aussies dress up in their finest duds and get blitzed while intrepid photographers capture it all in order to delight of th...

Tim Cahill Eliminates Syria From World Cup Qualification With Extra-Time Header
Syria’s run through World Cup qualification ended in heartbreak today. Tim Cahill headed in a goal, his second, in extra time to put Australia past Syria, 2-1, in the second leg of their fifth-place AFC playoff. Australia won, 3-2, on aggregate and advanced to the inter-confederation playoffs....

Some Homophobic Australians Are Mad About Macklemore<em></em>
Australia is in the midst of a two-month, mail-in vote to measure public opinion on gay marriage. This Sunday, Macklemore is scheduled to perform “Same Love”—a pro-LGBT song—at the National Rugby League grand final. A lot of Australians who don’t think gay people deserve basic human rights are mad a...

Former Australian Cycling Star Charged With Selling "Significant Quantities" Of MDMA
Two-time Olympic silver medalist Jack Bobridge was arrested in Perth yesterday and charged by Australian police with moving “significant quantities” of MDMA around Perth. He allegedy spent most of the summer selling pills in and around North Perth. As Perth Now reported, police have been investigati...

Don't Panic, The USWNT's Struggles Might Be A Good Thing
Tameka Butt capitalized on a Becky Sauerbrunn mistake to score the only goal of Australia’s first-ever win against the USWNT in 27 tries. Her 67th-minute score last night in Seattle, after what announcer Ian Darke referred to as “dithering defending,” gave her side (ranked seventh by FIFA) a histori...

Aussie Rules Football Player Gets Dunked On
One of the more thrilling bits of action Australian rules football has to offer is the long-distance, high-flying mark. These sometimes involve one player skying into the air and essentially launching himself off a grounded opponent in order to catch the ball. In a match between St. Kilda and Essend...

Australian Rules Football Player Uses His Opponent To Get Major Air<em></em>
Besides the dope referee signals, the coolest thing in Australian rules football is the mark. A mark is when a player cleanly catches a ball that has traveled at least 15 meters (49 feet) in the air. There’s even an annual Mark of the Year contest, awarded to the best one of the season....

Saudi National Team Declines To Participate In Pregame Moment Of Silence For London Attacks
The Saudi Arabian national soccer team, in Australia today for a World Cup qualifying match, did not observe the pregame moment of silence the Australian soccer federation put together to commemorate the victims of last weekend’s terrorist attacks in London. Here’s video of the moment:...

Margaret Court Says "Tennis Is Full Of Lesbians" And A Whole Bunch Of Bigoted Shit
Less than a week after Australian tennis champion turned preacher Margaret Court threatened to boycott Qantas airlines because its CEO supports same-sex marriage, she gave an interview to Vision Christian radio station in which she spewed a whole mess of other homophobic and transphobic shit includi...

Idiot On The Field Invades Eurovision Song Contest, Drops Drawers, Moons The World
A man in the Australian flag invaded the stage of today’s Eurovision Song Contest and bared his ass to 200 million viewers around the world just as last year’s champion, Ukrainian singer Jamala, performed her newest hit....

The Complete Guide To Understanding Australian Rules Football
Aussie rules footy! The greatest sport ever invented! Is it the same as rugby? Why aren’t they wearing helmets? Did that team just earn a point for missing the goals?...

Footy Fight!
Tonight’s AFL matchup between Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions featured a good-ass fight late in the third quarter, as Lance Franklin and Nick Robertson took some time out to beat up on each other. Yet another reason why this sport is superior to the NFL: while the Aussie announcers have themselves a...

Exasperated Columnist Begs Australia To Please, Please Ignore Nick Kyrgios
Here are the values at risk if you find Nick Kyrgios interesting, or, worse, deign to root for him: “self-respect,” “the surrender of your pride,” “Australia’s moral bottom line,” “our national sporting principles.”...

Old Man Federer Signs New Deal, May Keep Playing Until Humanity Leaves For Mars
The saner Roger Federer fans treated his Australian Open title as a late-night dessert—one they really didn’t expect or deserve!—snuck in before the long sleep. The more delusional might have seen it as the beginning of a late-career resurgence, promising fresh titles to come. I sat somewhere in bet...

Is Uncle Toni, Rafael Nadal's Longtime Coach, Really Cool With Stepping Down?<em></em>
Rafael Nadal will split ways with his longtime coach, Uncle Toni, at the end of the 2017 season, according to an interview Toni Nadal gave to the website Il Tennis Italiano over the weekend. Instead of traveling with his nephew, Toni Nadal said he will spend next season overseeing the Nadals’ tenni...

ESPN Sued By Tennis Broadcaster Fired Over Venus Williams Remark
Tennis broadcaster Doug Adler, who didn’t return to ESPN’s Australian Open broadcast after commenting on Venus Williams’s “gorilla” or “guerrilla” style of play—that’s the big question here—has sued ESPN and two ESPN executives in charge of tennis broadcasts in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging w...

Science! Shows That Roger Federer's Backhand In Fact Defeated Rafael Nadal
Yesterday we argued that Federer’s unusually strong backhand anchored his Australian Open win over Rafael Nadal, and today we found a startling statistical basis for that claim. It comes courtesy of the always helpful Jeff Sackmann at TennisAbstract. Relative to other sports, tennis remains fairly d...