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Canberra Today 19°/24° | Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Welsh / Writer so wrong on local football league

AFL writer Patrick Smith’s analysis of the impact Ainslie transgender footballer Hannah Mouncey would have on the AFLW slightly misses the mark.

Mike Welsh
Mike Welsh.

The AFL blocked the 196-centimetre-tall, 100-kilogram player from the national AFLW draft due to “physical disparity”.

Smith, writing in “The Australian” underrates the local league: “Those who argue if Mouncey was going to make football a one-sided affair in the AFLW then she would decimate the local Canberra league…. The Canberra league is far more relaxed. It is not quite social football”.

Smith has seemingly overlooked the five Canberran players in the Giant’s squad alone and the four locals who played for premiership club Adelaide.

CANBERRA-born sports journalist Erin Molan is tipped to anchor a renovated NRL “Footy Show” in 2018. The 30-something personality, who began her career at the local WIN TV network, was among the first names floated to replace the “axed” Paul “Fatty” Vautin who has anchored the Channel Nine league staple for almost a quarter of a century.

Molan’s career has flourished since moving to Sydney TV in 2010 and now includes an Australian Commercial Radio Award for the Best Newcomer at 2GB.

FORMER Raiders star Josh Dugan has vowed to dedicate the next phase of his colourful career “to saving others”. The pledge comes after the South Tuggeranong junior publicly thanked his partner, Jordan Danielle.

Dugan told the “Sydney Morning Herald’s” Danny Weidler, that she “has kept me sane and saved me in many ways. When I was younger I didn’t have anyone, that was my downfall in Canberra”.

The State-of-Origin star says he’s turned his life around, especially outside footy.

“I’m working on getting my diploma of mental health… I’ve struggled with that a little bit since I was a bit younger,” he says..

A SHORTLISTING for a prestigious Walkley award has capped off a stellar year for journalist Chris Uhlmann. In late August the former ABC political editor landed the plum gig as Channel Nine’s Canberra bureau chief replacing the retiring Laurie Oakes.

A month earlier Uhlmann’s report on Donald Trump’s appearance at the G20 summit in Hamburg went viral, drawing over a million views. The piece, for the ABC “Insiders” program, gives the journalist the opportunity to win a second Walkley after first being recognised in 2008.

WHILE Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie seeks to hobble the lobbying industry in Canberra, one group seeking access to policy makers was given the red carpet. Australian screen legends Bryan Brown, Sigrid Thornton, Leah Purcell and Gillian Armstrong were among a delegation that came to the capital to lobby politicians to get behind the Australian TV and film industry.

The high-profile Make it Australian campaigners are fighting for change in several areas including reform of local content rules and restoration of funding for public broadcasters and Screen Australia.

Jeremy Hanson.

CANBERRA Libs have been accused of making local music festivals unsafe after successfully halting a pill-testing trial planned for November’s Spilt Milk event.

Acting Health Minister and Greens Leader Shane Rattenbury slammed shadow A-G Jeremy Hanson after the groundbreaking trial was stopped on legal grounds.

Rattenbury says festivals “will now be more dangerous than if the pill testing trial went ahead”.

An unofficial pill-testing service, provided by harm-reduction activists, remains a faint possibility at up-coming local music festivals.

THERE’S an old saying in the Sport Of Kings about changing fortunes. “Going from Old Gold chocolates to boiled lollies” is an adage former Canberra political couple, Ian De Landelles and Mary Porter are now sadly all too familiar with. The retired political adviser and the former MLA are part-owners of the thoroughbred Fell Swoop which ran in the world’s richest turf race, the inaugural $10 million Everest Stakes at Randwick. Unfortunately the horse was injured during the race and earned the dubious claim of being the first to run last in the Everest.

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Ian Meikle, editor

Mike Welsh

Mike Welsh

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