CHAMPION netballer Liz Ellis has gone into bat for Canberra sports reporter Erin Molan after the axing of the NRL “Footy Show”.

Molan, who took over hosting the dated Channel Nine winter staple, has been the target of a social media assault with many accusing her of “killing” the 25-year-old show.

But Ellis says Molan “took on hosting an iconic TV show and gave it her best shot. She, along with the team who made the show, couldn’t turn it around.”

Nine’s sport boss Tom Malone said of Molan: “She’s a great broadcaster” and will play “a prominent role on Nine’s sports broadcasts going forward”.

NOT all shock jocks are the same, a fact now clear to Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.

Ms Hanson-Young’s confusion over the major players in the infamous 2011 “ditch-the-witch” rallies on the lawns of Parliament House has forced her to apologise and earned a lecture on the benefits of research.

Promoting her new book “En Garde” on Melbourne talkback radio, Ms Hanson-Young confused Ray Hadley with his stablemate Alan Jones, alleging poor treatment of then PM Julia Gillard.

In accepting Hanson-Young’s apology Hadley suggested the senator do her homework in the future.

CANBERRA overachiever Bec Goddard has joined the Canberra Capitals coaching panel for the new season. The inaugural AFLW premiership coach says she hopes the new role and new code will enhance her overall coaching skills. Goddard’s appointment is part of a wider campaign to end the Capital’s WNBL championship drought, stretching back to 2010.

STILL on the Capitals and four-time Olympian Lauren Jackson’s autobiography “My Story, A Life in Basketball and Beyond” is bound to sell well in the capital. Born and raised in Albury, Canberra provided the springboard for Jackson’s brilliant career. Arriving in 1997 as a 16-year-old to take up an AIS scholarship, Jackson went on to help the Canberra Capitals to four WNBL championships. On Jackson’s retirement in 2014 Caps coach Carrie Graf said: “Lauren has simply been iconic to women’s basketball. She leaves a great legacy of winning,”

A 10-DAY trek from Sydney to Canberra by United Indian Association members raising funds for drought-affected NSW farmers, ended on the beginning of celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birthday (October 2). The Indian-Australian “Walk for Farmers” walkers finished their journey at Gandhi’s statue in Glebe Park. A UIA spokesperson says the walk was “to say thank you to the farmers who toil hard to bring food to our table.”

FORMER ACT chief police officer Roman Quaedvlieg, recently involved in a politically bruising stoush with Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, appears to take inspiration from the man who advocated non-violent activism. Quaedvlieg, controversially sacked as commissioner of the Australian Border Force, chose Gandhi’s birthday to tweet: “Is it just me, or is the right moving further to the right and the left moving further to the left? I’m no Gandhi but wouldn’t we all be better off moving closer to the middle?”

CANBERRA real estate is front and centre after the listing of former PM Malcolm Turnbull’s part-time pad on Kingston Foreshore. The two-level three bedroom penthouse, purchased in 2006 for $1.8 million is expected to fetch around the $2.5 million mark at auction.

AN exhibition of drawings of bus shelters built for our public transport system in the 1970s has opened at the Canberra Museum and Gallery. The sketches by artist Trevor Dickinson depict 52 of the iconic concrete shelters first installed in 1975.

He’s tracked down most of the almost 500 structures. Many are still in active service, but this spare pair has been retired and now acts as a smoko hut for workers at a Fyshwick worksite.