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Greg Growden (–2020)

Autor von Rugby Union for Dummies: UK Edition

14+ Werke 87 Mitglieder 3 Rezensionen

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Todestag
2020-11-14
Geschlecht
male
Nationalität
Australia
Berufe
journalist

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An interesting enough review of Australian cricketers taking time out from their training schedules to fight for Australia in wartime. The most famous mentioned is Keith Miller, while Test players JJ. Ferris, Tibby Cotter and Laurie Nash, among others, also get decent entries, as well as a smattering of first-class players, including Charles Backman, the first Australian first-class cricketer to die in WWI, and Norman Calloway, who made a double century in his only first-class outing before also dying in World War I.

However, while we get a lot on Bradman, who spent most of WII as an invalid, with comparatively little on first-class cricketers who spent the war fighting overseas, including, for example, South Australian Bruce Bowley who was captured during the Fall of Singapore and spent years in Changi Prison, but sadly doesn't rate a mention.

Otherwise, beyond learning that apparently no Australian cricketers served in the Korean War, there is a good section on Australia's only living Test cricketer who fought in a warzone; Tony Dell, whose life post-cricketing career has not been a happy one but who at least seems to be on a better wicket now.
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MiaCulpa | Feb 24, 2023 |
With the autumn 2018 Quilter Internationals about to start and spotting this book on the Book Barn shelf for only £1, I thought it a providential omen ans stumped up my hard earned quid.

Most of the rules I know about, but it was more than just a little enlightening to know how scrum penalties are earned.

The book fails to acquire a fifth star because of the publication date - 2004. But in this publication, the authors have an incredible moment of prescience. In anticipating the upcoming World Cup game of 2003, they note that a key player could be the England teams fly-half, Johnny Wilkinson '...who is probably the most consistently accurate goal kicker in world rugby.' As it happened, it was Johnny Wilkinson who, in after-time, scored the winning points with a drop goal and thereby winning the competition for England.

With the world cup 2019 only a few months away, Amazon get another sale because I'd like a more up-to-date version.
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Kampuskop | Nov 24, 2018 |
Triumph and tragedy may be universal but sometimes it seems that cricket has a mortgage on the term. And there's never been a cricketer who flew so high yet sunk so low as Australian chinaman bowler Charles "Chuck" Fleetwood-Smith.

As we read of his youth in small town Stawell through his cricketing career, his eccentricities and his sad decline, there is almost an inevitably that there would be no happy ending for Fleetwood-Smith. Of course, most of his problems were self-inflicted.

For a while he had the perfect life; an international cricketer, married into a wealthy family and a handsome bloke who, according to fellow spinner Bill O'Reilly, had sex with more women than you would have hot dinners. But throughout, his self-destructive personality would lead to destroying friendships (such as Don Bradman), his marriage and any prospect of a happy post-cricketing life. And then there was the time, during World War II, when he crashed that army truck.

As Growden points out, he could well have been writing about Australia's greatest ever spinner who post-cricketing retirement had a comfortable living instead of (potential Spoiler Alert) a homeless alcoholic. But then that wouldn't be Fleetwood-Smith.
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MiaCulpa | May 10, 2017 |

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Werke
14
Auch von
1
Mitglieder
87
Beliebtheit
#211,168
Bewertung
½ 3.7
Rezensionen
3
ISBNs
31

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