Graham Arnold was a much-loved figure at the Central Coast Mariners during his tenure as coach from 2010 to 2013, where he guided the club to their first A-League title in 2012/13.

Following the Grand Final win in April 2013, Arnold would re-commit to the Mariners for another two seasons, signing a contract extension in August that year.

However, in mid-November Arnold would drop a bombshell, announcing he was leaving the club and had accepted a coaching role at Vegalta Sendai in Japan.

Now, here is where things get interesting…

In early April 2014, Arnold quit his Japanese job after only six matches in charge – with a record of 0 wins, 2 draws and 4 losses.

Less than a month later, he would return to Australia and in early May was appointed as the new Sydney FC manager, following the sacking of Frank Farina.

Needless to say, some folks at the Mariners were not impressed, and plotted a scheme to take revenge upon their former coach. The next home match against Sydney FC would mark Arnold’s return to the Central Coast, but in opposition colours – and the locals planned to let him have it!

How it started…

Accusing Graham Arnold of chasing the big bucks, the Mariners website not only created the moniker of ‘Cashed-up Arnie’ for their former coach, but provided a page where play money could be printed out featuring Arnold’s head – the idea being to toss thousands of fake notes about at the game.

If everything went to plan, the hostile crowd would get right under Arnie’s skin and aggravate him enough to perhaps influence the outcome of the match.

How it ended…

I love sporting banter, and although I think the Mariners were a little unfair toward Graham Arnold, this bizarre caper was still very funny.

Arnold would go on to claim back-to-back premierships at Sydney FC, including a Grand Final win in 2016/17.

During the same four-year period, the Central Coast Mariners would not play finals football – winning the wooden spoon in seasons 2015/16 and 2017/18.

All photos courtesy of various online sources.

It’s time for another weekly rant about ‘The Acolyte’, but as always I will steer clear of all other distractions and focus simply on the facts.

Let’s begin by going all the way back to the final scene of episode one.

Here is ‘The Stranger’ standing on a rock, whilst telling his apprentice a thing or two about killing Jedi, and quoting the following.

“If you attack a Jedi with a weapon, you will fail.

Steel or laser are no threat to them.”

I admit, the scene looked good – the mysterious villain with his back turned, igniting a red lightsabre, and speaking in a deep metallic voice.

But any Star Wars fan would know right away that this pearl of wisdom is inaccurate, and most likely put into the show by its lazy writers because it sounded ‘hip and cool’. Just one of dozens and dozens of critical writing errors that we’ve seen in this series so far, but I am only highlighting this one in particular as the events of episode five blew it right out of the water.

Now, before we move on to the fifth installment, remember the quote – “If you attack a Jedi with a weapon you will fail. Steel or laser are no threat to them.”

Whoops!

Ouch!

Blimey!

That’s gotta hurt!

And let’s not forget the off-screen death of the Wookiee.

What was that quote again? Oh, that’s right – “Steel or laser are no threat to them.”

Now, let’s revisit the first episode and take a closer look at how Jedi fare against steel.

Oh, would you look at that?

Death by fruit knife – steel fruit knife.

Now, if you change the bad guy’s quote and remove all the nonsense about laser and steel, then at least this part of the wayward storytelling is corrected. So why didn’t they?

I don’t understand what is happening with this show – nor where its 180 million dollar budget went.

I will end on a positive note and say that despite all the glaring issues, the lightsabre fights were pretty good – better than anything seen in the sequel trilogy. Also, the performance of Manny Jacinto as Qimir/The Stranger is top notch – probably the highlight of the show.

All screenshots are courtesy of Lucasfilm/Disney Plus.

Whenever Scotland qualifies for a major football tournament, we are treated to some incredible theatre as thousands of supporters belt out their anthem around the stadium.

And at Euro 2024 they have been at the top of their game!

But don’t take my word for it. Click on the link below to hear the Scots in all their glory, courtesy of MarkofScotland82’s YouTube channel.

Below is a link to the broadcast version, courtesy of Optus Sport.

https://youtu.be/Cwo6f_iWl9Y?si=OrqzYNXow6AWtPYz

Hopefully Scotland can defeat Hungary this morning, because then we will get to hear their rousing rendition at least one more time during the knockout stage.

This week marked the fifty-year anniversary of Australia’s first appearance at the FIFA World Cup Finals.

The achievements of this squad are legendary – a group comprised of amateur players who qualified against the odds to take their place among the top sixteen teams in the world.

Drawing both East and West Germany in the group stage was always going to be a tough ask, and the Socceroos lost both matches – after putting up a serious fight. The third and final game was against Chile, whom the underdogs managed to hold to a 0-0 draw.

No one would have thought at the time that 32 years would pass before Australia would make their next appearance at the World Cup Finals.

Over the past week, Football Australia have been releasing some great articles and videos about the ’74 Socceroos, such as the team profile from the official tournament programme, as seen below.

Perhaps second only to Bradman’s ‘1948 Invincibles’ – the 1974 Socceroos will forever hold their place among the giants of Australian sport.

Link below to the brilliant documentary on the Football Australia YouTube Channel.

Photos courtesy of Football Australia and other online sources.

I thought a 15% audience score was as low as this would get, but it seems the downward slide is continuing. The question that remains now is: – will it drop below 10%?

I should point out that the critics are once again on another planet here with a combined 84% score. How can the ‘experts’ miss what is arguably some of the worst writing ever seen on television? To me, at best – and being very kind, I would give this two stars out of five.

So, in unison with fellow ‘Star Wars’ fans everywhere, I decided to step up and play my part…

To be fair, if this show – which I’m only watching for comedic value – suddenly turns around and starts resembling actual ‘Star Wars’, then I will add half a star or more to my rating.

“The power of one… The power of two… The power of MAAANNNNYYYYYY!”

The 2011 Lars Von Trier film ‘Melancholia’ is at times grinding and slow-burning, and starts off with an hour-long dysfunctional wedding scene featuring some truly dislikable characters.

It does not get any easier to watch beyond that point, as serious mental illness is a major theme throughout. However, this is somewhat balanced out by the spectacular visuals and locations, not to mention the intrigue surrounding the arrival of a rogue planet near Earth’s orbit.

Any film from Von Trier is an acquired taste, with his directing style not to everyone’s liking.

I would say ‘The House That Jack Built’ would be the only other of Von Trier’s projects considered anywhere near ‘mainstream’ – although it was extremely violent. On the other hand, I found his previous film ‘Nymphomaniac’ so offensive that I could barely make it half-way through.

‘Melancholia’ is worth a watch, if you’re looking for something to challenge your senses – with a little science-fiction added into the mix. It is neither violent, nor offensive – but does feature some nudity. The cast is solid too, with Kiefer Sutherland, Kirsten Dunst, and Alexander Skarsgard.

Von Trier may be an eccentric film-maker, but as you can see in the screenshots below, he is no mug when it comes to cinematography and creating fantastic visuals.

All photos courtesy of Zentropa Productions.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since watching ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ and also hearing about the destruction of ‘Doctor Who’ – shows that both happen to be on Disney Plus.

We desperately need a reset – Dallas-style!

‘Dallas’ was perhaps the biggest TV show in the world during the 1980’s, and the story of the ninth season – also known as ‘The Dream Season’ is legendary.

It all started with the killing off of the Bobby Ewing character (the only man without a hat in the photo), as the actor Patrick Duffy had decided to leave the show after the eighth season.

When Duffy made his return a year later, the producers accommodated this by retro-writing the entire ninth season as a dream experienced by his mourning wife Pamela, played by Victoria Principal (wearing the blue suit in the photo). That’s right – an entire season of thirty episodes was turned into a fantasy that never happened, hence the ninth season of ‘Dallas’ being commonly referred to as ‘The Dream Season’.

‘Dallas’ then continued on like nothing happened.

So, can someone please do the same with ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Doctor Who’? – A one-season rewind won’t be enough – these shows need to be taken back at least twenty years!

Before people start jumping up and down, I’m going to begin by saying straight up that I had NO issue with any of the casting – I couldn’t care less about representation quotas and DEI policies.

**MILD SPOILER WARNING AHEAD**

The opening two episodes of this show were complete garbage; nonsensical at times, riddled with poor timing and lazy scene jumps, and with more plot holes and inconsistencies than anything I have seen in television or film for a very long time.

And if the rumours are true, the show starts to get EVEN WORSE from episode three.

I’ll give one small example of how it kept missing the mark – the outline you see in the photo above is presumably the main villain who is referred to as ‘The Master’. This was the final scene of the first episode and was intended to end things on a thrilling and menacing note. Instead, I couldn’t stop laughing when listening to his voice, as he sounded like the hapless ‘Shockmaster’ from WWE wrestling.

Look, I was prepared to give the show a chance, and it ended up far worse than I imagined.

I do admit to having some concerns when the showrunner Leslye Headland continually made comments regarding gender and queerness, rather than selling the series on its story and action – speaking of a project that was a cross between ‘Frozen’ and ‘Kill Bill’.

I was concerned that Headland was in over her head with ‘Star Wars’, and I think this will prove to be the case. It felt wrong, it looked wrong, it tried to be ‘cool’ at times but fell short, the fight scenes were not good, even the special effects looked a little off.

I do hope that people reading this may disagree with me, and actually enjoyed the show. I really do.

All screenshots are courtesy of Lucasfilm – Disney Plus.

One by one, as they become eligible, my stories will be available to purchase on Books2Read.com.

First cab off the rank is ‘Barren Point Road’, with ‘Blasters!’ and ‘Vindictive Pursuits’ coming soon.

Once all the stories are listed, they will be advertised across multiple online bookstores.

The layout certainly looks professional enough, so let’s see how we go.