For many people, sport is a religion in and of itself, and for those who partake in its winter variants, September is four weekends of mass.
Come Saturday or Sunday, the huddled masses make their way to their churches and pray from their pews on the sidelines.
Players follow superstitions, they pray to the footy gods to bounce the ball their way and for knees and ankles to hold up.
Over the weekend in Avenel, the religious flavour of sport mixed with the more traditional religious tones.
Sandhurst priest Jackson Saunders was behind the mic in the OneFM commentary box, and on his way in passed none other than Sister Pam (or should that be ‘nun’ other?) at the gate.
We’ve been blessed by some cracking games of sport over the past few weeks, so maybe there is someone paying close attention over the hallowed turf and courts of the Goulburn Valley.
Australian Institute all woke-n up
The Australia Institute, which has a habit of trying to bust stereotypes, has just published a survey on who identifies as woke and what this means.
The survey found that people who identified as ‘woke’ were just as likely to live in regional Australia as to be inner-city latte drinkers.
“Our research shows most Australians are either unfamiliar with the term woke or prefer a positive definition of the word to a negative one,” Australia Institute director Bill Browne said.
Of those who described themselves as woke, three in five were major party voters (59 per cent) and more intended to vote for the Coalition than intended to vote for the Greens (24 per cent vs 22 per cent).
Those in regional and rural areas were about as likely to describe themselves as woke as those in metro areas (44 per cent vs 45 per cent).
All this talk about woke-ness is putting Oddie to sleep — it’s a boring ‘gotcha’ from people who want an excuse to be mad at anything.