They do things different in Aussie. There we were on Saturday, watching the half-time analysis of the AFLW Grand Final between North Melbourne and the Brisbane Lions when the presenter threw down to the pitch. There, under lights, lined up like reluctant mams on sports day, were eight players from various teams around Australia, all dressed in track pants and club jerseys.
“So the Telstra Half-Time Sprint is back for season 2025,” began the announcer Al Nicholson.
Time fell away. The universe folded in on itself. Empires collapsed, birds flew in reverse and the clock struck 45½. The Telstra Half-Time Sprint? What on earth are you talking about, Al?
Well, turns out it’s exactly what it sounds like. Eight AFLW players lined up to take their marks. Beside them was Jess Hull, Olympic 1,500m silver medallist from Paris. Ahead of them was 80 metres of Melbourne grass with cones laid out in a line.
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Hull was wearing huge yellow ear defenders and holding what looked like one of those tiny handguns a Bond girl might have stashed in her purse in Goldfinger or some such. She was very smiley for someone about to commit a mass shooting on a load of famous Aussie Rules players, however, so it didn’t take too long to realise that it was, in fact, a starter’s pistol.
They took their marks, Jess Hull’s pistol shot rang out and they were off. Zippy Fish on the Sydney Swans was the early leader. That’s not a made-up name, by the by. Zipporah Fish is the best young player in the AFLW, winner of the 2025 Rising Star award in the league. And here she was, rounding off a spectacular season by jumping out to an early lead in the Grand Final Half-Time Sprint.
But she wasn’t getting it all her own way. She had company in the shape of Lucy Single of the Gold Coast. By the time they got to halfway, this pair were five metres up on the rest of the field. “It’s Single and Fish,” shouted Nicholson, sounding (whether he knew it or not) like he was in the queue in Burdocks after closing time.
In the end, Lucy Single won the day, taking the tape a couple of hundredths of a second ahead of Zippy Fish. There was what racing punters would call an eye-catching run from West Coast Eagle player Ella Roberts in third. Roberts didn’t hear the gun and was left at the start, handing Single and Fish a good 10 metres of a head-start. By the time they reached the tape, she had passed the rest of the field and was finishing quickest of all. One to keep onside for the 2026 Telstra Half-Time Sprint.
We need to steal this idea immediately. People have been moaning for years about how dull the build-up to All-Ireland finals are now that there’s no minor match – here’s your solution. Gather up the players whose teams haven’t made it to the finals, football and hurling, men and women. Put them in their club jerseys. Get Rhasidat Adeleke on starting duties.
Can you imagine? This year alone you could have had Ciarán Kilkenny and Darragh Canavan, Olivia Divilly and Vikki Wall, Eoin Cody and Cian Lynch, Laura Murphy and Beth Carton. Get Greg Allen on commentary, promise five grand to the winner’s club. Line ’em up and send ’em off. It’s a no-brainer.
As for the final itself, it was a bit of a damp squib, with North Melbourne – club of the aforementioned Wall, as well as Cork’s Erika O’Shea and Fermanagh’s Bláthín Bogue – easily disposing of the overmatched Lions. At one stage, after an especially frenetic passage of play, one of the commentators described the players’ approach as, “It’s just a quick, ‘throw it on the boot and make it someone else’s problem.’” Aussie Rules football, in other words.
Back up this side of the rock, Munster were playing on Saturday night at home to the Stormers. It was another chastening night, when for the second week in a row an Irish team got turned into sawdust at scrum time by a South African team and lost the game because of it.
After a brilliant first half in which Munster built up a 21-6 lead, the Stormers brought on six forwards in one go in the 43rd minute. “It was impressive that there was no panic,” said Alan Quinlan on TNT afterwards. “Among the players, maybe,” laughed Stormers coach John Dobson. Panic or not, it had worked a treat.
“Ronan Fox is about to go to scrum university here,” said Ryle Nugent at one point, referring to the Munster Academy graduate Fox who had just come on at prop. Cut to the final scrum of the game, where the Stormers frontrow put manners on Munster with such extreme prejudice that Fox ended up with his two feet in the air and his ass six feet off the ground.
“We have a scrummaging culture that feeds itself,” said Dobson afterwards when the TNT lads asked him, half in desperation, what Irish rugby can possibly do to keep up. “It’s a bit childish, really. We believe that in every scrum, we can win a penalty. We have these great athletes and if you’re a coach, it’s like, you just push the diesel button and it starts.”
Zippy fish finish second. Story of the weekend.
