From the Pocket: Bulldogs need to lock down Marcus Bontempelli’s future above all else
It was a familiar story for Marcus Bontempelli and his team on the weekend.To mine the stats sheet, no player on the ground had more possessions, tackles, clearances, inside 50s and metres gained.It still wasn’t enough.The Bulldogs lost to a good side, but remain a decidedly lopsided, occasionally exhilarating and increasingly bewildering team.Leading his team off, the captain had the same look he often gets after losses like that – the wrung-out look of a man asking: “How much more do I have to do here?”Helen Garner, like half of Melbourne, is currently writing a book about the mushroom killer.
Before that, in The Season, it wasn’t barristers, jurors and murderers she was jotting notes about, but footballers – her grandson’s football team and the Western Bulldogs, specifically,Here she is on Lance Franklin being booed: “It’s a wounded face, with the wiped look of someone who’s copped a ringing slap across the cheek – all his expression lines gone,” Or on Rory Lobb: “I have a soft spot for him because he reminds me of a long-ago boyfriend, a rangy great bunch of bones with a dramatic head and a rare, sweet smile,” Or on Toby Greene: “Something about the shape of his head, like a tilted olive, and his vain little walk undermines my admiration for him,” On Bontempelli, four words suffice: “His quiet, faithful brilliance.
”The Bulldogs recently uploaded footage of their captain playing footy as a boy and you can see the etchings of the athlete he would become – the swivel and spin, the authoritative left boot, the half-second longer than all the other kids.His first possession at the professional level was something we’ve seen thousands of times since – scrapping on his knees, stripping the ball off his opponent and handballing to create.Since that moment, there’s been no significant fluctuations from week to week, from season to season, even from quarter to quarter.There are exceptions, of course: he was bullied by GWS in the elimination final in 2019 and was strangely subdued in last year’s final against Hawthorn.But that’s about it.
You can be pretty sure he’s going to be somewhere near brilliant, every week, every season.What a luxury it must be to coach someone like that.And what a joy it is to support a team with a player of that calibre.Physically, he’s perfect for the modern game.He’s strong enough through the hips and core to absorb contact, to chop his way out of tackles and to still get his handballs away.
The champion midfielders of previous generations were shorter and stockier and distributed lower to the ground,A recurring image of this taller generation of midfielders – of Patrick Cripps, of Tom Green and certainly of Bomtempelli – is of them handballing out of trouble from an upright position,But his size doesn’t compromise his ability to run all day and to sprint forward,He’s quicker than his gait suggests,He’s almost never run down.
He’s an outstanding endurance athlete and regularly finishes in the Top 3 in their time trials.At stoppages, he’s always on his toes, always alert, like a tennis player returning serve.He’s never more dangerous than at a stoppage, about 25 metres out, with a bit of space carved out on his left side.He slams the ball on his boot with relish and he almost never misses.His goal in the third quarter of the 2021 grand final, just as he was playing himself into September folklore, is the exemplar – but he does it nearly every week.
At just 29, his record is incredible: six-time All-Australian, six-time club champion, and three-time league MVP,The Bont does the lot,He bores in and lopes out,He carries the Dogs when they’re no good, he fronts the media when they’ve pissed away another season and he’s the cherry on top when they’re on a blitz,Sign up to From the Pocket: AFL WeeklyJonathan Horn brings expert analysis on the week's biggest AFL storiesafter newsletter promotionBontempelli and the club are now thrashing out the terms of a new contract: it’s impossible to imagine him playing anywhere else.
It’s hard to think of an individual player who means more to a club and its supporters.The Bulldogs need a lot of things: they need a functional backline.They need to start beating good teams.They need to make the most of a soft draw to secure a double chance.But most of all, they need Bontempelli’s signature.
He has given them everything.A simple squiggle of the pen would mean the world to this club, and would go a long way to ensuring he’s the greatest player to ever pull on the jumper.This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket.To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions
Rosie O’Donnell dismisses Trump’s threat to revoke her US citizenship
Rosie O’Donnell has shrugged off a threat from Donald Trump to revoke her US citizenship on the grounds that she is “a threat to humanity”.The New York-born actor and comedian said on Sunday that she was the latest in a long list of artists, activists and celebrities to be threatened by the US president.“So, I didn’t take it personally, but I will tell you the way that he is has emboldened people like him,” O’Donnell told RTÉ Radio’s Sunday with Miriam show.The Trump administration has sought to curb citizenship rights and questioned the citizenship of some critics, including Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, as well as people like O’Donnell who were born in the US.On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship
Artist or activist? For Juliet Stevenson and her husband, Gaza leaves them with no choice
Read any celebrity-signed open letter advocating for social justice over the past few years and you’ll probably spot Juliet Stevenson’s name. When the veteran actor is not gracing screens or on a stage somewhere, she’s out on the streets brandishing a placard or giving speeches about human rights, gender equality and the Palestinian right to self-determination.Just last month, she wrote in the Guardian about the British government’s “complicity” in the Gaza atrocities and what she called an attempt to repress civil liberties by proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group.Critics may – and they do – disparage Stevenson as a “luvvie” engaging in typical performative liberal politics, but spend just a few minutes with the actor and her husband – the anthropologist, film-maker and writer Hugh Brody – and you quickly discover that the roots of their activism run far deeper than that.In fact, the fight for peace and justice in Palestine is something that has defined the couple’s relationship for 32 years, particularly because Brody is Jewish and the son of a Holocaust survivor
‘History’s most devastating document of war’: the simple yet graphic details of the Bayeux tapestry
“Angli et Franci” – these Latin words embroidered on the Bayeux tapestry may be the first time those cartoon rivals, the English and the French, were named together. But in one of the shifts from triumph to horror that make this epic work of art still gripping almost a millennium after it was made, the full sentence reads: “Here at the same time the English and French [or Angles and Franks] fell in battle”. Below the black lettering, horses and chainmailed riders are thrown about and upside down in a bloody tangle. In the lower margin lie corpses and a severed head.Now, in an unprecedented piece of cultural diplomacy between the Angli and Franci, this 70-metre long Romanesque wonder, preserved for centuries in Bayeux, Normandy, is to go on show at the British Museum
My cultural awakening: I joined Danny Wallace’s accidental positivity cult – and found the love of my life
I was aimless and lonely after finishing my A-levels. Then a friend recommended the author’s book and everything changedThe spring after my A-levels was not going the way I planned. I was 19, hadn’t got the required grades for any of my university choices and hadn’t saved for a gap year. My friends were off enjoying their new lives and I was stuck at home in Essex with my disappointed parents, doing occasional temp work.Then I read Join Me by the writer and comedian Danny Wallace
Watch the Skies to Wet Leg: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Watch the SkiesOut now With the return of all things Y2K in fashion and music, it makes sense that the turn of the millennium fascination with little green men would likewise be back in vogue. But this sci-fi about a teenager teaming up with an agency that investigates paranormal phenomena is notable for its futuristic qualities too: it uses AI dubbing technology to create an English-language film from the Swedish original.SupermanOut now Superman is dead, long live Superman: wave goodbye to handsome hunk Henry Cavill’s stint as the man of steel and say hello to the new era of equally handsome hunk David Corenswet, a veteran of two Ryan Murphy series on Netflix. At the helm of this reboot is James Gunn, the director behind diverse entertainments including Slither and Guardians of the Galaxy.Michael Haneke RetrospectiveVarious venues nationwide; to 30 July The Austrian director is known for making films that are often kind of a bummer, but also bona fide masterpieces
The Guide #198: Such Brave Girls shows that grown-up gross-out comedy is thriving
The best binge-watches should make you feel a little bit sick while you gorge on them, and Kat Sadler’s sitcom Such Brave Girls, which just returned for a second season on BBC Three and iPlayer, certainly fits that description. I found myself burning through episodes, the enjoyment of them tempered with the slightest top note of nausea.That isn’t a criticism of the series, which follows the chaotically bleak existence of adult sisters Josie (Sadler) and Billie (Lizzie Davidson), still living at home with their wild-eyed mother, Deb (Louise Brealey). In fact it’s the intended reaction. From its logo (the title of the show made out in strands of wet hair slithering across bathroom tiles) onwards, Such Brave Girls is built to shock, unsettle and gross out, but above all be laughed at
Protect children, not just animals, from lead exposure | Brief letters
Fauja Singh, ‘world’s oldest marathon runner’, dies in road accident aged 114
‘They lump us all together’: van-dwellers and homeowners clash over life near Bristol Downs
Reform-run councils once known for green policies expected to scrap climate pledges
Government not learning lessons from deaths of domestic abuse victims, report finds
High-street slot machines reap record takings as councils call for power to curb spread