By Steve Giffiths
November 22nd 2009 @ 12:39am
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Federer fuelled by battle with Nadal for number one
Roger Federer admits the prospect of finishing the year as world number one ahead of Rafael Nadal will fuel his bid to win the ATP World Tour Finals in London.
Federer goes into the Tour Finals, beginning on Sunday at London’s O2 Arena, in pole position in the world rankings, but the Wimbledon champion knows Nadal [...]
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![I’ve been amazed by the football noise that’s been coming out of New Zealand over recent weeks. While I suppose it all started with that fateful match against Bahrain in November, since almost 20,000 fans stumped up in Christchurch to see the Phoenix defeat Adelaide United 1-0 almost four weeks ago, I’ve started to believe.
Not [...] Davidde Corran: The Phoenix can help the game rise up](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wellington-phoenix-tim-brown-th.jpg)
![The AFL dominates the Australian sporting landscape because it delivers entertainment like that. Geelong and St Kilda ensured the greatest day on our sporting calendar lived up to the occasion with the Cats confirming their greatness in a thrilling Grand Final.
With the grey weather relenting in the dying moments of the final quarter with scores [...] Adrian Musolino: Geelong confirm their greatness in an epic struggle](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/geelong-confirm-th.jpg)
![There seems to be a consensus amongst many long time league fans that the eighties were a golden period for the game. The game expanded beyond Sydney and the seeds were sown for the national competition that we have today. Good times.
There’s probably still many who wouldn’t mind if the game was the same [...] Gabriel Knowles: Memo NRL: bring back the five minute sin bin](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/memo-nrl-ben-cummins-th.jpg)
![Are the Australian selectors expressing the growing concerns of the greater national cricket punditry by giving Brad Haddin a match in charge of the international team?
Haddin had shown for a number of years at New South Wales that he had the tactical and leadership nous to be a skipper at the elite level. In [...] Geoff Lawson: ACB have had enough of blonde tips and sports cars](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/why-clarke-haddin-th.jpg)
![The A2-League, or whatever the second division mentioned by Frank Lowy at the Melbourne Victory business luncheon will be called, needs to be forgotten. With crowds fading across the country, it’s the last thing the game needs, even if it is a long-term possibility.
Put simply, it’s not a realistic possibility considering the fragile state [...] Adrian Musolino: Forget the second division; create the FFA Cup](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/forget-second-division-create-ffa-cup-th.jpg)
![Don’t bother shutting the gate, Gold Coast United have already bolted. What’s interesting about Gold Coast’s form so far is that two of their three wins have come away from home. Of course, they’ve only played at home once so far. But elsewhere home teams are struggling to chalk up wins.
Of the fifteen games [...] Mike Tuckerman: Home form no advantage in A-League](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/home-form-tahj-minniecon-th.jpg)
![The Roar has been told that Mark Gerrard wants to come back to Australian rugby in 2011, with the aim of giving the Rugby World Cup squad a real crack. This is, or should be, good news for the game here.
One of the Super Rugby clubs, the Melbourne Rebels, perhaps, should make him a workable [...] Spiro Zavos: Mark Gerrard should be welcomed back to Australia](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/mark-gerrard-th.jpg)
![With his fourth NRL Grand Final in a row coming up on Sunday, and another championship ring likely, the question has to be asked: Is Craig Bellamy our best coach in any Australian rugby code right now? The answer, in my opinion, is not yet.
He is undoubtedly the finest rugby league coach of his generation.
In [...] Spiro Zavos: Is Craig Bellamy our best coach, league or union?](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/is-craig-bellamy-th.jpg)
![1993 was a good time to be an Australian in Britain, especially if you were the sort of Aussie who likes sport. Which, really, is the only sort of Aussie who ends up in Britain.
The Wallabies had just backed up the Rugby World Cup win with a successful tour of Ireland and Wales, marred only [...] Matthew Horan: How I missed cricket’s Ball of the Century](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/how-i-missed-cricket-shane-warne-th.jpg)
![There’s been some interesting sporting experiments in recent years: Nadal and Federer playing on a half-clay, half-grass court; the ICC World XI playing Australia in a Super Test and three one-day internationals; and the golfing obsession of seeing how the best females would go on the men’s tour.
They didn’t really prove much.
We already knew [...] Benjamin Conkey: Let’s test today’s champions using yesterday’s equipment](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/giggs-football-immortality-th.jpg)
![Netball is now following in the footsteps of cricket and rugby in providing a shorter version of the game, which will hopefully excite existing netball fans and grab the attention of new ones. Between October 9-11, a new World Netball Series will take place in Manchester, featuring the top six netballing countries: Australia, New Zealand, [...] Natalie Medhurst: World Netball Series may fizz without crowd support](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/nat-medhurst-th.jpg)
![The depth and breadth of our sporting landscape never ceases to amaze me. On Saturday alone you could have watched Ashes cricket, NRL, AFL, A-League, Tri-Nations, V8 Supercars and the like on the box. With codes undertaking one of the most aggressive expansion phases in Australian sporting history, can this be sustained?
It is a fascinating [...] Adrian Musolino: Is Australia’s sporting landscape too overcrowded?](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/is-australias-overcrowded-th.jpg)



