A review of the Australia’s sporting year in 2009.

AFL
In July it was a pack mark and in September it was a toe tap. Not much could split Geelong and St Kilda, the stand-out sides of the season. Amid a season of exceptional football, both clubs won their first 13 games, which made for an unprecedented build-up to their round-14 showdown. In a game that matched the hype, the Saints won a classic thanks to Michael Gardiner’s huge grab and winning goal. They met again in the grand final, a bruiser played in appalling conditions. It was decided when Geelong’s Matthew Scarlett used the outside of his boot to knock the ball to teammate Gary Ablett, who sent it forward, where Paul Chapman snapped the winning goal. Geelong’s win put them in exulted company, with two premierships in three years. Ablett joined the greats by winning the Brownlow Medal, and Carlton’s Brendan Fevola won the Coleman Medal. But after one indiscretion too many Fevola was traded to Brisbane.

ATHLETICS

Steve Hooker’s performance to win pole vault gold in the world championships in Berlin must rate as Australia’s sporting moment of the year. Nursing an injured thigh that almost prevented him competing, Hooker needed a painkiller to take part in the final, and sat out until the bar was raised to 5.85m. He failed his first jump, passed the height to 5.90m, and cleared it successfully. Dani Samuels also won gold for Australia in the women’s discus, while Mitchell Watt (men’s long jump) and the men’s 4x400m relay team won bronze medals. While those results were encouraging ahead of next year’s Commonwealth Games and the 2012 Olympics, the Australian Olympic Committee was dismayed in November when an independent review questioned a funding bias towards Olympic sports. The Crawford Report recommended funding be directed towards sports that attract high participation, such as cricket and the football codes. The AOC had called for an extra $100 million annually for 10 years for elite sports.

CRICKET
More wickets, more centuries, most of the leading run-scorers. But in the Ashes, England won more of the big moments, and won the series 2-1. Australia’s inability to bowl out England’s last pair in Cardiff was decisive, they were out-bowled at Lord’s and crashed to defeat, and in the decider at The Oval, Stuart Broad was unplayable. Ricky Ponting must live with two Ashes defeats as skipper, but other parts of the year gave him great satisfaction. His young team won a Test series in South Africa, successfully defended the Champions Trophy and defied injuries to beat India in a one-day series in India. After the retirements of 2007-08, Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus became key bowlers and Marcus North and Shane Watson established themselves as batsmen. Mitchell Johnson was named international cricketer of the year, but his year typified his country’s – when the Ashes came, he went missing.

CYCLING
Cadel Evans’ response to criticism was emphatic. After a disappointing Tour de France, where he finished 30th and copped plenty of flak that he never attacked, Evans became Australia’s first cycling road race world champion with a decisive solo break at the foot of the final climb of the 262km race in Switzerland. The rainbow jersey made amends for the frustrations he endured during the Tour de France, where he was runner-up in 2007 and 2008. While Evans succeeded overseas, it was on Australian soil where cycling received a major boost at the start of the year, when American superstar Lance Armstrong competed in the Tour Down Under after a three-and-a-half year hiatus from the sport, and finished 29th. But the sport was saddened in April by the death of former star Jobie Dajka, who experienced alcohol problems and depression.

GOLF
Australia must seem an idyllic destination for Tiger Woods right now. When the world’s greatest golfer visited for the Australian Masters in November, we could not get enough of him. And all we wanted to talk about was golf. His visit sparked wonders for the sport, as packed galleries watched him at Kingston Heath, where he won comfortably and then said he would love to return. Whether he does will depend on how he comes through a personal scandal, after his infidelities went public. Golf needs Woods back, just as Australia needs its best players firing. Geoff Ogilvy led the way in 2009, with two tournament victories and $US4 million in prizemoney earned, and Adam Scott and Robert Allenby finished off their years well. In December Scott won the Australian Open and Stuart Appleby was second, and Allenby won the Australian PGA. The trio can look to 2010 with renewed optimism, but can Woods do the same?

HORSE RACING
He was born before Phar Lap rose to greatness, and at 82 remains the defining figure in Australian racing. Bart Cummings’ 2009 spring carnival yielded four group-one victories, the Caulfield Cup (Viewed), the Cox Plate (So You Think), the Oaks (Faint Perfume) and the Toorak Handicap (Allez Wonder). Viewed was the favourite entering the Melbourne Cup, but the Mark Kavanagh-trained Shocking denied Cummings what would have been a 13th Cup win. Shocking’s win was a dream come true for jockey Corey Brown, who was beaten by a nose in the great race of 2008.

MOTOR RACING
Champagne never tasted so sweet for Mark Webber, who in July won his first Formula One race, with victory in the German Grand Prix. Webber’s breakthrough, after eight years of trying, 130 starts, injuries and frustrations with inferior cars, was the first by an Australian since Alan Jones won in 1981. Webber also won in Brazil, which took him to fourth in the drivers’ championship, behind Jenson Button, who won the season opener in Melbourne. At home, Jamie Whincup won the V8 Supercar championship for the second straight year and will switch from Ford to Holden in 2010. In motorcycling, Casey Stoner gave Australian fans a thrill with his third-straight win in his home grand prix at Phillip Island, after missing part of the season through illness.

RUGBY
The Wallabies were black-washed by New Zealand and red-faced at one point on their tour of the northern hemisphere, but insist their 2011 World Cup preparations are much further advanced at the end of 2009 than they were at the start. Coach Robbie Deans found his own position queried towards the end of a mixed bag of a year that included wins over Italy, France, South Africa, England and Wales, but also four defeats to the All Blacks, one to the Springboks and a stinker to Scotland. But Deans believes the emergence of Quade Cooper, Will Genia, Digby Ioane and Ben Alexander outweighed the negatives on the tour of Britain and Ireland. Australia play England twice next year and get three Tests against the All Blacks, which will be crucial before the World Cup across the Tasman.

RUGBY LEAGUE
The NRL should look to Melbourne when it comes to promoting the code. In a season of off-field indiscretions, which included sexual assault charges being laid against poster boy Brett Stewart, the Storm’s Billy Slater and Greg Inglis showed everything good about league, by starring for club, state and country. They lifted Melbourne to a second premiership in three seasons after victory over Parramatta in the grand final, where Slater won the Clive Churchill Medal, while Inglis scored a crucial try and field goal. Inglis starred for Queensland in game two of the Origin series, when the Maroons secured a record fourth-straight series win over NSW. In November Slater scored three tries in the Kangaroos’ 46-16 win over England in the Four Nations final, while Inglis was the player of the tournament. Even Inglis found himself before the courts, on an assault charge. In a terrible year for the game’s image, some of the worst incidents included the Roosters’ Nate Myles defecating in a hotel hallway and his coach Brad Fittler drunkenly trying to get into another guest’s hotel room. The NRL needs more gentlemen like Hazem El Masri, who retired as the game’s greatest points scorer.

SOCCER
The pitches of South Africa in 2010 will show just how far the Socceroos have come in four years, but in getting there, 2009 proved Australia is a far more assured presence in the world game. The Socceroos were the last team to qualify for the 2006 World Cup, after a dramatic penalty shoot-out. This year, after a faultless qualifying period, they were one of the first teams to book their place in next year’s finals with a scoreless draw in Qatar, when most of Australia was asleep. Pim Verbeek’s team was later drawn in a pool comprising Germany, Ghana and Serbia. Barring disaster, 2010 should also bring Australia qualification for the 2011 Asian Cup. Then it’s all eyes on South Africa. In June Australia launched its bid to host the World Cup in either 2018 or 2022. Perhaps reflecting the Socceroos’ past year, the bid was dubbed the “no worries” World Cup, but it was anything but in December, when a turf war erupted between soccer and the AFL and NRL. The Melbourne Victory won the 2008-09 A-League title.

SURFING
Australia finished the year on top of the world, as Mick Fanning and Stephanie Gilmore were crowned world champions. Gilmore’s win was her third in succession, but Fanning’s was far more dramatic. A wipeout in Hawaii from Joel Parkinson handed his good mate the title. Fanning now has two world championship titles.

SWIMMING
Australian swimming celebrated its centenary in 2009, but the year was far from the sport’s finest. The world championships in Rome were marred by the controversy caused by the high-tech suits, which helped swimmers glide like torpedoes and break 43 records in eight days. US superstar Michael Phelps defied the rush to don the newest polyurethane suit and still won five gold medals. There were calls for suit-assisted records to be annulled, and FINA highlighted the confusion by banning some suits, although not until 2010. If the water wasn’t murky enough, Australian swimming plunged into crisis in December, when allegations of sexual abuse were levelled against former Olympic coach Terry Buck, who died in 2005. At the same time came an allegation of inappropriate behaviour against national coach Alan Thompson.

TENNIS
Australians love a fighter, especially when she calls Australia home. Jelena Dokic captured her adopted country’s heart for good with a stirring performance in the Australian Open in January. Freed from her domineering father Damir and having overcome the worst of her personal troubles, Dokic was granted a wild card and beat three seeds to storm into the quarter-finals. Dinara Safina ended the fairytale, but Dokic was the darling of the tournament. In more promising signs for the women, Sam Stosur reached the semi-finals of the French Open, where she took eventual champion Svetlana Kuznetsova to three sets. Stosur finished the year ranked 13th in the world. Lleyton Hewitt produced the best performance of the Australian men, when he reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, and lost in five sets to Andy Roddick.

TRIATHLON
Craig Alexander made history at the Hawaiian Ironman in October, becoming the first Australian to twice win triathlon’s
famous race. Alexander conquered the 226km course and its extreme conditions in eight hours and 20 minutes and by doing so, ensured this was the fourth year when an Australian athlete has won after Chris McCormack won in 2007 and Michellie Jones won the women’s event in 2006.

© AAP 2012

Enjoy sports? Enjoy a bargain? All Sports Online has your favourite sporting brands at up to 70% off. Online only, premium quality sporting goods and merchandise at discounted prices. Get a deal now.