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![The biggest challenge facing the NRL isn’t ensuring Brad Fittler knows which is his hotel room but rather ensuring that the One RL dream becomes a reality.
While, Fittler was busy buying some extra strong nails and a jumbo hammer for a coffin with the headstone marked “my coaching career” it also emerged than [...] Steve Kaless: One rugby league vision is failing](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/david-gallop-th.jpg)
![Libby Trickett is considering retirement at the age of 24. Casey Stoner has taken a leave of absence due to extreme fatigue at the age of 23. What’s happening to our star athletes?
It seems as though their lifespan, or ability to sustain a long-term career at the top, is being tested, not just as [...] Adrian Musolino: Sports stars start too young, retire too early](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/sports-stars-start-too-young-th.jpg)
![There are Test matches and there are testing at matches. Pakistan versus Sri Lankan at the National stadium in Karachi last week looked to be extraordinarily testing to all concerned, not least the poor bowlers who toiled on the unforgiving and relentless playing surface.
I can recall English seam bowler Paul Allot’s description of the [...] Geoff Lawson: Green wickets are vital for Test cricket](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/graeme-smith-green-wickets-th.jpg)
![Let’s make one thing clear. Robbie Deans knows rugby. 10 years of provincial rugby and five test matches proves he is capable of understanding the game at the highest level. He can coach – that surely isn’t in dispute.
He led the Crusaders to five Super 12/14 championships. No other team has even won the [...] David Wiseman: It’s time to go Wallabies](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/its-time-to-go-wallabies-th.jpg)
![There are losses, and then there is what happened to the Minnesota Vikings in last weekend’s NFC Championship Game. Vikings fans thought 1998 was horrible, but this puts that to shame.
In 1998, Vikings’ kicker Morten Anderson missed a field goal which would have clinched the game — at least then they got to kick.
This time [...] David Wiseman: Are some teams just destined for heartbreak each season?](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/why-sept-soward-young-th.jpg)
![Over 100,000 will gather in Adelaide’s CBD today to watch Lance Armstrong, Cadel Evans and their pro-cycling buddies – impressive for a city with just over one million inhabitants. Adelaide, so often derided by its eastern seaboard brethren as a backwater has, in fact, contributed much to the wider Aussie sporting landscape, be it cycling, [...] Adrian Musolino: Australian sport owes much to little old Adelaide](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/adelaide-tour-down-under-th.jpg)
![I thought I was persona non grata with Football Federation Australia but at least someone appears to be reading my work, judging from the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed late last week by the FFA and its Indonesian counterpart, the Football Association of Indonesia or PSSI.
While it stops short of a joint World Cup [...] Jesse Fink: FFA’s Indonesia deal a watershed for Australia](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/poisoned-chalice-allsopp-th.jpg)
![As the winter football codes launch into their seasons, Australia leaves behind what many are bemoaning as a forgettable summer of sport. A summer that Sport & Style labelled as the ‘Summer of dud’ .
Across all of the summer sports, off-field talking points overshadowed on-field performance – and what happened on the field wasn’t [...] Adrian Musolino: The end is nigh for our summer of discontent](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/jets-fury-daal-th.jpg)
![Despite the giant strides made in the game from the Socceroos World Cup showing and the development of the A-League, football continues to fight for attention in the mainstream press, on free to air television and in print. It seems an ingrained ignorance still exists, judging by the pitiful coverage in certain sections of the [...] Adrian Musolino: Why does the mainstream media ignore football?](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/newcastle-jets-grand-final-th.jpg)
![It’s been a week of extremes for the A-League, from the invisibility of a week off to the thrilling finals matches in Wellington and Sydney.
The week just past has been a fascinating microcosm of how the promising developments for the wider Australian football community are sometimes the same factors that impede the growth of the [...] Adrian Musolino: The Catch-22s that continue to impede the A-League](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/five-reasons-a-league-th.jpg)
![Football is increasingly becoming more and more defensive. The distance between lines has been shortened, space is becoming more and more squeezed, and 4-2-4 has become 4-5-1.
At the 1954 World Cup, an average of 5.38 goals were scored per match. Fifty-two years later at Germany 2006, that had dropped to 2.31.
The financial imbalance [...] Davidde Corran: Football isn’t a red card game](http://www.theroar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/rename-epl-gpl-patrice-evra-th.jpg)



