Welcome.

Well,investiture day for my OAM, awarded for services to the Australian film, is rapidly approaching. Time to get the suit dry cleaned. Having not mixed a film since Bruce Berersford's Paradise Road, which starred Glen Close and a very young Kate Blanchett in 1997, I thought my previous life might well have been forgotten. What is that old saying? Good things come to those who wait.

Perhaps as exciting is my journey into a new venture which allows me to be a personal leadership coach involved in helping students achieve their potential as future leaders of the community. An old Rugby mate, Russell Trotter, who now earns a crust being a life coach suggested I might enjoy the involvement with some dedicated, motivated young people. How right he was! We hear plenty of bagging of today's youth but the doubters would be thrilled to hear these young people speak about their aims. The course, run by Future Achievement Australia,is called Max Potential and is aimed specifically at people who want to make a difference in a world so focused on material values. I am loving it.  

The footy season is in full swing with my favourite team the Waratahs slugging it out in the highly competitive Super 15 title. Footy means different things to different people but to me it's essentially Rugby. Mind you I have enjoyed my trips to Bluetongue Stadium to see the Mariners. Just ask my grand kids. Bluetongue is such a wonderful arena that I have to think,every time I go, we should have a top-class Rugby team playing there. Too late it seems. We are a great code for missing the boat. Just think about Sydney's west. Welcome the Giants.

The Wallabies will have a chance to erase some memories of their World Cup failure in a season that sees home tests against Scotland, Wales,New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina. With the enormous expenses of running a World cup it might well be long time before we see another Down Under. The strength of rugby is in the South but the money is in the North. And that includes japan. How long before Asia or North America get the gig?

The French could not quite win the Rugby but they won their second successive Melbourne cup. French horse, French jockey and just one Aussie horse in the first ten. The powers that be cannot understand that betting was ten percent down on the Cup but not on other races over the Cup carnival. Why would you put your hard earned on a horse whose form is a mystery to you and who you had never even heard of until a week or so before the race? They did well to hold as much money as they did. Sadly our stayers are now also-rans. if there is no incentive to breed them they will fall away even further. Do we care? Time will tell.

While I have been able to speak at two wonderful functions lately,for the Hawthorne Club in Newcastle and the Sunnybank Club in Brisbane, I am still looking for a publisher willing to trust my latest book which tells the story of two of Sydney's greatest wartime sports' champions. With international and national sport abandoned during the war, boxing and horse racing experienced halcyon times. The darling of the race crowds was Flight, a chunky little filly, sold for a song at the 1941 yearling sales, who went on to become the greatest stake winning mare in the history of Australian racing. Eighty thousand fans came to see her attempt to win the 1943 Doncaster Handicap with nine pounds (four kilograms) over Weight For Age, an impost no filly was asked to carry before nor since. Her battle with the mighty Queenslander Bernborough in the WFA Chipping Norton Stakes in 1946 remains one of the greatest races ever seen at Randwick. The boxing sensation was Vic Patrick who thrilled crowds for almost a decade as he won a reputation as the finest fighter we had seen since Les Darcy, twenty five years earlier. They shared the most essential qualities of all champions, talent and boundless courage. You deserve to read about them. We will keep on trying. there must be a God, even in publishing.

The aim of this site is to flog a few of my books as well as a couple of classic DVDs which put you on tour with the Wallabies in an era which will sadly never come again, as well as to promote my guest speaking appearances. You can also buy a CD of my sporting verse.

While I am probably best known as a rugby man (happy with that) I have a genuine love of most sports, the result of being indoctrinated by trips with my late father to see the great sporting champions of my childhood, Don Bradman, Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller, Clive Churchill, Frankie Stanmore, John Bromwich, John Treloar, Vic Patrick, Ray Revell, Aub Lawson et al. My poems will testify to this.

I’ve been described as a punter, poet, coach and raconteur and that about sums me up. I also enjoyed a wonderful career in the Australian film industry which you will see if you care to read the About Fab page. The industry continues to struggle but dedicated and talented people always manage to keep it going. The film game, like sport, lives on passion.

If you have just found me - stop by occasionally and see what I'm up to and please - tell your friends about this site. I look forward to getting to know you.