Sports thoughts

1) Does Collingwood need Chris Tarrant? No. Is he a useful addition to a team going for another premiership? Yes. He will replace Presti in the backline and offer more speed and agility. Taz will also be a really good option to replace Ben Reid and Nathan Brown if they get injured. Reid and Brown are both 22 and share a house. They will share Collingwood's backline for another decade or so. But Tarrant, 30, has a couple of good years left and will be part of a backline squad. Collingwood showed that football is becoming a squad game. Your best 22 is no longer enough. You need a best 30 to cover for injuries, suspensions, loss of form and to match up against different teams. It's the Manchester United model, which every club has copied in Europe over the last few years.

2) The Bulldogs have rejuvenated well. Justin Sherman is an outside runner coming into his prime, while Mitch Wallis and Tom Liberatore are father/son selections with pace and skill. Goodbye Aker, Brad Johnston and Nathan Eagleton.

3) Brisbane... it's hard to know. I thought they'd be great this year, they were for five games, then things turned horrible. They've traded away Sherman, Michael Rischitelli and Jared Brennan - three players in their prime, with the good years still to come. A strange decision. But they've picked up heaps of draft picks, and they still have some good players. With Jonathan Brown in your team you can do anything. A fit Fev and Brown and who knows??

4) Geelong has a chance to prove the Ewing Theory. It's when a team loses its superstar and everyone writes them off, and they actually go better the next year. Based on Patrick Ewing, the great Knicks centre, whose teams played better without him. He was a weapon, but for some reason his teams did better when he was injured or gone. Time for Selwood to show he's worth the big wraps and big dollars and take over games like Ablett did.

5) Who knows what will happen with Carlton? Judd was great, Murphy was good but hasn't learned how to break hard tags, and Bryce Gibbs... is taking his time maturing. Carlton's top 8 players are damn good - the rest aren't so good. Andrew Walker may well thrive somewhere else.

6) Why do batsmen always "save their Test career" with a big hundred? You know what I want? I want a batsman to make runs to WIN GAMES FOR AUSTRALIA, rather than so they can stick around and be s*** for another five Tests. Shane Watson is the only player I feel will reliably make runs. WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN? I mean, I've always been a big Watson fan. He was awesome for Tassie. But you could never call him reliable. Now he's the big man at the top of the order.

7) Marcus North... all of Australia is expecting you to screw us over during the Ashes. Will you do a Hussey and do nothing for four Tests, only to make a big score in the final match when it's all over and the pressure is off? Or will you make a big score in a huge win and live off that for the rest of the summer, slowly finding new ways to suck? I would love you to deliver like you were a while back. It would be great. Please do it. I'm just saying we don't expect it.

8) The Opals' performance in the World Championships was a bit embarrassing. Fifth in the world. Losing to the Czech Republic. The only silver lining I can see (not that we got close to silver... fifth... pffff) is that now we know what we need to do to win gold at London 2012. Liz Cambage will be two years older and more experienced, the team will have more time together. The big worry is that Lauren Jackson will finally break down and her body won't be able to bang it in the paint anymore. We need a healthy Jackson and a firing Cambage to physically dominate other teams, while our guards can match it with anyone.