You may have noticed that things have been a little quiet around these parts of late.

That’s because we’ve taken The Toy Department and turned it into something quite substantial, BackPageLead.

We’ve had a great time here at TDD blogging on a variety of sports. We’ve had a few laughs, whacked a few people with a tiny stick and beaten our chests over all sorts of issues.

Now we have to be a bit more grown-up about it and try to build BackPageLead into a great Australian sports website.

This is our final post at The Toy Department, so we want to take this opportunity to thank all our loyal followers. Those who read us, followed us and tweeted us. Also thanks to those who loiter around various WordPress blogs offering wise counsel to various Luddites such as us.

We hope to see you all at BackPageLead. Visit us soon. And visit us often.

When we talk about the great coaches in Australian sport we tend to focus on either those from an oval ball background, or those who have helped steer us to Olympic gold.

There are some already lamenting that no place can be found for Brian Goorjian in Australia. Arguably our best ever basketball coach is now plying his trade in China.

Let’s hope that Ernie Merrick never needs to blaze a similar trade because we’re hard pressed to think of a better coach in Australian sport at this particular time.

The Melbourne Storm’s Craig Bellamy is coaching superbly, as is Geelong’s Mark Thompson, but Merrick’s work in getting the Melbourne Victory to their third A-League grand final in five seasons and the club’s second in as many seasons has been every bit as impressive.

Major hurdles have been thrown Merrick’s way all season. First came a spate of injuries, then some suspensions and finally some ridiculous scheduling that saw the Victory having to juggle the finals of the domestic competition with the opening fixtures of the Asian Champions League.

First the injuries. Melbourne’s season looked shot for good when within days, Archie Thompson, Matthew Kemp and Robbie Kruse all went down with leg injuries. Once the whipping boy of the Victory faithful (probably because he used to play for Adelaide), Kemp emerged as a vital part of Melbourne’s defence and it was feared his absence would leave too big a hole for Melbourne to cover.

Then came Thompson and Kruse. Thompson is the best striker in the A-League, while Kruse is a rising star, inexplicably let go by Brisbane, and seemingly able to conjure a goal from nothing.

Add a suspension to skipper Kevin Muscat and Merrick was forced to dig deep into his reserves just to put a team on the pitch. But the Victory rebounded from a 2-0 loss to Sydney in the final round of the season – which handed Sydney top spot – to beat the Sky Blues 2-1 in the first leg of the major semi-final at Etihad. Within days the Victory was in Beijing with a depleted squad, losing their ACL opener 1-0 and again the epitaphs were being written, mainly (and perhaps wishfully) out of Sydney. But after Sunday night’s 2-2 draw with Sydney, and 4-3 win overall on aggregate, Melbourne is again preparing to host another grand final at Etihad Stadium.

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Merrick has instilled resilience and determination in his squad. A bit like Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson, his mantra is that if you lose one soldier, you replace them with another. Merrick has moulded a group of players he knows can come in and do whatever is required, be it for five minutes, 90 minutes, or as was the case on Sunday night, 120 minutes.

He also has a crack medical squad that was able to get Kruse and Thompson up for the game. Kruse ran hard in his first game back and scored a cracker of a goal that will feature on the highlights reels for years. Importantly, it swung momentum firmly towards the Victory and for most of the time on Sunday night, they were the better team.

Kruse made way after about 60 minutes and then it was Thompson’s turn. There was not a hint of rust from the Melbourne frontman given he hadn’t played for five weeks and had the assistant referees been paying attention, the game might not have even needed extra time. It was a case of when, not if, Thompson would score.

Next on Merrick’s to-do list is to get his team up within 48 hours for their next ACL game. Then comes the grand final, both at home.

For Merrick, the hard work might just about be over.

Had a scrubbing shot for goal from Tony Liberatore late in the 1997 preliminary final not faded at the last moment, that year’s grand final would have been one for the romantics, between the Western Bulldogs and St Kilda, each with just one premiership to their name.

Bugger the romance, thought the footy gods. Libba’s kick went wide – just – and Adelaide won a memorable preliminary final and the following week, the flag.

It has taken another 13 years but we’re finally getting that Bulldogs-Saints grand final. It might only be the pre-season premiership decider, but it is a game to look forward to all the same.

It hasn’t been all that that often that the NAB Cup grand final features the two teams who dominate the betting for the day premiership as well, but at this stage, you would be hard-pressed to think of any teams more likely to play off on the last Saturday in September.

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St Kilda had been on the receiving end of considerable good fortune in its first two NAB Cup encounters, but looked really solid against Fremantle on Saturday night. The Dogs were a little wobblier in their semi against Port the night before, but the huge pack mark from Barry Hall to set up the winning goal by Brian Lake would have warmed the cockles of every Bulldog heart.

It is the first grand final of any description for the Bulldogs since the 1970 night grand final and you have to wonder who at the Whitten Oval has the key to what must be an old, dusty and relatively empty trophy cabinet.

Perhaps it is David Smorgon. You have to feel happy for the Bulldog president, who has missed a few big finals matches in recent years because of clashes with Jewish holidays. But you’d imagine he will be the first one through the gates next weekend, because he has put in 13 years of toil into the Bulldogs without the club even having the chance to play off for some silverware.

In 1997 and 1998, and again in 2008 and 2009, the Bulldogs have been beaten preliminary finalists. Every time, there has been a missing piece of the jigsaw at the Whitten Oval but the recruitment of Hall might have changed that. The Bulldogs would appear to have it all.

The Saints will be a formidable opponent. Their defence has been as miserly as last year but in Brett Peake and David Armitage, they have a bit more speed through the midfield. This was their achilles last year and why they made the ill-considered decision to recruit Andrew Lovett, but if Peake and Armitage continue to perform as they have, it might be a mistake they get away with.

The appointment of John Howard as ICC president from 2012 has produced a chorus of indignation from a predictable array of suspects but many of the charges leveled against him – that he is a cricket nuff-nuff who lacks a feel for the game and has no record of cricket administration – are irrelevant furphies.

He does not need to be able to recite large tracts of the 1948 Wisden, or give you a concise interpretation of the LBW rules, in order to do this job. The past two ICC presidents have proved that a demonstrable lack of cricket ‘pedigree’ is no barrier to success in the role. And it is possible the new man in charge, India’s Sharad Pawar, whom Howard will succeed in two years, may never have donned the flannels in his life.

According to his biography on Cricinfo: ‘’Pawar’s only connection to cricket was a tenuous one – his father-in-law, Sadu Shinde, was a Test leg-spinner who toured England in 1946.’’ And like Howard, Pawar is a politician.

Pawar will replace David Morgan as president this year. Morgan is a Welshman who never played the game at any decent level and was, in fact, a former commercial director of a steel company before joining Glamorgan CCC in 1980 as a senior marketing man.

Morgan, in turn, succeeded South African Ray Mali, who happened to be a teacher by profession, and on it goes. All seem to have done a fair to middling job. The point is, you don’t need to have played 100 Tests or been a county cricket club secretary since Colin Cowdrey was in his prime to successfully run cricket’s governing body.

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You just need an abiding love of the game, a proven record of administration and, in a sport increasingly dominated from the sub-continent, a talent for diplomacy. There will be many who quibble with Howard’s qualifications on the latter score – and they would probably include Fairfax columnist Peter Roebuck and former Test captain Ian Chappell.

In the lead-up to yesterday’s announcement, Roebuck went in to bat for the New Zealand candidate Sir John Anderson – who admittedly sounds as though he would have made an ideal appointment – but couldn’t resist a swipe at Howard’s knowledge of cricket which, he said, was ‘’more characterised by enthusiasm than depth or imagination’’.

Ian Chappell, an outspoken advocate of asylum seekers, who walked out of the Channel Nine commentary box in 2007 in protest when Howard walked in to do a guest commentary spot, has also criticized the appointment. But that sounds like an opinion that has its roots in ideology rather than cricket.

As to Howard’s connection with the game, and playing record, sure, his off-spinners are a bit wonky, and one or two even land at his feet. And sure his on drive needs a bit of work. But, if we’re being picky, those same charges could be leveled at half a dozen cricket writers I could name who happily traipse in and out of the press boxes of the world, and have no qualms about offering up opinions on the techniques of the game’s best players. The truth is many of them couldn’t tell you how Murali bowls his doosra, or how difficult it is to hit a cover drive on the up on a seaming wicket.

That lack of nitty-gritty knowledge and first-hand experience doesn’t mean they can’t do their job capably, nor will it count against Howard.

24 hours later, it is still hard to work out what to take from the Four Corners expose into the politics of Australian tennis, or more to the point, of Tennis Australia.

On the one hand, there wasn’t a whole lot of news. Paul McNamee is the figurehead for a number of prominent Australian tennis identities who yearn for change in the game. Tennis Australia believes the game is headed in the right direction and that years of neglect when it comes to junior development have been righted. All we need is just a bit more patience.

But here is what we would like answered in the wake of last night’s show, and what we have observed, admittedly from a great distance.

1. Why is McNamee so on the outer? His track record in running the Australian Open and the Hopman Cup is pretty good. Under his watch, the Open emerged from its status as the ‘fourth Grand Slam’ to the equal of the other Slams. The players love it and it it brings Melbourne to a screeching halt for pretty much the entire fortnight. Craig Tiley and co have consolidated his work and the tournament continues to grow, but under McNamee it made its quantum leap. So why the turf war?
2. Does Harold Mitchell hold a conflict of interest? The powerful TA board member now runs the new Melbourne Rebels rugby team. And he is one of the most powerful ad men in Australia. Where does he tell prospective sports sponsors to plough their dough?
3. Managing player development for TA is a huge job. So is running the Australian Open. Tiley might be a talented person, but can he, or anyone for that matter, possibly juggle both these jobs? We don’t think so.
4. What caused Michelle Michie to sell Australian Tennis magazine to TA? We know the confidentiality agreement exists so we’ll never know the answer, but an independent tennis journal would be nice. Perhaps an online entrepreneur is ready and waiting to fill this void in the market.
5. Where was Todd Woodbridge’s head at? If you’re the head of men’s tennis for TA, you should be able to reel off the names of the top juniors in the country in an instant and without thinking.
6. The claim by one critic that TA has moved from a service provider to become an aspiring Fortune 500 company was strong. TA probably does need to move with the times, but it neglects the grassroots at its peril. Other sports, particularly the football codes, are working at the development level with particular zeal.

Tiley went on SEN on Tuesday saying the entire show was little more than an endorsement for McNamee as he again prepares to challenge Geoff Pollard for the TA presidency, and granted, the views of the pro-McNamee camp were given a very solid airing.

But the tennis establishment in this country still wields great power and holds all the aces. And if the Hopman Cup moves from its traditional TV home on the ABC next summer, that power will have been exercised once again.

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When Wayne Jackson stepped down as chief executive of the AFL he expressed the fervent wish that Fremantle finally come good after years of fumbling around.

Making the final four of the NAB Cup doesn’t quite constitute ‘coming good’ but on the evidence presented at Etihad Stadium on Sunday in the win over North Melbourne, things might not be as parlous for Fremantle as some have suggested. The noose around Mark Harvey’s neck might have been loosened just a tad.

The kids the Dockers have stockpiled through the draft might be starting to click. Midfielder Stephen Hill was terrific, while Chris Mayne was outstanding with five goals. And Anthony Morabito, taken with the fourth pick overall at last year’s draft, looks a readymade senior player.

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The win was achieved without Matthew Pavlich, Adam McPhee and Rhys Palmer, the 2008 Rising Star winner who might be the best young Docker of the lot. It was also interesting to note on Sunday that Chris Tarrant played the experienced veteran defender to a tee and Ryan Murphy, surely on his last chance with the Dockers, also bobbed up as an important key forward.

Yes, the Dockers have made us eat our words over and over again. Smart tipsters simply don’t tip them at all and are therefore spared the inevitable heartbreak when the Dockers lose the unloseable game. And we don’t expect them to win this week, having to travel to back Melbourne to play St Kilda on a six-day break. Sadly for the Dockers, AC/DC take precedence at Subiaco this weekend, preventing the AFL from giving the Dockers the leg-up they might have needed to make the NAB Cup Grand Final.

You’d have to think the Saints would win this one on their merits, rather than rely on brain fades from their opponents. Against Collingwood, a defensive lapse allowed Adam Schneider to mark on his own 30 metres from goalto kick the match-winner, while on Saturday night, Sydney’s Mark Seaby played on from a 50-metre penalty, so the resultant goal was worth six, rather than nine points.

Port Adelaide have also looked impressive in their two hit-outs to date but the Western Bulldogs were particularly sharp against Hawthorn on Friday night. Barry Hall booted six goals, but even if he averages half that figure during the season, he will add the dimension the Bulldogs have been so obviously missing the last few seasons.

Fast, strong, tough, hungry and now with a key forward. You would have to think all the elements are in place for the Bulldogs to make a run.

Ross Lyon might have cut a cocksure figure as he assured the assembled media at Moorabbin on Tuesday that the Saints had done their due diligence before the now ill-fated decision to trade their first round pick to Essendon in exchange for Andrew Lovett.

But rest assured the Saints are anxious at how the media chooses to spin the turn of events that saw them lose Luke Ball to Collingwood for nothing and now, not have Andrew Lovett as his replacement.

As we at The Toy Department understand it, two senior St Kilda football department figures spent about 20 minutes on Tuesday evening tearing strips off one veteran Melbourne footy scribe, who had already gone public with a damning view of St Kilda’s recent list management.

Very touchy they are at Moorabbin and when you’re coming off such a narrow defeat in a grand final, you’re on a hiding to nothing. The Saints need to walk away with the silverware this season or legitimate questions will be asked about why they let Ball walk away for nothing and then rolled the dice to secure obviously damaged goods in Lovett.

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It was interesting to hear Matthew Lloyd say on SEN on Wednesday morning that if the Saints conducted their due diligence on Lovett that they claimed to have done, that they didn’t speak to him in his capacity as the most recent captain of Essendon.

If they didn’t speak to the skipper, and they already knew that Lovett had twice been suspended by Bomber coach Matthew Knights, just who was it from Windy Hill who advised them that Lovett would be a good pick-up?

All credit to the Saints if they can put all this behind them and win that elusive second flag. But for now, we suggest this has been a major distraction.

On a related matter, it has been fascinating to observe the AFL Players Association’s stance on all this. The AFLPA and the league have been all but joined at the hip in recent years, in common agreement on most issues and with matters such as the Collective Bargaining Agreement signed off with a minimum of fuss and and even less rancour.

But this could be the issue that drives a wedge between the two bodies. The Saints clearly sacked Lovett with the consent of the AFL, prompting the AFPLA to label the move as “disappointing” and call out the Saints for not allowing a grievance resolution procedure lodged by Lovett to run its course.

Negotiations for the next CBA are on the horizon. You have to wonder whether events of the last few days will lead to a harder edge to those discussions.

We at The Toy Department would like to thank AC/DC for a ripping night’s entertainment.

We’re not the hugest attenders of live music but we’re hard-pressed to to think of anything better we have seen for a long time.

In particular, we loved Angus’s guitar solo and the nice tribute to Angus Young.

So all in all, a good night out.

But we think it all came at a cost and we fear that the Melbourne Victory might be paying the price.

Because as we write, the massive stage and all the accompanying infrastructure that comes with staging such an event is being dismantled and we fear for that the Etihad Stadium surface will look like after all but a small patch near the Lockett end goals has been covered for more than a week.

We thought that four days to get the surface ready for the NAB Cup clash between Collingwood and St Kilda would have been a stretch. But then we learned that Melbourne and Sydney will be playing there Thursday night in the first leg of the A League major semi-final. So that’s 72 hours to return the venue to its main purpose as an elite sports stadium and if you believe its boss and no.1 spruiker Ian Collins, one of the finest sports stadiums in the world.

So injury-depleted are the Victory that it will have little choice but to go on the attack at home and try to get two or three goals past Sydney in order to have a chance of holding on in the second leg a fortnight later, which for them, will come after a trip to Beijing for the Asian Champions League opener.

In order to play fast, attacking soccer, you need a billiard-table like surface. But we fear that the surface on Thursday night will be anything but. We’re expecting bumps, vast area of rolled dirt and different shades of green, depending on how alive the grass still is.

For a first-round NAB Cup match, the aesthetics doesn’t mean all that much.

But it does when you are about to play one of the most important soccer games of the year and it is little wonder that the opening of the new rectangular stadium is so eagerly-anticipated next year.

State of Origin was an idea first conceived by the AFL and then made its own by rugby league.

And the thinking here is that the NRL has latched on to another idea that has its origins in the AFL and is taking it in a bold, new direction.

It’s the All-Star Game on the Gold Coast this Saturday night – featuring the NRL All Stars against the Indigenous All Stars.

The build-up has been enormous, with the teams already in camp, every ticket at Skilled Stadium already having been sold and Channel Nine preparing to televise it all over Australia.

The media has already picked up some of the juicy match-ups in the game, such as Greg Inglis playing against club and state teammates Cam Smith and Billy Slater for the first time.

As is always the case with NRL representative football, players from both sides appear to be making every attempt to play.

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Now contrast this with the AFL, which has already staged three matches featuring its own Indigenous All Stars, but only every couple of years.

The matches so far have taken place in Darwin, which while symbolically important, is a long way from the AFL spotlight.

They feature the Indigenous team against a club and because it’s the first hit-out of the year, you can be assured that any player from either side who has a slight niggle, is a bit underdone or just too important to be risked in a game so early in the year, will not be required to take part. Adam Goodes journeyed to the game a couple of years back and took part…as an assistant coach.

The NRL does representative football far better than the AFL and you would have to imagine that this match could soon become the traditional opening of the new league season.

There have been some suggestions that the AFL wants to increase the standing of its own Indigenous All Stars game. How about the All Stars taking on the reigning premiers, or a team made up of the previous year’s NAB Rising Star nominations?

And while Darwin holds strong claims on hosting the game, it needs a new home. The AFL could follow the NRL lead and play it on the Gold Coast, perhaps to officially christen the redeveloped Carrara ground early next year. Maybe in 2010, Gary Ablett could lead Gold Coast into action for the first time in a match against the Indigenous All Stars.

And it needs to be on TV. Not on ABC2, or whatever low-profile station has carried it in the past, but on one of the AFL’s official broadcasters and preferably free-to-air. Put it on against a one-day cricket match and it will rate its socks off.

The AFL has been a pioneer when it comes to embracing indigenous Australia. It has created the template for other sports to follow. But when it comes to All Star games, it would be a shame for the NRL to rain on its parade.