I bowl bouncers for one reason ... to hit the batsman and thus intimidate him. I try to hit a batsman in the rib-cage when I bowl a purposeful bouncer and I want it to hurt so much that the batsman won't want to face me any more.

I was sent off seven times in twenty-one years. I don't think that's excessive ... They were all for punching.

The tackling from the Wallabies was dedicated, tough and as mindless of fear and pain as the game had seen.

I think there is a certain percentage of people who come to watch the game who like to see a bit of fisticuffs ... let's look at that again to see how it started.

Sent off, carried off, but never backed off.

A good punch-up never really worried me, but it frightened the hell out of some of my opponents.

There's a Victorian cricketer, ‘eave half a brick at him.

He won't do that to me again!

I couldn't have bitten him. I left my teeth in the dressing room.

Football is essentially a rough game all the world over, and ... not suitable for poodles and milksops.

No one fakes being eye-gouged.

Some of the players hadn't introduced themselves at that stage. There's a lot of new players in both sides, and it was a good opportunity to greet each other.

I want to put the ambulance office on alert. Instead of these guys leaving on a bus after a game, I want them to be taken away in an ambulance. I have told my team that if they don't spill blood they are not doing their job right. If they don't bust some ribs tonight, then they haven't done their job.

Shut up or I'll rip your fucking heads off.

When I was about 14 0r 15, and running in a pretty muddy cross country race, one of my shoes stuck in the mud and came off. Boy, was I wild. To think that I had trained hard for this race and didn't do up my shoelace tightly enough! I really got aggressive with myself, and I found myself starting to pass a lot of runners. As it turned out, I improved something like twenty places in that one race. But I never did get my shoe back.

Whereas the alcohol-fuelled activities of the footy trip sometimes bring out the worst in human nature, what happened after the Sari Club bombing evoked the best. Where we once looked for drunks and trouble-makers, we now see young heroes who were willing to protect mates, rummage for bodies and spend agonising days waiting for news at morgues and hospitals.

Hit him? I can't even see the bastard.

To win this competition you need 6 good front rowers -two in A Grade, two in Reserve Grade and two on suspension. [presumably for aggressive play]

I don't want my children exposed to a sport where thuggery and violence are condoned or even tolerated.

Sport is such an integral component of Australian culture it has woven a tapestry through the documented deeds of our servicemen and women in theatres of war. Football matches in the shadows of the pyramids or on the fields hacked from the jungles of New Guinea , boxing tournaments abroad troopships and make-shift race meetings on the lush, green battlefields of France: all opportunities to temporarily escape the traumas of the front.

Never have I seen a people so devout! They gather in small groups along the waterfront. Then at a signal from their leader they raise their faces to heaven only to humble themselves immediately by bending in the dust. Mon Dieu! Such devotion!

In Australia, like it or not, it has been the sportspeople and the soldiers who have provided a large proportion of the nation's legends. Their deeds have become enshrined in history books: they attract awe and inspiration. They cannot be measured against each other—who would even try to compare a Victoria Cross with anything else, least of all an Olympic gold medal—but the affinity is irrevocably there.

In the face of murderous enemy fire this bold race of athletes proceeded to scale the highest cliffs.

I guess you don't do those sort of things when you've known what it's like at have a Messerschmitt up your arse.

We had a game of cricket on Shell Green on Sunday just to let them see we were not concerned … and when shells whistled by we pretended to field them. The men were wonderfully cheerful and seemed to take the whole thing as a huge joke.

The day was an overwhelming success. Even the deaths of two officers in a steeplechase accident did not dampen one of the greatest sporting events held on the western front.

Part and parcel of Anzac Day for many Diggers is having a bet, whether the traditional two-up or at the track.

I feel that the stature of our race is such that we can put playtime aside. The hours previously devoted to sport and leisure must now be given to the duties of war.

Even if Australians are quick to dismiss their champions when they falter, the role of sport in the nation's development has always been significant. Australia 's fighting men – at the Boer War, during the world wars, – won for Australians a reputation for gallantry and for being tough and fair. But so have its sporting men and women.

Your comrades at Gallipoli are calling you. This is not the time for football or tennis matches ... it is serious. Show that you realise this by enlisting at once.

Last Tuesday Se'nnight as some young men were amusing themselves with the rough sport of wrestling in a house at Parramatta, one of them received a fall, by which the splinterbone of his arm was broke.

One wrong move can effectively end a career, be it that of an elite performer or an F-grade trier who takes his or her game very seriously.

If someone tears their knee up and they can't sidestep, and you repair it and they go out and win the Churchill Medal in the Grand Final, you think you've done a bit of good.

After the Australian working week, the citizen is refreshed, relaxed and eager to tackle his leisure and (hopefully) if called upon to give his cartilege (sic) for his country!

In 1990, Sports Injuries In Australia, a report to the Federal Government's National Better Health Program, estimated there were one million of them a year. Of that total, 2000,000 were serious and 40,000 required hospitalisation or surgical intervention. The direct medical cost of sports injuries in 1987-88 was estimated at between $333 million and $400 million lost through work absenteeism. On 1990 estimates, the author of the report, Dr Garry Egger, put the total cost at about $1 billion, or 18 per cent of that for road accidents and 5 per cent of all accidents and injuries.

Sports injuries cost Australians more than $1.5 billion a year but the health benefits of exercise far outweighed the risks. Injury affected one in 17 Australians playing sport every year and the most injury-prone sports were Australian rules football, cycling, soccer and the rugby codes. Lower-body injuries were twice as common as upper-body injuries.

Monkey bars are responsible for one third of injuries received by children using playground equipment. Of the children with a sports injury 45 percent were playing one of the football codes other than soccer. Fourteen percent were injured playing basketball or netball while 12 percent were injured while playing soccer.

I dislocated my finger pretty badly and I wasn't sure whether I was going to play. Now I'm thinking of dislocating the others.

I went off the grog once. I went ten weeks but I broke my jaw and did my knee. I was jumping out of my skin but everything turned on me so I gave it the arse.

His knee and ankle are that bad he can't even limp.

The time has arrived … for the muscular young man to again become the slave of the football field, and to go forth to dislocate his collar-bone, tear his gaudy guernsey, and break the legs of his friends, while his lady admirers look on with gasping interest, and give a little oh! every time a bone snaps. He is spurred on to achieve bruises and glory, and broken joints, and a coating of mud, by the presence of those beautiful spectators who shoulder even while fascinated by the carnage. Never is the muscular young man so happy as when, blood streaming from his nose, and his smart jersey and clean white pants covered with real estate, he limps past the pitying damsels on his way to the ambulance van, where the surgeon stands by with a tourniquet, an Emarch bandage, a pad of bulldog forceps, and an armful of lint, while the girls murmur in tones as soothing to his ear as chorolhydrate to a sufferer from the jim-jams – words of admiration and sympathy. It's a glorious thing to be a footballer on Saturday afternoon. It is only when he goes to the office on Monday morning, with a swollen mouth, banana-sized fingers, and lumps as big as the coast range all over his body, that the muscular disciple of manslaughter feels sad.

I must thank the doctors who put me back together. People were saying after my knee surgery that I had this miracle cure, electrical therapy, but if Stan James hadn't performed successful surgery, neither therapy nor a strong mind would have helped and the same with Dr Leech who carried out my Achilles tendon surgery.

Her body has reef cuts all over it. She also has bad knees and fractured vertebrae, and is constantly getting worked on by chiropractors, osteopaths and physiotherapists. So why does she do it if it's that dangerous?

I have broken both arms twice each, had an operation on each one, broke my foot, broke my arm, ummmm … all sorts of stuff. I hurt my back, I have a bad knee and sore elbows and other minor things that don't matter.

My legs are throbbing, my heart is struggling but I don't care. I have a medal, something to hold for the photographs. I can throw it around my neck forever. I can retire now if I want, because I have all I ever wanted. Eighteen marathons – my body is saying I have to stop this. I'm struggling to stand up, but I have the rest of my life to recover.

The pain was excruciating. I've never felt anything like it. I'm devastated. All the work you put in … and it's over in the blink of an eye.

My leg is broken, so I hop –

I'll open up a Doctor's shop –

All through that game, Futball.