Around the turn of last century, just after the impoverished and sick Oscar Wilde had been released from prison in France for engaging in the “love that dare not speak its name,” the great man received a cable from a journalist in London, asking, “How are you?”

Our man Oscar wanly replied, “Lately, a verb has been lacking in my life.”

Six decades later, in a famous story from American journalism in the early 1960s, an editor in Chicago sends a cable to his reporter on the ground in Alabama covering the first faint stirrings of the civil rights movement: “Any news?”

A cable comes back within the hour: “Not a new.”

And ain’t both of the above true of Australian sport this week? Very few verbs, and not a new!

If you’re not into horse-racing – which describes most of us – and you can’t follow the latest white-ball cricket series before the Ashes starts with a proper red ball, there’s nothing doin’. (Well, at least not in the red-meat sports preferred by us Neanderthals.)

Just not cricket: The white-ball series between Australia and India.Credit: AP

Oh, stop it.

Yes, yes, yes, there is some kind of “Pacific Championship” going on in league, but I’m not sure how the Kangaroos are involved in that, as I think they’ve just arrived in London, to play there? And while I look forward to the Wallabies playing Japan in Tokyo the sarvo, it is not as if the lead-up has provided much in the way of “news”.

Which leaves us where, exactly?

I reckon it leaves us trawling the past for good yarns, even while scouring the city for fresh stuff from the grassroots.

And how funny I should say that ...

For she was a lovely elderly woman, who approached me in the café on the reckoning that I might like her story from 50 years ago.

Go on ...

She and her refined girlfriends from the Lower North Shore were at a bar in George Street, when a very famous rugby league footballer – who first found fame with St George before going much higher – sent over a bottle of champagne to their table, with a cheery wave in their direction.

In short order he had plonked himself down among them, trying on various versions of “How ’bout it, love?” to one after the other, only to receive polite variations of the same response: “Thanks, but I’d sooner stuff a pretzel up my nose.”

Said Leaguie then storms off into the night. As the young ladies leave a couple of hours later, it is only to find the cost of the champagne had been added to their bill!

And that’ll learn ’em.

Meantime, the scene was set a couple of months ago, out Canterbury way, one Saturday morning as kids from all over Sydney were engaged in a touch competition. On the sideline is a familiar figure – Premier Chris Minns.

He is there watching his youngest........

© The Age