Here we are, another Wednesday email on a Thursday, which is pretty close, let's be honest.
Last night Adam and Geoff were busy at the Australian Sports Commission Awards, where we notched a Highly Commended in the best podcast category - essentially a silver medal behind the sport media monolith that is Mark Howard. Not bad.
(Cue the clip of Robin Williams saying "It's just an honour to be nominated" while miming a Pinocchio nose growing.)
We also had a mad week...
2024-02-22 08:44:34 +0000 UTC
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Well, what do you know. A Wednesday email on a Wednesday. We did it.
We're about to get into the third Test of the India-England series - see Cam's preview episode above - with Adam and some Daniel Norcross joining him for the Daily. We'll simultaneously be covering the Australia-South Africa women's Test with Geoff and Bharat. Currently day three won't be possible with Geoff having to move house, but bear with us.
In other news, we're working on a new website to replace the defun...
2024-02-14 04:43:51 +0000 UTC
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Hard to think of many more popular award winners than Mitch Marsh this last week, and his acceptance speech has immediately become iconic. As iconic as TFW sending out the first Wednesday email for February on a Saturday. How did that happen?
There was still a lot going on this week. Our coverage of the India-England Test from Vizag involved all of Adam, Geoff, Cam P and Vish, in different configurations. If you missed an episode we had a
2024-02-10 04:05:21 +0000 UTC
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West Indies via Shamar Joseph in Brisbane. England from 190 behind in Hyderabad. South Africa's women beating Australia for the first time. And most of all, The FInal Word XI becoming The Final Word XVII and making it three wins in a row in our January 26 game at Birchgrove against the Newtown Browns.
The full match report is at the end of this post. And the second innings from the 13th over is watchable on the stream above.
One more victory: this Wedne...
2024-01-31 04:41:21 +0000 UTC
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It has been all Bharat all the time - with he and Geoff in Adelaide together, we did four Daily shows, the live Story Time at the Ark, and the weekly show on Monday.
Now we're into a new phase, with the England tour of India about to start, where Cam Ponsonby will be reporting back for TFW. Bharat will be with West Indies in Brisbane.
This week is also Birchgrove Week, because our mighty TFW XI is playing in Sydney on Friday. We're aiming to have a live stream available on the You...
2024-01-24 17:39:17 +0000 UTC
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That only took two and a bit days, which means that Bharat and Geoff didn't have quite as much work to do as they might have done, in between organising a live Story Time. So instead of being at the ground, we're sitting in the Adelaide hills figuring out what to put in the next weekly show.
The few West Indies Daily shows we did were good fun though, if you missed them. Preview, day 2024-01-20 05:02:09 +0000 UTC
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Did you come to the Sydney live show? If so, you saw Michael Bevan on rare form, a room full of people cheering replays 30 years later, and some of you even managed to find a pub with us after the show. Quite the quest.
Some good news is that for those who weren't there, this interview will be released at some stage in the next few weeks, when the schedule suits.
Some more good news is that with a successful couple of test cases in Melbourne and Sydney thanks to our event-organisi...
2024-01-12 03:28:39 +0000 UTC
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Start as you mean to go on, they say. Which in our case means sending the first Wednesday email of the year out on a Saturday. Look, there has been a Test match to think about. Rizwan is attempting a ridiculous appeal against David Warner as we type.
But the most important thing is that the Sydney live show with TFW hero Michael Bevan has not yet happened. It's Sunday night at the Comedy Store, which is right next to the SCG. So come along if you're in town - 2024-01-06 01:31:39 +0000 UTC
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There's nothing like a hometown Test match to give us the chance to up our wardrobe game, without the limitations of living out of a satchel. We reckon we did a decent job across the four days, that so nearly ended up being five.
It was a pretty special week in Melbourne, packing in various podcast recording and editing sessions before Christmas, having the day itself with family, balancing the Test match with the festive possibilities of those few days when everyone else we know ...
2023-12-30 08:26:56 +0000 UTC
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We had a great time in Perth. It was warm, it was mild, it was blue and clear. Every time you walk across the footbridge or take the train over the causeway, you are flying in a world of sky and water. And Pakistan's capitulation on the fourth day at least allowed Adam a more manageable travel schedule with the two little girls, and got Geoff a day on the beach with friends. Watching the sun set into the ocean is something that only this side of Australia gets to do.
Obviously we made D...
2023-12-22 05:44:21 +0000 UTC
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It's quite impressive, in a way, to not only forget to post the email on Wednesday this week, but also forget to post it at all last week. That makes 16 days since the last time we sent one out. Whoops. We can blame a combination of things: babies and their upended sleep cycles, Meredith Music Festival and its upended sleep cycles, straight into the Melbourne live show on the Monday night, recording a show on Tuesday, then travelling to Perth on the Wednesday itself.
There was a f...
2023-12-22 05:29:44 +0000 UTC
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Ah well, it had to happen sometime. We are back in Melbourne together this week, which has many things to like about it, such as sitting together in backyard dappled sunshine to record the weekly show. It always feels best doing it that way. We even did a video version of this one.
Funny though that our own hometown has delivered the first TFW XI loss, which in fact involved a team of 13, after a streak of games unbeaten across England, Scotland and Sydney. The Royal Park Reds are...
2023-12-06 04:31:32 +0000 UTC
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He's good at photos, that Phil Brown. He has been back and forth between England and Australia for so long that he doesn't have a distinct idea of what home is, but he can still look up at a New South Wales sky and see some magic.
For us, there is something very special about getting back to Australia, and especially back to Melbourne. Stopping into some of the old bars, seeing familiar faces without having to arrange it, catching scents or bits of sunlight or rolls of rain on the roof ...
2023-11-29 16:11:38 +0000 UTC
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Phew. That took some doing. And we're not even talking about the Australian cricket team, we're talking about the Australian podcasting team - apparently we released 67 episodes during the span of the tournament, with 48 Daily shows and 15 longer episodes covering the Weekly, Story Time, and Adam's re-release of a couple of Greatest Season eps.
Special congratulations to everyone who played the Discord game of Combat Listening - trying to listen to each episode before the next one...
2023-11-23 06:46:01 +0000 UTC
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We've already had one, and we're waiting for the next. It's Week 3 of November on The Final Word, and the last week of our World Cup coverage. Before our TFW Daily for India's win over New Zealand (audio here, video above) we started this week off with Adam's documentary history of the 1999 tied semi between Australia and South Africa.
Episode 2 - The Oral History of the ‘99 semi-final ti...
2023-11-16 07:54:10 +0000 UTC
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That was quite a week. It was quite a Tuesday. It was also a reason why the Wednesday email is going out on Friday again, for November Week 2. We were a little bit distracted, ok?
You will all know that Glenn Maxwell produced the greatest individual ODI miracle. There are any number of pure one-day centuries, and you can make a few arguments for some special rescue knocks - Kapil, Viv, Abul Razzaq - but this was another level. Nobody has ever made a double century unless they were batti...
2023-11-10 10:48:01 +0000 UTC
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Happy November. It is the first Wednesday of the month, and the first time in weeks that we've got this email out on time. The fact that it is November also means that is mathematically possible for this World Cup to eventually end, as Geoff continues to bounce around India and Adam keeps tracking it all from London.
All the World Cup Daily shows are in your pod feeds or on the video channel, and we think they've been very entertaining - worth a catch-up if you've missed a few. Es...
2023-11-01 10:35:30 +0000 UTC
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What else would we put as top billing? Sure, the Wednesday email might be going out on Friday again, but the story at the top is the one that's most important, after a truly mad night out in Delhi this week. The video up top is our response.
The rest of the World Cup Daily shows are on the pod feed or the YouTube channel as usual. Cam Ponsonby has been helping out as a co-host from London, while Carlos Brathwaite, Nikesh Rughani and Ben Jones have all joined Geoff recently from India.&n...
2023-10-27 18:52:50 +0000 UTC
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Hello TFW world. It has been another of those weeks, as is evident by the Wednesday email coming out on a Friday again. But you know, days are arbitrary constructions aren't they? Either way, it's Week 3 of October, and we still have a lot of World Cup to go. But it has got more spicy - not just with Australia getting started with a first win, per the video above, but Afghanistan handsomely beating the reigning champs England, r...
2023-10-20 09:22:51 +0000 UTC
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We didn't make a big deal of this beforehand, because we weren't quite sure that it was going to come together, but now it has - The Final Word is at least 50% at the World Cup! Geoff made it to Chennai in time for the third day of the tournament, and will be there throughout to do radio commentary for the ABC-BBC joint broadcast. That also means that on some days we'll get some flavour (mostly in the form of background noise) from the stadiums as we record the Daily shows between India and L...
2023-10-13 13:50:30 +0000 UTC
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That's right. Week 1 of October is the beginning of the weeks to come. Why not start with this?
World Cup Daily 2023: The ten-team preview
World Cup Daily 2023, Day 0: It's about to land. Ten teams, a dozen cities, the best part of seven weeks. Take a deep breath and dive in with us, and the expert help of ESPNCricinfo's young gun Matt Roller.
Here's the audio.<...
2023-10-05 06:24:32 +0000 UTC
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It has to be close. We don't know the photographer's name, but this snap from 80s Brisbane grade cricket features an off-camera intervention from Story Time fave Harald Frei. If you can figure out who took it, let us know.
In other news, it is spring in Melbourne, various grand finals are about to take place, but most importantly of all, cricket has begun. Men's and women's domestic competitions have played their first matches, which means only one thing. A new season.
This ...
2023-09-27 08:08:05 +0000 UTC
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This might just have been the most bumper week we've ever put together. Yes, a regular weekly show, plus a couple of TFW Daily episodes as Adam wrapped up the one-day series with England and New Zealand. Story Time 150 was a live online affair with about a hundred people logging on to hang out with us at some stage of the recording. Then we worked in Adam's first re-release episode of Calling The Shots with new director's commentary from Daniel Norcross, and in between all of that we intervie...
2023-09-20 01:25:00 +0000 UTC
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Hello all, the live Story Time hangout for an utterly non-milestone episode will be happening today on a Zoom call. You can connect from 9:45am London time, which is 6:45pm Melbourne time, and those of you in between can work it out from there.
We have a couple of ridiculous stories to tell you and an unexpected guest appearance.
Drop by and say hello.
This link should be enough to get you into the call. Hopefully it works at your end, though it won't work before...
2023-09-15 05:57:26 +0000 UTC
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There'll be a special little extra this Friday, a live broadcast of our recording for the incredibly pointless milestone of Story Time 150. We'll put up a locked post that will also go out as an email, and it will have a Zoom link. Alternatively if you're already on Discord we'll try to broadcast the audio live on the Talkies channel. We're looking to start the actual Story Time recording at 7pm Melbourne time, which is 10am London, so we'll probably get the call going sometime in the half ho...
2023-09-12 23:01:01 +0000 UTC
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It's the month off before the World Cup, and we're as busy as ever. Things we've learned recently: "Semper ad finem; numquam ante" is the Latin motto of our "Can't stop, won't stop," and it has held true. Given Adam was going to be at most of the matches while New Zealand toured England, we figured we might as well do a TFW Daily, even when he wasn't there. So Jeremy Coney and Andy Zaltzman joined the expanding ranks of Final Word co-hosts over the past week, while Alex Hartley returned. ...
2023-09-08 04:44:54 +0000 UTC
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We've been predicting this for a while, but here it is. In the closing stages of a close ODI between two Full Member nations, a non-striker run out by the bowler is a big story but not the biggest of the match. The times are indeed changing.
In a rare month of five Wednesdays, this is Week 5 of August for The Final Word. It will also be the last TFW Weekly recorded on the road until the World Cup starts. Geoff will be back home to Melbourne in a few days so we'll be able to spend ...
2023-08-30 08:49:38 +0000 UTC
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Another week of some pretty cool things happening in Final Word land. We've also finally caught up on the Patreon inbox. If you want to get onto the Discord chat page - hint hint to those recent arrivals - now is the time to message for the code.
Of course, with things quieter, Adam has spent the week in Scotland making a mega episode, and TFW XI extended the Invincible streak to five wins, never beaten, after a triumph against the Eccentric Flamingoes in Edinburg...
2023-08-23 18:59:38 +0000 UTC
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What a week! The full video of the Stephen Fry interview is now live and lots of people have enjoyed watching that one in addition to listening to it. Adam headed down to Lord's to interview Grace Harris, and there will be video of that one next week with the audio already live. And recorded to be released in the week to come, we've got a long-pursued interview with Cheteshwar Pujara, one of the top rank of Final Word Faves.
That was Week 3 of August!
Also on Patreon subscri...
2023-08-18 08:30:42 +0000 UTC
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First of all, exciting that almost a hundred people have newly joined or rejoined the silliness of Patreon over the course of the Ashes. Welcome, and thanks. If we can help you feel at home, let us know. We're working on getting through the message inbox, bear with us. If you can figure out how to join our TFW Discord page, you'll find other listeners hanging out there too.
Secondly, we told you there was a big interview coming. Wonderful response to the conversation with Stephen Fry so...
2023-08-09 01:00:03 +0000 UTC
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