The final anti-climax

In the Daily Telegraph, Chico Harlan gives an outsider's interpretation of the one-sided Pura Cup decider between New South Wales and Victoria.

With the Pura Cup final four-fifths done, the Bushrangers had already sustained enough damage to recognise what would happen in the worst-case scenario (they'd lose), and what would happen with a last-day inspired effort (they'd lose), and what would happen with the intervention of a minor miracle (they'd lose).

Cricket, at least to this American outsider's eyes, delivers a reliable supply of oddities, but it saved the best for last, turning its grand final into a grand anticlimax. At least briefly, sport meant inevitability. NSW defeated Victoria like boiling water defeats lobster.

Michael Horan writes in the Herald Sun that reaching five of a possible six domestic finals in the past two years has brought little joy for Victoria.