In the not particularly appetising context of the Italy's Euro 2016 group H qualifier against Azerbaijan, Giorgio Chiellini was seemingly determined to entertain everybody singlehandedly. After opening the scoring for Italy in the 44^th minute, Chiellini equalised for the opposition in the 77^th, sticking one away past his own 'keeper Gianluigi Buffon. He then completed the hat-trick, or whatever it was, in the 81^st minute with a headed goal, on this occasion to the benefit of his own team's account. You'd figure that then he got pretty much a free choice of whatever colour of sports drink he wanted. It is believed that prior to the next round of matches, UEFA is considering spinning Chiellini off into a stand-alone team.

The snoozer

It's AFL trade time again. It might not be that all the talk is dull exactly, but it would be impenetrably convoluted to even the smarter quiz-kids among the week's Nobel Prize winners, and also the weather is warmer and more snooze-conducive than previously. Basically, once anyone launches an expression like "complicated five-club deal" and proceeds to outline the intricacies, it's a case of the snore-storms falling where they may. Parenthetically, there probably have never been that many uncomplicated five-club deals.

The yak attack

The verbal fanfares and 21-gun salutes ahead of the A-League season from executives and media were fervent if not fevered. One account described the league as a burgeoning success highlighted by the fact that this season half of the 10 teams were poised to break even. Zowie. It's not exactly "Roll over NFL and tell Bundesliga the news".

How far the cherry?

Some minor teething problems in the early going of Fox Sports' A-League coverage, Melbourne Victory v West Sydney. In a visual recap of John Kosmina's pre-match predictions, the sentence appeared on-screen: "Finkler must bring his flare."

Actually, that's just the kind of thing they've tried to stamp out in soccer, unless they were referring to half a pair of old-fashioned pants. Or, and this is wildly speculative, maybe they meant "flair".

Another appealing clash of the verbal and visual came in the post-match summary as Kosmina described Archie Thompson's maturity and experience at the exact same moment as the screen brought us the spectacle of Archie wildly miming some kind of highly acrobatic reproductive-style activity with the corner flag. Not one for young players, apparently.

Bozo of the week

As a result of what seems to have been simmering intra-club problems which purportedly involved coach Brendan McCartney and captain Ryan Griffen, the Western Bulldogs wound up retaining neither of them – perhaps one of the more extreme interpretations of the traditional western movie expression, "This town ain't big enough for the both of us". Club president Peter Gordon chose this as the optimum moment to declare that the Bulldogs should be good for finals appearances for most of the next 10 years. Well, it has been suggested that the secret of good comedy is masterful timing.

Reader feedback

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– Dean Adams, email

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