New PFP 👀

In 1942 a Dutch warship escaped the Japanese Navy by pretending to be an island. It worked. By early March 1942, the Dutch East Indies were falling. The Japanese had crushed the Allied fleet at the Battle of the Java Sea. Java was about to be overrun. The last Dutch ships still afloat were ordered to run for Australia. One of them was HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen, a small, slow minesweeper about 180 feet long. She had almost no guns that could stop an airplane, and she couldn't outrun a Japanese destroyer if her life depended on it. Which it did. She was supposed to make the escape with three other Dutch warships. Those ships were caught and sunk. Abraham Crijnssen was on her own. Her captain, Lieutenant Commander Anton van Miert, came up with a plan that sounds insane. The waters between Java and Australia are scattered with thousands of islands. Many of them are just tiny specks of land with a few trees on top. So the crew went ashore and cut down trees and jungle plants. They covered the entire ship in them, from bow to stern, until she looked like a small jungle-covered island. They painted the exposed parts of the hull gray and brown to look like rock and cliffs. There was one catch. Islands don't move. So during the day, the ship anchored right up against real islands and sat completely still. The crew refreshed the wilting leaves and stayed out of sight. Japanese planes flew overhead. They saw nothing but one more island. At night, the "island" pulled up anchor and crept south toward Australia. Night after night, day after day, she slipped through waters crawling with Japanese ships and aircraft. After about eight days, the coast of Australia came into view. On March 20, 1942, Abraham Crijnssen sailed into Fremantle. She was the last Allied ship to escape Java, and the only one of her class in the region to survive. She went on to serve the rest of the war with the Royal Australian Navy hunting submarines. And she's still around today. Abraham Crijnssen is preserved as a museum ship at the Dutch Navy Museum in Den Helder, in the Netherlands.

The deadliest football game in American history ended 0-0. Christmas Eve, 1944. 65 Marines played a pickup game on a field of dirt and coral on Guadalcanal. Six months later, 15 of them were dead. That's the true story this movie is based on, and it's worth knowing before you see it. After Pearl Harbor, college football stars enlisted in huge numbers, and more of them picked the Marines than any other branch. By late 1944 the 4th and 29th Marine Regiments were on Guadalcanal training for the invasion of Okinawa, and between them they had All-Americans, five team captains, and close to 20 guys who were either drafted by or went on to play in the NFL. The game itself started as trash talk over beers. Guys from the 29th said they'd kick the 4th's ass if the two regiments ever played. So on December 24 they actually played, wearing T-shirts and cut-off dungarees with numbers stenciled on the front. Around 1,500 Marines stood around the field watching, and the radio broadcast went out to bases all over the Pacific. Three hours of football, a brawl or two, and nobody scored. Then they shipped out to Okinawa, the bloodiest battle of the Pacific. 82 days of fighting that killed over 240,000 people. The casualty rate in those two regiments went past 50%. Tony Butkovich led the nation in rushing at Purdue in 1943 and went #11 overall in the NFL draft. A sniper killed him that April. He was 24. Dave Schreiner, Wisconsin's two-time All-American, had been the #11 pick the year before. A sniper got him too, one day before the island was declared secure. He was the 15th and last player from the game to die there. No single battle has ever killed more American athletes. Buzz Bissinger spent years researching all 65 of these guys for the book this comes from. He wrote Friday Night Lights, and Peter Berg directed that movie too. Those two have spent 20 years turning football into stories about way more than football, so this one ended up in the right hands.

Royal Law survives a protest to win the $150,000 Listed Swan Draught-Kalgoorlie Cup for Ash Maley and Tash Faithfull 👏

Instant reaction to The Castle.

"Zak Butters chose the Western Bulldogs because Geelong refused to explain how they would get a deal done. Port Adelaide flatly refused to deal with Geelong, knowing they would likely get short changed. There is bad blood between these two teams dating back to the Travis Boak attempted recruitment." - Sam on why Butters chose the Dogs

Of course, as well as Perth’s home-town paper, the West is also stablemate to AFL rights holder Channel Seven, which has been busy minting ad dollars. #MediaWatch

CHARLIE CAMERON SILENCES WHARFIE TIME!!! #AFLGF