No one can doubt the message from Cricket Australia this week.

While the national selectors have recently been criticised for their efficiency in communication, they were loud and clear about their views when releasing the latest Australian team.

Unfortunately for Ricky Ponting it is a line he probably doesn't want to hear.

Retirement is never nice for a hostile participant. The bitterness can erase much of the glory of past service.

The move by the selectors to dump Ponting from the national one-day team - thus ending his international limited overs career midway through a series - was blunt and brutal. It told everyone that Australian cricket is moving on.

Maybe Ponting didn't get the gist of what was in the selectors' minds a few months ago.

At 38 and with shaky form over the past two years it seemed obvious Ponting's days were numbered. There was a call for him to put the bat away after a strong finish to the Test series with India. It was the chance to go out on top. On his terms.

AFL baulk at Steffensen talk

Professional athletes are a lot like the Hollywood movie set.

Whenever sportspeople gather, there is always an outpouring of respect - mostly real, sometimes fake - for each other. There is that unwritten code that forces everybody to be happy about everyone else's achievements.

Somehow at the weekend those guidelines were relaxed for John Steffensen.

And it highlighted how, indeed, athletes near at the top of their game have different approaches to their work.

Shortly after Steffensen's victory in the 400m at the Go for 2&5 Track Classic on Saturday, Geelong's new AFL captain Joel Selwood tweeted, "Anyone manage to see John Steffensen interview on ch10 tonight? #confidant (sic) #averagebloke?"

Not long later Steffensen replied via twitterverse, "call me and ask the champ yourself bud!!"

It followed Steffensen's exuberant post-race statement claiming, "It was a murder scene out there tonight - someone should have called triple zero."

Such flamboyance has cost Steffensen plenty of criticism.

Boss needs GF guidelines

So the boss has gone for The Boss.

From reports on the east coast AFL chief Andrew Demetriou has once again shuffled through his pile of old 45s to select the pre-match distraction for this year's premiership decider.

Meatloaf hadn't had a hit since vinyl records were in vogue yet staggered around the MCG stage before last season's grand final. Much the same for Bruce Springsteen but his tunes were far classier when the AFL's master was listening to them on Countdown, the curtain-raiser to the league's ABC highlights show, The Winners, back in the early 1980s - before every home had a CD player.

You get the impression from Springsteen and how he likes to be portrayed as a working class man that if he were Australian he'd be a big football fan.

But he isn't. And that raises a key point about how we celebrate the biggest day of the football calendar.
What should be the golden rules for the activities at the MCG on that last Saturday in September (or first in October as we have had in past two years)?

We must never let the streamers and dancing schoolkids detract from the spectacle involving the 44 combatants but it is generally accepted that there is more to grand final day than just the game.

However, in the wake of Meatloaf's MCG meltdown five months ago we need to make sure that some guidelines are followed.