Test Cricket - Australia vs the Hobbitses

 Some hobbitses fighting over the precious.

The New Zealand cricket team and its fans have taken a well earned break from sheep shearing, wine guzzling and Lord of the Rings ‘hobbitses’ role-playing to pop over to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) to play some good ol’ fashioned proper sport that doesn't involve sheep, wine or hobbits.

This is the second Test in a trilogy of fantasy matches featuring these gnome-like hobbits battling evil warlords (the Australians, stay with me) for control of a magical place called the MCG.

As it turns out, the newly designed activity program for hobbitses at the MCG does in fact allow for all of the important leisure pursuits that New Zealanders enjoy.

The MCG Fun Curators have decided that fans should no longer have to choose between attending a Test Cricket match or maintaining basic hygiene standards, because now the MCG offers a barber service.

It is not clear whether it is for sheep and hobbits as well, but I saw a human-ish looking man in the barber chair having his sheep-like beard tended to, so he could sit back and watch the match in the blazing Melbourne sun/wind/rain/hurricane (depending on the time of day you choose for your manscaping). This is the new cricket. This is men living their best lives. It’s a great time for sheep shearing hobbitses to be alive.

The MCG has stepped up big time his year. There are a variety of goods and services on offer at the ground that you wouldn’t normally expect from a day at the cricket. You can get a shave, get a haircut, shear some sheep, indulge in some fush and chips, play some rugby probably and do some Haka, I don’t really know. Nevertheless, exhausting day!

Credit to the boys, the creative types at the MCG, they really are making the Fushy Chaps (my nickname for the drunk New Zealand larrakins who made their way across the fishy ditch to the Test) feel right at home. The Chaps are loud, and singsongy. Never mind ’alcohol free areas’; I’d need a New Zealander free area.

Where do we even draw the line with spectator entertainment at stadiums these days? I’ve got no idea, but I also have an idea, Cricket Australia. How about Pay to Play, where for a few hundred quid (going to charity) you get to field for Australia for 5 minutes? I didn’t say it was a good idea. I’m sure the Australian captain Tim Paine would more than welcome a drunkard twit running around his outfield tripping over their hobbit feet. Stupid hobbitses.

The Australian captain has been awfully perplexed lately at the Umpire Decision Reviewing System, the DRS, and rightly so. To be fair, the meaning of the acronym DRS should change with each ref decision. For example, Didn’t Really See, Dat Ref Shite, Didn't Review Shite. The reviewing system needs a systemic review.

Anyways, it’s looking like a win for the Aussies. We wants it, we needs it.

Thoughts from the Big Bash League

Last night I went to a Big Bash League (BBL) cricket game at Manuka Oval in Canberra. Cricket being the sport where two team play a game with sticks and balls and one team wins and the other does not. If you’d like me to describe anything else to you please let me know.

So this particular match was between Sydney and Hobart - the Sydney Thunder versus the Hobart Hurricanes, with Sydney hijacking the Canberra pitch as a lesser second-string home when their parents at Spotless Stadium have kicked them out for partying and cricketing too much.

BBL names are curious. While Sydney is very dependable with it’s thunder activity throughout the summer months, I’m not convinced Hobart has ever experienced a hurricane, but that’s not important right now. Well it is important actually if you are of the view that team names should perhaps vaguely reflect something about that city but, alas, nope. Maybe it’s a bit like Gandhi’s world view - be the stormcell you want to be in the BBL. 

Clearly the BBL Team Naming Gods were not concerned with the potentially adverse consequences for international tourism of giving Australian sporting teams names like hurricanes, thunder, heat and scorchers. Maybe in the future they’ll add terrifying spiders, deadly snakes and bogans to the comp to really give those pesky tourists the boot.

Anyway, I’ve been to the cricket before, and I always find it a mirthful experience - what’s life without MIRTH! - except I always get wet because it always rains, and I always get cold because it always gets cold, even though it’s supposed to be summer, and my brain apparently can’t be bothered reminding me of these facts before I go.

So last night was no different - wet, cold, yet mirthful - and also a kid got hit in the head by a cricket ball. If the world of cricket is foreign to you, the balls are made of the hardest substances in the known universe and they are whacked at a very, very hard speed. 

The crowd announcer always thoughtfully tells us to watch out for balls that may fly into our heads. Look, thankyou for the threatening heads-up, but it’s kind of difficult to avoid when you’re constantly being distracted by the endless advertising, adorable little attention-seeking robot cameras zooming around, dance cams and crowd waves. Also, head injuries are highly likely when the you’re working within a framework that rewards a player with a ‘six’ for clubbing a ball into the crowd. It is, in fact, a work, health and safety nightmare.

The offending ball. Maybe.

Onto other burning matters. I almost forgot how most excellent Australian sport is at promoting the junk food industry. It actually does a better job at promoting the $20 billion a year Australian junk food industry cash cow than the industry does. Last night was KFC’s turn to turn us all off healthy options and be less health conscious consumers. 

Last night the crowd announcer - who had seamlessly moved on from a kid getting hit in the head with a ball - told us excitedly that if a ‘six’ was caught in the crowd we could all win free KFC. Because that’s the way to earning yourself a cricketer’s physique, kids. Fairly confident the cricketers are not eating that for supper, ever.

Anyway, my team won - the dependable Sydney thunder activity - so yay.

A Culturally Iconic Bowl of Gridiron

America loves its bowls. While most bowls are round, the Americans seem to favour the rectangular ones. They believe their bowls are quite magnificent in their properties and hold things really good. They even go so far as to call them Super Bowls. Once a year, they put all the food and drink in America in a really big bowl and 100,000 people sit there and eat it and cheer on men with footballs. Such great craic.

Such a huge coincidence that I write today of awe inspiring containers typically used to prepare and serve food because that Super Bowl brouhaha has just taken place again - Los Angeles Rams took on the New England Patriots and lost.  There were broken bits of china bowl everywhere. And I watched a bit of it, like I often do, without a darn clue as to the nature of any of those player’s business on the field.

I don’t understand the end game of plays in gridiron at all. What are they trying to do. No-one will tell me. The commentators are really of no help whatsoever. I have to use my knowledge of other codes of football and just assume they are trying to get to each other’s end to secure points by being there with the football.

I don’t even understand what the name of the game means. I’m sure Wikipedia could tell me but I don’t care that much. Okay fine. Wikipedia says gridiron is “a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end”. Oh that’s extremely helpful, Wikipedia. Can you please explain astrophysics to me? Wikipedia also says gridiron is an instrument of torture on which people were secured before being burned by fire back in ye olden days, so that’s lovely. I feel like watching gridiron could also be considered an instrument of torture.

I always say I don’t understand this at all, and then it occurred to me that watching the national sport of another culture is like visiting another culture, so the least I can do is try to understand it.

So how does one begin to understand another culture? Become self-aware of your biases? Oh, I’m very aware that this game is stupid and makes no sense. But why is that? Should I do my own research to try and understand? Okay. I’ve done that. None of the plays make any sense. Should I talk to someone from a gridiron background? Um, the commentators are confusing the fuck out of me.  Here are some examples of their lingo:
 “2nd and 11” - I think this is basic gridiron. I don’t understand what those words mean. 
“Rams converted on their last 3rd downs” - that doesn’t mean anything.
 “62, 345, first of 20” - what. 
“The longest 3rd down the Rams face tonight” - not a thing. Not words that should be uttered in a sentence, because it’s not a sentence that makes sense.

Alright, back to the game. From what I can tell, there is only one footballer with any talent on the field. The quarterback. He’s literally the only skilled employee on the books. The rest of them just run into each other like I do all day if I don’t wear my glasses. Is that unfair to the rest of the players? I don’t know.

Oh now another timeout. The players, coach and Other Unnecessary Sideline People are all going to group together to try and figure out what the actual heck is going on.

I have to say that, culturally, I just don’t find it that interesting. But I get it, you know. The hallowed ground of Superbowl is a cultural place of significance. They have their own language, wear different clothes to sporting teams I’m familiar with, the land markings are different, the crowds have a different vibe, the stadiums are…huge. The stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, where this game is being played could fit 3 Australias in it. 

This is not a stadium; it’s a mothership.

Watching a sport you are not familiar with is like visiting a foreign country or culture, which brings me to the final hot tip to understanding another country’s sporting cultural icon. Travel. Go there. This one I have got covered. I’m planning on going to Disneyland later this year, which won’t help me understand gridiron at all, but it can’t hurt.

Can Tiger change his stripes?

A few days ago Tiger Woods won a golf game by being the best at whacking hard little white balls into a hole. His first professional win in five years, as I understand it. It was a HUGE DEAL game in the big PGA Tour series, with the winner’s loot coming in at a staggering UDS $1.62 million; which is really just maintenance money on his USD$54 million private jet. 
 

If there was one thing Tiger probably wishes he could do with the enormous mountainous alps of golfing cash he’s earned over the years, it’s deleting his internet history. I don’t know much about The Golfing, but I do recall the sensationalised history of Tiger Woods, and The Internets is only too keen to remind me.

As we can recall from our previous experiences with Tiger, he is a tiger. Arguably the most recognised of the world's large animal species, he has widespread popular appeal. He spends his days stalking his prey and charming the tigresses. It's a jungle out there.

 

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly nine years since the world discovered that the golf world’s golden boy  - the human Tiger - had an off-duty hobby that took up nearly as much time as his golfing commitments. 

That being his wild infidelity scandal involving a gazillion affairs, and the fallout in 2009, when the media drooled as one mistress after another crawled out of seedy Las Vegas and New York City stripclubs to tell their sordid Tiger tale.

 

Back in the day, he really took his most bankable sponsor’s logo to heart – Just Do It.  While the media tore him apart, much of the public merely marveled at Tiger's clearly superior time management juggling so many tigresses.  He really put wedding planners to shame with his organisational skills.

Amid all the scandal and the global media's insatiable appetite for celebrity sleaze, one thing confused the hell out of me. Apparently Tiger first met his wife Elin when she was the on-tour babysitter for Swedish golfer, Jesper Parnevik, and his wife.  At what point would Parnevik's wife have agreed to having a gorgeous, Swedish ex-model come along to look after their children on tour with her husband? 

For the past few years, apart from a few trips in and out of court houses, Tiger has done a great job - or at least his management company have - at staying off the radar to refocus and concentrate on the sport that enabled him to score with so many trashy tigresses young women in the first place. 

While Woods was once widely acknowledged as the best adulterer golfer in the world, he is currently ranked 13^th, up from the 55^th a few years ago, which is roughly the same number of women he had going in 2009 before he was caught with his hand in the skanky jar. 

Which begs the question; should we expect a return of strippers / cocktail waitresses / nightclub door tigresses now Tiger’s clawed his way back out of the jungle?

 

I went to rugby. I blogged.

The other night I dusted the spikey icicles off my season pass and dragged my seasoned arse to Canberra's numero uno football stadium. I was wildly anticipating an evening of watching my Super Rugby team, the ACT Brumbies, get their (foot)balls handed to them by the Wellington Hurricanes; a team that is, generally speaking, considerably better than my team. 

It was never going to be about Having Fun or Enjoying Oneself; one just has to support one's team through thick and thin, rain or shine, snow or hurricane, Chief or Crusader, self-annihilation or crushing smackdown. You have to be there and just go with it when we are playing a New Zealand team.

ACT Brumbies versus Wellington Hurricanes. Let's take a look at the matchup on e-paper. A free-roaming feral horse, an animal known for its random roaming usually through alpine countryside for no particular reason, versus a hostile weather system known for its wanton random destruction of stuff in its path.

Well it seems to me that everyone involved just needed to sit down for a planning morning and focus on developing some type of strategic plan for getting through the game with maybe some scones and jam for morning tea if you don't mind. None of this fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants entertainment; that's not want the people want.

As it turns out, the wild horse gave the hurricane from UnZud quite a run for its money. Alas, as they say in the classic sports broadcasts, "Are you not entertained?! Are you not entertained?! Is this not why you are here?" Or maybe that was a quote from the movie Gladiator. It's hard to say.   

At kickoff, the opposition started as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds, causing heavy rains that were expected to continue for several hours. Linesmen were down, sponsors were airborne, and there was all kinds of carnage going on at that place that sells cold hot chips, which was potentially not hurricane related though.

Wild horse fan, Jimbo, saw all the action, saying “Everyone was warned to expect catastrophic flooding, and I think we got 6-8 metres of storm surge. Now my cold hot chip are wet”.  I think Jimbo may well have had a few.

But before you could say “that’s a ferocious battering, squire”, the strong gusts stopped, the eye of the storm passed, and the cell was fairly quickly downgraded to a tropical storm. And then it turned into a little rain shower as it continued to make landfall. My team won, which made my head spin on its axis and explode in astonishment.

As the game went on, I turned my attention to all the similarities of professional rugby union and my work as a public servant. Playing for a professional public servant team is a dream for thousands of people. But behind the glamour is grinding hours of hard work:

Desk work
Look, I did see a slew pf people with clipboards parading along the sidelines at the footy. It's hard to say what they were doing, but they looked like they were of great significance; they had pens and they were ticking things on paper. And if ticking things on paper for no good reason whatsoever doesn't constitute a desk job then I don't know what does.

Applause
Every morning, as I jog out of the elevator with meaningful purpose on my face, there is a throng of people who cheer my sudden presence and clamour for a glimpse of me as I head to my position on the floor, and then spend the day marvelling at my skillset - what a skillset! - when I use the printer, and cheer loudly - what a great delivery of that email!

Near the end of the day, they yell loudly - hurrah! - urging me on, to keep doing the impressive things I do. I didn't want this. This life, this dream life, was thrust upon me. I can’t make it stop. They idolise me. Occasionally, after work, I hang around to sign autographs.

Blood bin
Like rugby players, as soon as we have a piece of trash that needs tending to, we can leave the field of play to place it in the blood red bin. But only if it can't be recycled.

Offside
This occurs when you eat your packed lunch before lunchtime. It's not really in the spirit of the game, but some people do it deliberately - and get away with it - when the ref isn't looking. What's that? That doesn't even make sense? Well, look, the cyber universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

Nutrition
Every public servant player knows the secret to maximise on-field performance: 'tis cake. 'tis always cake.

Scrum meetings
A key part of the day. Unlike an actual scrum, which rugby players use as a method to restart play to gain possession of the ball, public servant players pack down closely together just for the hell of it. 

The average acceleration at which a public servant player moves forward, out of a scrum meeting, is 29.2.54m/s2. What's that - that doesn't make sense either? That's not really relevant? Much like the minutes wasted in rugby scrums, many scrum meetings are also an officially sanctioned waste of time.

Sharknado hits Bruce Stadium

Last night a freak storm hit Bruce Stadium in Canberra. It was so stormy that it caused a football team amount of sharks to be scooped up in water spouts and flood the place with shark-infested water, as often happens when sharks infest waters. We in the movie industry call that a sharknado.

Like all great cinematic disaster films, only the shit people drowned. Unfortunately, as has been the case with all the sharknados I have survived, it's nearly always the vulnerable and the people I push into the eye of the storm that are the first to go. It's very sad, but you can't fight nature.

While most people survived the flood, you'll be very pleased to know that many of them got eaten by sharks in a dramatic, cinematic fashion. I suppose that was sad in a way, for them. But worse was to come. 

Tragically, my team, the home team, the team that didn't cause the sharknado, lost the game in a deeply traumatic way and now I have all the sad feelings. I shall seek therapy to cope with it all.

I went onto the Sharknado's website to see where in the world they are from. Turns out it's somewhere in South Africa. I would do better research if I cared. 

Their cheerleaders, as is often the way with the cheerleaders, are dressed in blah fashioned into blah blah blah with their deep neckline fashioned into a sharkbite. It's technically really hard to explain, but I could probably do it justice by describing it as Skanknado chic.   

What is with the cheer squad?

I got the rugby league football finals fever. Night fever, night fever… don’t sue me Bee Gees.

Symptoms of the strain of finals fever that I have contracted include feeling hot and sweaty, shivering, and shamelessly jumping on the bandwagon and riding it all the way to the stadium, presumably stealing a real fan’s ticket along the way.

Well it pays to hold onto some of your dole payment and give it to Ticketek rather than to Dan Murphy, doesn't it. Yep, first stereotype - there will be more. The thing with stereotypes is it’s not allowed to be funny unless it is being acted out by someone who is a member of the group being stereotyped, so now I'm just a monster.

 
I went to the Canberra Raiders versus Penrith Panthers final at GIO Stadium last night. It was a great night’s entertainment, and the league fans were nowhere near as bad as union supporters (or just about anyone else) make them out to be. Maybe I just Steve Bradbury’d my way through it all. I don’t know.

I’m not technically a Raider’s enthusiast. I have heard of them, I’m from the same city as them and I recognise the worth of all the shades of green - accept not really at all the Raider’s preferred shade of green - so we have a lot in common right off the boot.

Every team in the NRL has a cheer squad. They are the Shiny Things. They are designed to distract you from all the fist fights, drive-by shootings, traffic violations and other misdemeanours in your seating location. The Shiny Things are most excellent at stereotyping themselves, which saves everyone else from doing it. 

I’m quite sure the Penrith Panther cheer squad would heartily agree that the respectability of the females on the squad would improve immeasurably if they didn’t wear black latex dominatrix outfits. I mean, REALLY? Is that a good choice??

Unexpectedly, I didn’t take issue with Canberra’s Shiny Things, presumably because they weren’t prancing around in front of children while radiating sadomasochism. Also they seemed to have modelled themselves on Sandy’s cheerleader outfit in Grease, and who would be opposed to the fresh-faced innuendo of that icon.

When the players ran out onto the field at the start of the game there were flames thrown into the air. Everyone loves flames being chucked around everywhere. It’s so captivating and dangerous. Except it’s not. It’s a really precarious situation. Especially when the Shiny Things could have gone up flames with their synthetic hair extensions flapping in the wind. I suppose it would have kept us supporters at a fairly moderate temperature for a while during a typically fickle spring/winter (sprinter) evening.

The Shiny Things could distract you from a plane nose diving into the middle of the field. They stand and stare at the crowd, for ages, waving their pom poms and exposing elaborate fake smiles with nary an awkward twitch. It’s classic sociopathy, and leads me to wonder whether somewhere inside them lurks the capacity to suck someone’s brains out with a straw. 

The P.A. system regularly bosses everyone to report anti-social behaviour to a special anti-social hotline. Um, I'm gonna go with the cheerleaders behaviour? 

It’s often kind of hard to tell the difference between anti-social behaviour and what is just normal to some people. A guy near me was screaming and caterwauling for his team. Most people in and around this sport seem to be anti-social, and also ideally equipped with a tattoo advertising either their toughness or their promiscuity. 

I'm not sure the Terms of Reference for anti-social behaviour in this context but it seems to be a pretty loose sliding scale.

So, anyway, 'my' team won. Go Raiders!

I went to Brumbies rugby. Naturally I blogged about it.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in ancient 1996, people in the Southern Hemisphere decided that there just weren't enough gladiatorial sporting competitions involving balls so a new one absolutely needed to be created forthwith. Thus, the dawn of the Super Rugby.

There were originally 12 teams involved in this new rugby ball tournament and thus it was aptly named the Super 12. And then more teams wanted to play with the balls so it became Super 14. 

And then some smart minds decided this was a bit silly, wasn't it, so best call it Super Rugby, which means 18 billion more teams could participate if they wanted to with no name change required. There's a lesson in there for everyone.

Watching rugby union is my new shiny thing. Who knew it was so entertaining.  Here's how it goes: there are two teams, and one wins. The other loses. 

There are no encouragement awards for the losers. They just have to get back on the horse and give it their best shot the next week. Because that's how life works. Sometimes you win; sometimes you don't.

Speaking of horses, my local rugby union team is called the ACT Brumbies. A brumby is a free roaming feral horse that roams the Australian alps. With that in mind, the ACT Brumbies are remarkably good at ball control and passing in general with all those hooves getting in the way.

I understand about 3.7% of the rules of rugby union, but I appreciate that my home city is very good at it. For example, I've been to two games and they have won all of them. I have heard a vicious rumour that they don't always win every game, but I call that out as conjecture until I see this loss situation take place.

I have worked out that the aim of the game is to get a ball from one end of a field to the other while grunting and piling of top of each other. The rules of the game seem very complicated but I guess I will begrudgingly learn them because they seem important to the fans who yell about them loudly and endlessly to no-one in particular.

Things I noted:

• My heightened awareness of my condition - of being unremarkable and ordinary.  No-one expresses such approval of being entertained when I send an email at my work in the Australian Public Service. No-one wears a business shirt with my name on the back of it. There's no-one on the sidelines yelling at me to send the email straighter, you goose.

• The brumbies running around the paddock are built like double-brick stables constructed to withstand a herd of marauding wildebeest. Next time I need to lift my jumbo jet and store it in the overhead aircraft hangar I'm calling the ACT Brumbies.

• Abs City (see above).

• It doesn't matter if you don't know the rules of rugby.  As long as you show your support for the home team through fist pumping and random heckling of the opposition players, occasionally your own players, the referees, the team doctors, the ball kids, the TV camera guy, the guy who carries the camera guy's cord, the guy who carries the camera guy's microphone or the guy who rides a quad bike out to deliver a little sand castle for freekicks (which is never not hilarious), you are accepted and acceptable.

• Never, ever look at the bright paddock lights above you to see how bright they are. They are brighter than the sun (if you are from England, see picture. This is the sun).
  

• I thought there would be many interesting and varied peoples who would attend rugby union matches but, on the whole, they were well civilised and not one soul tried to pick a fight with me, probably because they have jobs and aren't on parole like football fans from other codes.  It's also possibly because I'm just like a scary bikie, except without the muscles, anti-social behaviour, sleeve tatts, criminal rap sheet, harley or drug dealing ways.  I did give two panadol to a colleague the other day, but she swore she had a headache so I was just administering some light first aid.

• The hot chips from the catering are strangely delicious. Life continues to smack me in the mouth with it's darn surprises.

Runs on the Cheeseboard.

We all know that Australia is in the middla ocean in the middla nowhere. A back of beyond, full of the Bush, the Outback, the Bushfire, the Cricket and big mobs of the Whoop-Whoop.

Our country is like one half of a pair of ships that pass in the night, except there isn't any other ship for miles, unless the other ships are lost or have been overrun by pirates who like vegemite on toast and a glass of milo before a night of pillaging on ye high seas.

The remoteness of Australia often gets my goat. You know when you're on a lilo in a pool and you get to the edge and you kick off with your feet to drift to the other side? I wish we could do that with Australia. We could traverse the world! I suppose the sharks would pop an inflatable Australia with their baby teeth in seconds.

One of my main gripes with our remoteness is during The Ashes. If you don't know what The Ashes are then how dare you.

The Ashes are an extremely tiny but important urn that is given to the winner of a series of cricket test matches between Australia and England.

Aussie cricketer Mitchell Marsh tucks
 into a cheeseboard because yum.

Cricket is a religion in Australia. It is an institution founded on the worship of skank slash loveable rogue slash cricket commentator Shane Warne and a strict set of beliefs. Like winning. 

And giddily jumping up and down when this happens. So happy. And then so sad. So sad. All the emotions. And that's just after one ball from a fast bowler, the dramatic divas of the cricketing world. Ours are called Mitchell. It's just easier to remember one name.

If you need me to explain cricket to you it goes like this: two teams, one wins. Although sometimes they play for five days and then shake hands, drink tea, and eat cheese and agree to a draw so no-one wins. It's complicated. 

It's also non-contact. At no time during a game is it acceptable to touch each other, until they all hug and drink tea at the end of a game after agreeing that this sport doesn't always need a winner, sometimes it's just nice to drink tea together. Lovely.

A lot of people think cricket is boring. Well many things are boring to those who unable to grasp the concepts of strategy or thinking.

I think you are probably going to get some enjoyment out of any sport if you attend in person. 

Live elite cricket, for example, highlights the speed of the game, the precision, the skill, the technique, the strategy, the dedication, the persistence. That's all worthy of an admission price, innit?

You may not love it, but you will appreciate something about the skill sets on show. Unless we're talking about the sport of boxing, in which case you may as well save your cash and just hang around the pub and appreciate that no-one has KO'd you yet.

I love my cricket. However at this time of the year - winter in Australia - any cricketing event of import involving my national team is played on the other side of the world, in another time zone, in another galaxy.

But now that this year's Ashes is finished, I need to find a way to get off London's Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and return to a time zone that is vaguely, or, even better, specifically, connected to my every day existence.

Another Mitchell. So confusing.

While I happily exist on London time my home town of Canberra, Australia is not. It is from the future.

GMT was invented in England in the late 17th century to give English cricketers a general idea of when to stop their match for a spot of jam and scones, or cheese and crackers if that's your jam. 

And, to this day, the unruly GMT continues to ruin the sleeping patterns of cricket fans the world over.

A Tale of Two Warring Tribes

I’m off to the big football game on Saturday. The one where they play with oval shaped balls.

Collingwood versus Carlton at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, the World, THE UNIVERSE.  

Should be fun, if I don’t die in the crossfire between two warring tribes.

I’ve made a lame attempt to learn a bit about these tribes, so I can negotiate my way out of a blood-soaked armed combat situation if the need arises.

Back in 1892 (or maybe it was 2189, I forget), a bunch of tribes joined together in Melbourne, Australia to create a new form of entertainment for the masses, to replace the previous form of entertainment that involved watching people die of bubonic plague or something. I don’t know; I was unalive then. 

One of these tribes was known as Collingwood, and everyone dressed in black and white and stripes and nothing else. They all looked very much like human zebras but they’d bust your chops if you said that to their faces so no-one did ever. 

The Collingwood tribe took fortress in a crowded, unhygienic place with historic buildings and, like modern times, most people worked in places and did other things when they weren't doing the work things. 

This tribe grew and grew until it had over 300,000 likes on Facebook which is important because Facebook likes meant everything to everyone in 1892.

The other tribe was known as Carlton, and to this day do much the same thing as the Collingwood tribe with their days, but they have only 225,000 likes, so what even is the point of them. 

Back in the day, both tribes spent much of their free time engaging in hobbies such as breeding rats and suffering from typhoid and cholera and other health related conditions. It was the fun, carefree days.

And since 1892, on one day of the week, both these tribes gather in sports grounds and watch men throw their balls, while they engage in cheering and alcohol drinking and the ensuing violent tussles and then go to bars to discuss all of those things in gratuitous detail. 

Both tribes still obsess day and night about the hunting and gathering of the points earned at these sporting fixtures with the aim of bragging about it the next day at the work places and while they huddle in shops to purchase caffeinated beverages. It’s just what they do.

You're gonna need a bigger big screen, Canberra

Yesterday I went to The Cricket - England vs. the Prime Minister's XI in Canberra.  It was great craic.

Every year the PM asks several of his more flexible Cabinet Ministers, a few Australian international cricketers, and a bunch of up and coming kids, country bumpkins and blue heelers from local cricket teams around the country to attend Cabinet to make very important decisions on which the fate of the country rests, drink some tea, and then finish off the day with a spot of cricket. Some of that is the truth.  What is this, Watergate?

And they all said yes, that would be lovely thank you, so we had a match on our hands, old sport.  And the blue heelers did good. They didn't beat the England cricket team - no less - but they made it to the end almost. And they mostly returned the ball to their opponent after each over, but only when they were given a treat. Kids these days.

I love my cricket. I haven't been to a live game before, unless you count the time my mum took my sister and I to the MCG and we had to listen to the moronic alcoholics in Bay 13 for eight hours.

A lot of females I know think The Cricket is a big bore, which is rich coming from people who think watching 'how to paint roses on your toenails' Youtube videos is a fascinating way to while away the hours. 

Next up in my new busy, busy cricket calendar is the Big Bash League final, which Canberra will host in a few weeks. Muchos looking forward to that.

The fact that the other More Important Cities of Australia are being denied the final warms the cockles of my heart. It really does.

But Canberra is gonna need a bigger big screen.  Perhaps start with one from the 20th century.  While you shouldn't need your binoculars to see replays on the big screen, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.  All right Mr DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup, but not on that tiny bigscreen.  If you build a new one, they will come.

I'll be back.

So-called Sport of Golf

I found myself in a spot of boredom this afternoon, so I flicked on the televisual contraption and came across something that loosely resembled what I discerned as a golfing fixture. Aside from the fact that I'm super sharp, I called it out as golf because there was lots of kidney-shaped grassy knolls, and lots of people in stupid-looking Scottish slacks holding golf rackets, which was probably the giveaway to be honest.

I can't get my head around golf.  Every type of point is named after a chicken or fowl or something, and that's just stupid. Can't they just add points up like real sports? And then you have the handicap fixation, which to me means you get to swindle your opponents, right?

I don't know much about the so-called sport of golf, except that its most famous contender is now more famed for being a skanky whorebag.  I understand women chasing after Formula One drivers; they live on the edge of the edge of the chichane, and their jobs are extremely dangerous and hugely exciting, if not fairly stupid. But golfers? Really?

This particular match is called the Farmers Insurance Open, which raises some questions - most notably - how can a farmers’ body afford to sponsor a golf tournament that skanky Tiger plays in?  Australian farmers don't get out of bed for anything less than a hefty subsidy, so I couldn't see them scraping together a couple of dollars to run even a lemonade stand.  Perhaps the generosity of the American taxpayers knows no bounds.

I jumped onto The Google to look up these mysteriously wealthy farmers and discovered that Farmers Insurance are just like AAMI or the NRMA, but started out insuring the vehicles of rural farmers like 500 years ago, hence the name.  Didn't want to change your name to something that makes sense then?

Although I think this is a non-sport, you gotta give some credit to the old golfing players. Unlike the ATP Tour players at the Australian Tennis Open, who whinge and whine about distractions, like a fluttering butterfly, to the chair umpire constantly ("quiet please butterfly, quiet please"), Tiger and his cohorts have to contend with caddies whispering in their ear, being chased up the fairway by their fans, annoying paragliders lurking twenty metres above their heads, and high waisted tweed tartan knickerbockers, replete with a Nike logo in Tiger's case.

Rockets and Oranges

I live in a first world country, which means I don't have to worry about food, water or sanitation, at least until I go to an open air loo in a hick country town.

So basically, for the most part, my mind is free to concern itself with such pointless matters as the vagaries of my mood on any given day (usually Monday to Friday, funnily enough), the hideousness of the shock frocks at the Golden Globes, or, tonight, the outrageous bright orangeness of the outfits of the linepeoples at the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne. 

Think of the most radiant orange day-glo neon hue you can possibly imagine and then go ten times brighter, shine 18 big arse sporting lights on it and stick a couple of high-voltage neon lamps down their pants for that blinding effect.

I guess if Mothership Earth has a power outage we'll at least have Rod Laver Arena to guide us back to orbit or whatever happens when we turn the lights out at night.  I don't know, I'm not an astronauteer.  Plus I don't need to know about science; that's what Sheldon and The Big Bang Theory are for.

Despite the fact that I've almost mastered a high-level (see: very basic) understanding of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics - which is in fact a true story - my grasp of anything else related to science or math is akin to that of a kindergartener, perhaps even leaning toward advanced preschool level.

My brain just refuses to acknowledge that science and math make any sense whatsoever.  The other day my sister and I watched one of those disastrous disaster movies made by the special effects trainees at Universal Studios.  My sister possesses a university degree in some brain debilitatingly boring science shit and found it necessary to laugh raucously throughout at the actors lack of understanding of the basics of physics as they tossed out lines like "magnetic activity is unpredictable". 

Okay, given, magnets don't really surprise you that often with their behaviour, but which science is phsyics again?  I know; embarrassing.  Science actually hurts my brain and math leaves even more collateral damage.

What?

It's very important to me to keep abreast of current affairs.  Anyone who knows me will tell you that if I don't read something newsworthy at least once a day time loses all meaning to me and my head will spin on its axis until it explodes.  It's a huge inconvenience and often quite awkward.  You really find out who your friends are when your head spontaneously detonates itself.

So keeping in mind my incessant need for current affairs updates, you can understand my interest in David Beckham at this time, given he has just primped, posed and preened his way through a new H & M undergarments ad for the Superbowl.  Thus, it seemed prudent to overanalyse his undies commercial, debriefing myself as it were, thereby ensuring I don't miss out on any part of this important, newsworthy affair.

Hundreds and thousands of runs

In any professional sport, your value is determined by a number – specifically how high a number or, in Tiger Woods' game, how low a number. If you happen not to consistently reach, and consistently increase, the number than is determined by ‘experts’ to be the best you can be, well, it’s probably time to call it a day and get onto designing your own line of stylish sports socks and jocks or start commentating various athletic pursuits, as retired sportspeeps tend to do.

I thought about the obsession with numbers the other day, when I was watching the second cricket test match between Australia and India at the Sydney Cricket Ground. This is the hundredth test match that the SCG has hosted, and the Indian player Sachin Tendulkar, who is affectionately known as the Little Master in cricketing circles, is under pressure to reach his hundredth century, which means he has ran up and down the wicket a shitload of times.

Up and down, up and down, one hundred million gazillion times. I wonder if the Little Master goes back and forth, back and forth in his dreams, yelling, ‘faster, Little Master, faster!’, to himself in his sleep like some nutso. I think the expectation would be very frustrating. I don't see any other player reaching those lofty heights.

Although, this week, Australian captain Michael Clarke reached 329 (not out) before declaring, which made Ricky Ponting (134) and Michael Hussey (150 not out) look like they were bowlers or something. Apparently Hussey is a bowler, so it makes sense then that he only reached 150. I guess the Australian public is giving away respect, as Clarke’s high score allowed him to go from tosser to hero in the eyes of the country in just a day.

I'm not a fanatic, but I don't mind watching the old cricket, now and again. I especially like how commentators come up with scores of colourful ways to describe how the home team is losing, or winning, as though they spend their time between overs leafing through a thesaurus.

Like any professional side, Team Australia has had its ups and downs over the years, but, unlike some sportstars, I am now comfortable with members of the Australian cricket team inserting the word 'professional' before their occupational titles, which implies a level of competence that is, for the most part, very pointedly not in evidence in many of our other professional sportspeople.

Sailing their Wild Oats

This afternoon I watched the start of the highly anticipated, time-honoured Sydney to Hobart yacht sink or swim race. It’s the only time you'll find people racing tooth and nail to be the first to get to Tasmania. Surely it's only for the prestige; but it would certainly make more sense if it was a race heading away from Tasmania.

I am not a fan of sailing or boats or sailing boats or races involving sailing boats, but there is something rather cathartic about watching those itsy bitsy (in the context of the vastness of the ocean) sailing machines slicing through the dark waters off Sydney heads.

Wild Oats is the darling of the race and has been for years. Actually, I’m not sure why any other competitor starts the race with the objective of winning it.  I know that’s not a very professional attitude or approach to competitive sport, but Wild Oats always wins, and has the most cash, and by far the coolest name, and the most talent for manning spinnakers and the like without capsizing.

This year they apparently have a marine on board who can hold his breath for five minutes in case there is trouble with the keel, which is evidently under the boat thingy and steers stuff or something.  I imagine that is his sole role on this fun-filled little roller coaster ride into oceanic hell.

I’m not sure if it is appropriate to call Wild Oats a boat, because that is far too common a name for a racing machine. I imagine they’d get highly offended at being called a boat. It would be like calling a F1 Ferrari a convertible sports car.

The fun for the crew of Wild Oats is definitely not in the journey. They are on a sprint, because this is a race, damn it, not a sail around the damn Caribbean. While one boat has hired a gourmet chef, and are replete with air conditioning, bedrooms with en suites, a wine cellar fully stocked with pinot noir and probably HD TV, the crew of Wild Oats must make doeth with freeze-dried vegemite sandwiches. Sounds yummo. And there will definitely be no sowing of any wild oats aboard Wild Oats.  I know, right?  These people don’t sound anything like sailors.

I don’t know about you, but I am not keen on being onboard a ‘boat’ whose fate rests on what side of the deck I walk or sit on. I also would not be too chuffed about having to wear an orange jumpsuit just in case I fell into the ocean and had to be found and dragged out in the middle of the night by a rescue crew that may or may not get there in time to save me from a rogue man-eating octopus.

Thus, I have deployed my own method of avoiding these dramatic scenarios by not going on a boat across the damn Tasman Sea during cyclone season.

Olympic-size pool comebacks

The 2012 London Olympics are fast approaching, with the host city finalising preparations before it welcomes the prestigious international sporting event in July next year. As of December 2010, the seats in the Olympic stadium were being fitted, the flood lights were being tested, and all the other venues were nearing completion, including the venue that will house the sport of....Matrix fighting?  Wait a minute, I think that's the London Olympic Taekwondo mascots!  Cute, one-eyed liquid mercury men, or something.  Bless.    

A couple of London 2012 mascots

So the London preparations seem to be going swimmingly.  They remind me of the preparations for the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games, except that London's are well organised, safe and hygienic. (New Delhi Olympic Committee: Oh, that’s how you prepare stuff for an international sporting event?  We are totally gonna write that down for next time). No, New Delhi. You will not be hosting anything else ever, unless you clean up your garbage dump state of affairs.

Our future Olympians are currently training their little tushes off in a bid to qualify; determined to fulfill a life-long dream of representing their country in a sport that they love, are exceedingly good at, and for many, have been competing in since they were about two weeks old. Although, some late bloomers have been known to start at six months; which I don't see the point of, as they are clearly past their prime.  Okay, I mock, but I LOVE the Olympics.

Australians love an Olympic success story, more so when it involves one of our own. We remember with great fondness when Australian swimming sensation, Ian Thorpe, struck gold, time and again, and we remember his glorious journey to success. We remember because we travelled it with him, every step of the way. So there is no surprise, or doubt, that we want our best athletes to keep going. Because for those moments of glory, we are proud; proud of them, and proud of ourselves.

When Thorpe announced the end of his professional swimming career in 2006 at the age of 24, few could begrudge him his new direction in life. Australia’s most successful Olympian acknowledged he was "tired of swimming lap after lap staring at a black line”. I hear you Thorpie.  That's exactly the reason I gave up my professional swimming career.  So anyway, a few weeks ago, the 28-year-old Thorpedo announced to the world that he was making a comeback, just in time for the London games! 

And this week, another Australian Olympian, Michael Klim, 33, announced he was making a comeback, after retiring in 2007. And Olympians Geoff Huegill, 31, and Libby Trickett, 26, have woken up and smelt the chlorine, also coming out of retirement to put in a bid to contest the London games.

In 2007, another Olympian, U.S. swimmer, Dara Torres, a four-time Olympic gold medalist, was vying for a place on her national team for the Beijing games. In preparation, Torres broke her own American record for the 50m freestyle at the USA National Swimming Championships, seven years after retiring from competitive swimming. A remarkable achievement made more astonishing given Torres was 40, and first won gold 23 years before at the Los Angeles Olympics.

The news that the mother-of-one was challenging the new stable of Olympic hopefuls, some half her age, had sports physiologists and scientists scratching their heads at the unlikelihood of her making a successful comeback. A senior sports physiologist at the Australian Institute of Sport, David Pyne, says extending the careers of elite athletes is “good for the individuals and good for the sport”.

The concept of athletes taking a break before returning to the sport in a bid to extend their career has been gaining currency, as attested by Thorpe, Huegill, Klim and Trickett. While these swimmers are a good deal younger than Torres, they are exceptions to the rule, and pressure to remain in the sport should not be placed on our finest athletes.  Yes, you can’t beat the classics, but there are many other talented athletes coming up through the ranks.

We should acknowledge that even gifted athletes have a desire to experience life after their sporting achievements, and we should let them go when they are ready, so we can follow the new breed as they pursue their dreams. While some, like Thorpe, have unfinished business, our future Olympians are not buoyed by their own past triumphs or losses, although they may soon realise their one moment to shine may promise little more than exquisite glory or excruciating defeat.  And emboldened by our past successes, they will strive to make us just as proud.

NASA and nutrition

NASA, the world leader in space exploration, aerospace and aeronautics research and technology, and kids nutrition. Huh? Yes, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has a program to encourage fats kids to stop eating so much and start exercising a lot more. Man, why hasn't anyone thought of that before? Thank god we have those NASA researchers to come up with this ground-breaking stuff.

Yesterday NASA launched a health and nutrition competition called "Mission X: Train Like an Astronaut." Nearly 4,000 kids in 25 cities worldwide will participate in the six week pilot. At first glance this seems a little out of NASA's gamut, what with their focus on outer space and all. And then I thought about it again and I said to myself, who the fuck came up with this idea? Well, I don’t know, but it has Michelle Obama’s spacefood bar-free fingerprints all over it.

Only Michelle could produce a kids health awareness campaign out of a department that has absolutely nothing to do with health or nutrition. If anyone could link two things so distinctly different, it’s the First Lady. I’d be pretty pissed if I got a job at NASA and had to spend my time working on obesity programs.

During the program, the kiddies will no doubt learn that the astronauts that have sucked up enough to actually venture into the great unknown must choose their meals about five months before lift-off. NASA convenes a “special taste panel” so these space cowboys can taste the food and spit it out in a safe, controlled environment. The idea is to pick the meals that they find the least repulsive, as they will need to stomach it for days or months at a time. I know, I wish that I had paid more attention in aerospace class as well, and then I too would be living the dream.

Personally I think astronauts are excellent role models for kids. How often do you see them groping cosmonautic women in dark corridors at the international space station, sniffing a line of cocaine through the air on a night out orbiting, or doing anything controversial or inappropriate that requires discipline or fines at the hands of NASA? Discounting the fact that their hygiene practices may not be the most sanitary in the universe, they are ideal role models. Perhaps a little time spent in the outer space sin-bin would be useful for the entire stable of NRL players, where there is no-one around to care about their lack of law-abiding behaviour.

Kia & tennis balls

So I wanted to talk about the tennis today. Just because. But I’m at ‘K’ in my Alphabet Writing Challenge and what tennis terminology starts with ‘K’ other than the Australian Open’s main sponsor?

I love the Australian Open. I’ve wanted to head down to Melbourne for years, and I would have if it wasn’t so hot in January, if it wasn’t so much better to watch on Channel Seven, and if I didn't mind crowds of drunken hooligans throwing stadium seating and molotov cocktails at my head.  It would be like going to a Canterbury Bulldogs NRL game but escaping with all your limbs in tact.  Ah, multiculturalism at its finest.  Don't call me racist, I'm not the one hurling furniture around stadiums.

There are many cool reasons to watch the Australian Open.  I like Jim Courier’s entertaining courtside interviews with the players after their match.  I like how John Alexander gets all tetchy with Courier in the commentary box when Courier gets the answer to Alexander’s nightly ‘tennis brain teaser’ in about two seconds.

I wonder if Alexander will continue to commentate now that he is the Federal Member for Bennelong (which he won from Maxine McKew in the 2010 Federal Election after she stole it from John Howard)? I like how the female commentators do the bitchy thing some females do when they argue about inane little details, like whether the hems of men’s shorts are stitched or over-locked.

I like Andy Roddick. His appearance and sense of humour; his attitude problem not so much. I like how Roger Fedderer cries. I hate how Roger Fedderer cries. I like to ponder why Lleyton Hewitt is vilified and Pat Rafter is a demigod. I like how they make it look so damn easy. I like to think that I could play like this with a spot of training, a good pair of Nike sandshoes and some of that ubiquitous bling dripping off my body.

Um, so it turns out that Kia is a very generous sponsor. For the 2011 Australian Open, they will introduce the new Kia Grand Slam zoom zoom, for those players who are just too buggered to continue running around the court. They come equipped with fashionable lucozade holders, stylish sweatband seatbelts and an extra big glovebox for all your tennis ball requirements.

Why is sport so important in Australia?

Sport is an important social institution in Australia and the values that are deemed most important in Australian society are reflected in sport in Australia. Any meaning and value that is placed on sport in Australia is socially constructed, and reflect the core societal values, which are generally linked to what it means to be Australian. Power is a feature of all social relations, and the dominant group will use the values that are important in society, as a way of maintaining their hegemony. The dominant group will change as society changes.

Sport is an important social institution in Australia that permeates through all sectors of Australian society. In any sport interactions, when there is engagement with other individuals, there will be a degree of regulation or authority, a controlling structure or body that determines the rules of the game, so to speak. In this way, sport can be considered to be like any other social institution.

And like other social or cultural practices, it should be placed into the context of the society in which it occurs (Mewett, 2003: 446). If sport can be said to mirror society, then it will provide a means of understanding the core values in society, and in turn, the core values placed on sport.

The sociologist Max Weber said that societies are constructed by the human beings living in that society (Weber 1938 cited in Sage: 4-5), meaning any value that is placed on sport in Australia is socially constructed. Weber’s theory rests on the assumption that there are no ideas independent of human existence (Sage, 1990: 4).

The importance that is placed on sport in Australia is socially constructed and articulated by the dominant group in society to represent their version of ‘social reality’, thereby expressing it as part of the national identity (Sage, 1990: 21).

Thus, allowing the dominant group in society to legitimise their hegemony. While the dominant group in society will change as society changes (McGregor, 2003: 144), those at the top of the power structure will generally have more power, wealth, possessions, opportunities and more control over their lives than those at the bottom” (McGregor, 2003: 144).

The importance placed on sport during the First World War was class divided, and was a mirror of the class divisions in society at the time. In 1914, there were two distinct views toward what importance should be placed on sport. The dominant group was the middle class, reflecting the hegemony of the middle class in society at the time (McKernan, 1979: 3)

The middle class wanted Australians to stop playing sport until the war was over, with the view that sport was a recreational pursuit and merely a good grounding for the more important things in life, an excellent moral and physical training ground for the “greater game”, which of course meant the war (McKernan, 1979: 2). To this end, they argued that sport was distracting Australians from the war. In their view, sport served a higher, rational purpose than mere entertainment (McKernan. 1979: 2).

The alternate view came from the working class, who held the view that sport was a profession that was primarily a form of entertainment and should not be taken too seriously. They rejected the suggestion that a few hours spent watching a game of football meant that it “induced apathy or indifference to higher struggles or duties” (McKernan,1979: 18). The implication by the middle class being that men who spent time watching sport should instead be fighting the war.

While the level of importance that each class placed on sport was determined by social and economical factors (Horne et al, 1999: 61) (and was also a reflection of the amateur/professional divide of sport at the time).

By 1917, the class conflict was breaking down social cohesiveness necessary for a civil society so, not unsurprisingly, the Prime Minister, W.M. Hughes, intervened and attempted to resolve the issue. In his May 1917 Budget, he said sporting matches should be halted during the war “in order to concentrate the minds of the people on the more serious aspect of war.” (McKernan, 1979: 15).

After waiting for the football finals to be completed, the Government placed restrictions on sport for the duration of the war, particularly the professional codes where large crowds of men would gather, in the hope of encouraging more men to enlist (McKernan, 1979: 14-15).

They didn’t enlist in great numbers, but the restrictions did promote a more cohesive social environment that kept society in check and so legitimated the government intervention. An important point is that the restrictions were delayed until after the football finals, which contradicted the governments’ reason for intervening in the first place.

During the years of the First World War, different class structures in Australia placed varying levels of importance on sport. And through legitimate government intervention, the dominant group in society maintained their hegemony through the restrictions that were placed on certain sports, those which entertained the masses.

In Australian society today, the dominant group has changed, reflecting the changes in society. Class is still an issue, but when it comes to the importance that is placed on sport, the government are the dominant group and are able to influence the importance of sport in Australian society, or at least use the significance of sport to maintain their hegemony.

In October 2005, the Minister for Small Business in Victoria issued a press release that stated the Victorian Government had decided to “delay” the end of day-light savings to coincide with the end of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne (Haermeyer, 2005). The decision “makes things easier for businesses as it minimises any disruption or change during this exciting international event”. The government created certain conditions to benefit the state economically, the Games bringing in more tourists to the State.

By stating the delay of the end of daylight savings will accommodate international viewers and allow Australia to receive maximum international attention, this created a perceived importance around the Games and legitimised the Victorian Government’s desire to generate money into the Victorian economy, which is one of the features of a dominant group, to “preserve the basis of privilege and dominance” (Horne et al, 1999: 123).

Through placing a high level of importance onto sport, the dominant group are able to manipulate the values held in society to maintain their hegemony

Australians learn to conform to the social norms (Horne et al, 1999: 133) to fit into Australian society. They will adhere to the values they are told are distinctly Australian because they are so closely associated with what it means to be Australian; qualities like mateship, courage, teamwork, loyalty, leadership and physical prowess (Australian War Memorial, 2006) are part of Australia’s history. Therefore, the core values of Australian society are expected to be displayed during events of national significance like the Olympic Games by Australian athletes, and anything that does not fit this mould will be rejected as ‘un-Australian’.

In the 2004 Athens Olympics, rower Sally Robbins ‘stopped’ rowing during the final, ‘denying’ the Australian team a chance at a medal. She said her collapse was due to the extreme heat but she was vilified by much of the media and the public (Radcliffe, 2004). BBC Sport called her action “very un-Australian” and that she had disappointed her “sport-mad country” (Radcliffe, 2004). The Australian newspaper compared her to the Australian ‘hero’ Grant Hackett saying “his was the definitive demonstration of heroism - he did everything it took to reach his goal” (Radcliffe, 2004).

The Melbourne Sun headline read “It's eight, mate, pull your weight” (Radcliffe, 2004) and the Sydney Morning Telegraph used the headline "Just Oarful" to demonstrate their views and ran a poll asking readers to vote on whether she had cost the team a medal (Radcliffe, 2004). The response from Australia’s Olympic chief John Coates was that "there have been breaches of our team guidelines which say team members shouldn't talk disparagingly about other team members” (Radcliffe, 2004).

Importantly, the Australian Prime Minister John Howard said “I wasn't there and I can understand the passion and the emotion and the effort that goes into these things and the sense of disappointment people feel - but I'm not taking sides” (Radcliffe, 2004). It is normal for a politician to distance themselves from a controversy that does not involve the government, but his comment can be compared to the situation in 1917, where the Government of the day will intervene as little as possible, particularly when the controversy involves the matter of sport.

This example highlights sport reflecting the wider community, where Australians will judge other Australians by their actions on the sporting field. To this end, many in the Australian community placed more importance on Australian winning another medal than on the welfare of a fellow Australian, with a poll in the Sydney Morning Herald revealing that only 27% of respondents though that she was treated unfairly (Sydney Morning Herald, 2004).

Sport is an important social institution in Australia and the values that are deemed most important in Australian society are reflected in sport in Australia. The value and importance that is placed on sport in Australia is socially constructed, and reflect the core societal values, which are generally linked to what it means to be Australian. They are linked with Australian history, and any move away from these values will be rejected by society. While the dominant group in Australian society has changed as society changes, power remains a feature of all social relations; and the dominant group in society will use these values of Australians is a means of maintaining their hegemony.


Bibliography

Haermeyer, André (2005) Media Releases, Victorian Government, The Minister for Small Business, Daylight Savings Shines on Commonwealth Games, 27/10/05

http://www.dpc.vic.gov.au/domino/Web_Notes/newmedia.nsf/955cbeae7df9460dca256c8c00152d2b/1e1c9b49ed5429e8ca2570a800047eb6!OpenDocument

Horne, John; Tomlinson, Alan & Whannel, Garry (1999) Understanding Sport – An Introduction to the Sociological and Cultural Analysis of Sport, London: E & FN Spon.

McGregor, Craig (2003) Class in Ray Jureidini & Marilyn Poole (eds), Sociology: Australian Connections, Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, pp 141-157.

McKernan, Michael (1979) Sport, War and Society: Australia 1914-18.In Cashman Richard & McKernan Michael (Eds). Sport in History: The Making of Modern Sporting History. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press

Mewett, Peter (2003) Sport in Ray Jureidini & Marilyn Poole (eds), Sociology: Australian Connections, Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, pp 443-467.

Radcliffe, Paula (2004) BBC Sport online, Olympics 2004, Rower Suffers Aussie Backlash, 25/8/04

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics_2004/rowing/3597914.stm

Sage, George (1990) Power and Ideology in American Sport -A Critical Perspective, United States: Human Kinetics Books:

Sydney Morning Herald (2004) Athens 2004 Polls, Rowing controversy : Has Sally Robbins been treated unfairly? http://www.smh.com.au/polls/athens/form.html

Australian War Memorial (2006) Special Exhibitions Gallery, Sport and War. http://www.awm.gov.au/