Wally the Fly

THE audience at the IQ2 debate last night did a good impression of former Presidential candidate John Kerry; they were for it before they were against it.

The topic of debate at the City Recital Hall in Sydney was that ‘for a sporting country we’re not very sporting.’

Despite a pre-debate poll showing most of the audience agreed with the proposition, former Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist, author Peter FitzSimons and broadcaster Adam Spencer managed to change their mind.

Brett Hutchins author of Don Bradman: Challenging the Myth argued for the affirmative, saying that Australian elite sport is a ‘ruthless quasi-military operation’ citing the millions of dollars poured into Australia’s Olympic campaigns by the Federal Government.

Author Gideon Haigh pointed out the history of Australian sport in excluding women and Aboriginals and said that sport is used as a ‘rigid and ruthless power structure.’

Haigh said sport takes us away from real issues facing the country. “In Australia sport is the switch sell of the century. It takes a culture riveted by race, class, sex and money and says ‘it’s all the glorious melting pot on which anyone may succeed.’”

“The collective experience of sport in Australia has made us a nation of happy spectators; happy, dumb, fat, lazy spectators.”

“Not only in a metaphorical but a literal sense, this country daily grows less sporting, calorie by unallocated calorie and kilo by surplus kilo,” he said.

Peter FitzSimons admitted that Australia has a desire to win and that was better than the alternative.

“Would you prefer to be England, whose last big win was World War II?”

“And that was with our help.”

FitzSimons, referring to the Gilchrist’s famous ‘walk’ during the semi-final of the 2003 world cup against Sri Lanka said “we embrace Gilly for walking not just hitting sixes.”

“We would have savaged him if we weren’t sporting – this bastard has been living off it ever since.”

ABC broadcaster Tracy Holmes said that while Australia is usually in the running for most of the International Cricket Council annual awards, Australia have never won the ‘the Spirit of Cricket award.’

An award which Spencer, voted ‘Best Speak in the World’ at the World University Debating Championships likened to getting the ‘best uniform and attendance’ award at Year 12 speech night.

“Who else has won it? New Zealand. Good on them, they gotta win something.”

Spencer rejected the idea that we only care about winning. “Two words: Anna Meares. Two words: Grant Hackett. Five words: Socceroos world cup finals campaign,” he said.

“We celebrate gutsy performances, we celebrate passion, we celebrate people who give their all, we often don’t care if we win at all,” he said before stripping off his shirt to reveal a yellow Socceroos jersey with ‘SPENCER’ on the back.

“We don’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize or even the Spirit of Cricket award, but we don’t do that badly.”

Its been a another quiet week in league. No coaches abusing administrators, no mention of off-field incidents (arrests, sexual assaults etc), no suspensions of high profile players in high profile matches and all the games have been relatively boring. Of course, we’ve seen a brilliant finals series and lets hope Manly can send Beaver Menzies off with the farewell he deserves when they take on the WWE Storm.

While I’m in rant mode a big congrats goes to Adelaide United’s entry into the semi-finals of the ACL, a huge achievement.

To 18-year-old James O’Connor, who Spiro Zavos tipped as ‘the next Tim Horan’ before his first Super 14 game earlier this year, who was selected in the touring Wallabies squad for its tour of Europe. A couple more like him coming through the ranks, the future is a lookin’ good.

Also, while the headlines go to Manly’s big win the best game of the weekend was the Brisbane v NZ game in the under 20s. A lot has been said of how league is travelling (and plenty by me) but you have to say that the Toyota Cup has been a huge success and a great thing that’s been put together this year.

And most importantly, one of the greatest athletes in living memory, Haile Gebrselassie beat his own world record over the weekend in the Berlin marathon. This is the same bloke who won one of the most incredible races in Sydney 2000, coming from 100 metres behind the man coming first in the 10,000m race to beat him by a fraction of a second to take Olympic gold. Eight years later he’s beaten his own record in one of the toughest events imaginable (only a few months after competing in Bejing 10,000m final). You are a genius.

Go Hoppa! Go you good thing! While you may no longer be ‘the defensive genius of rugby league’ (thanks HG Nelson) but you absolutely powered home to be Australian heavyweight champion. Mate you can punch, what a fight from the ‘date hunter’ (HG again).

Souths golden boy Craig Wing said he was breaking with Redfern tradition and would be supporting Easts in the finals, Wally wonders how he would have felt watching Riley Brown on Friday night, the bloke whose gutless tackle put him out for the first half of the season, walking off the field with a broken arm.

Good on the ABC for showing the paralympic games. Some of these guys have only just missed out on being selected to the Olympics, that’s how good these athletes are. Helps when the coverage isn’t completely botched Channel 7 style too!

If you believe what you read, it’s the dawn of a new era in English football. The 4-1 away win over Croatia was a fantastic win. But we’ve heard all this before, we’ll be watching

And how ‘bout them Warriors? Great game, great win, looks like we’re in for an interesting few weeks of footy.

The Sideline Eye is a big fan of The Tonk cricket blog on smh.com. While it’s been in off-season hibernation for a while you gotta love the fact it doesn’t always run on the same media line (read agenda) that everyone is used to. Look at the post on ‘Gone Fishin’ Roy’s early dismissal from the Darwin crease. Instead of the ‘money-obsessed-doesn’t-value-the-bagging-green-the-unpatriotic-bastard’ line there’s a more sympathetic side.

Just 19,000 people rocked up to the Swan’s knock out semi at ANZ against the Boo-a-Roos on Saturday night.

Everyone from Tele to Fox Sports News to the SMH ran with the poor crowd angle, suggesting AFL might not be the league-eating predator we all feared was lurking nearby.

The Sideline Eye eagerly awaits Roy Masters to pounce on this like a Cheetah on a hapless antelope, yelling from the rooftop that Sydney ain’t ready for a second team.

Not so fast people.

Firstly, it was a shit of a night. People would have been hesitant to run to the car to get a DVD for a night in, let alone catch the necessary buses/trains/trams/hover crafts it takes to get to Homebush.

Secondly, the crowds in league that night were nothing to be proud of, including 5,000 at the Para game.

Thirdly, the fact a western Sydney team is destined to be parachuted in means that a lot of people will soon be expected to hate the Swans. Father of the Year said they should have given out 20,000 tickets in Blacktown. Well Blacktown won’t be part of the Swans constituency for too much longer.

Fourthly, the game was at ANZ and clearly Homebush-hating isn’t restricted to the rugby codes. Keep the ANZ game to the blockbusters against the West Coast and maybe Geelong.

Having said all that the AFL need to go to the room full of mirrors and take a good hard look at themselves and their approach to expansion plans. They seriously stuffed up what should have been a big crowd and a big game, but there was bugger all (to the power of none) promotion.

The poor crowd is not a sign of AFL running out of steam in Sydney but poor management by the pointy heads in Melbourne.