Chapter 5: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
Winning | Losing | Rivalry | Cheating | Drugs
 
Winning

Winners never blame anybody. It's only losers who try to blame other people for what went wrong. So never con yourself that your failures and your weaknesses are someone else's fault.

- Australian Football coach Ron Barassi who also said, “Competitive sport is an aristocracy of excellence” and “I spend all my time concentrating on winning next week's game” (1990s).
 
If you want to do something, anything, with all your heart, you will find a way.

- Pat Farmer after running around Australia in 191 days and setting a world long distance running record (1999).

Australia's National Sport – Winning.

- Title of an article by John Daly in Sport and Physical Education (1980).

Will-to-win is not the key to Australia 's success in sport, but it is an essential part of the compound of responsible factors.

- Harry Gordon, 'The Reasons Why,' in Sport in Australia: Selected Readings in Physical Activity (1973).

There's no feeling like winning in the boxing ring. It lasts for about 15 seconds. I carry the flag around, then I'm over checking out the guy I just beat. Then it's all over. I went downstairs and had a couple of mineral waters, and went home to bed.

- Boxer Shannon Taylor describing his win over the South American champion, Carlos Malaga of Argentina (1997).

"Well mates, it doesn't get any better than this!"  

Reply, "We could have won."

- An Australian TV reporter interviewing two Australian bronze medal winning rowers (2000).
 
Winning is not the only thing but it beats whatever comes to second. Obviously you've got to keep winning and losing in perspective but the thing that we talk about is not so much the desirability of winning, but the desirability of playing to the limit of your own ability. When you perform to the best of your own ability and you lose you can still be comfortable within yourself.
- Lindsay Gaze, basketball coach, quoted in Boys and Balls (1994). Gaze in a 2000 comment was to say, “The only time winning is critical is in war and surgery.”
 
The athletes are for perfection, so they have to win. And for them there is only one way to prevail. It is prescribed how they shall triumph and it shall be in competition. There are so many people who want them to win. If the athletes win these people can live for themselves for another day. The athletes come off the track, their hearts hammering sweet and clean, their bellies tight under the lights.
- Excerpt from ‘Suite for David Malouf and Athletes,' by Graeme Kinross-Smith in If I Abscond (1997).
 
Sport is about winning.

- Stuart MacKenzie the only sculler to have won Henley's Diamond Sculls on six occasions had a simple view of sport (1950s).

I'm not worried about Australia winning every game it plays. What I want to see is good, entertaining cricket, and the crowds come along. If we lose a few, so what? When you're playing, it hurts like buggery when you lose, and so it should. But you take a broader perspective when you retire. The big picture is the game continuing.

- Rodney Marsh, former Australian cricketer interviewed in 1999. During his cricket career in the 1980s he had said: "What's the point unless you're playing to win. Its all that counts – winning – I'll never play for the heck of it. I know if I play to the best of my ability, they'll find it bloody hard to leave me out of the team. It boils down to determination, competitiveness and damned hard work."

 

I'm not social. I don't want to have beers. I come, I conquer, and I go and they're still in a daze.

- Australian track cyclist Danny Clark (1990s).

Because of the pervasiveness of the sporting ethic that winning is everything and losing is nothing, in fact, worse than nothing, immoral, Vinny and all those players who fail are made to feel unworthy, are ‘shamed'. If winning is all that matters, when any means becomes acceptable in order to achieve that end. What are the implications of that philosophy for a civilised community? Perhaps the words ‘failure', ‘success', ‘winning' are too emotive and power-charged to use when discussing sensibly the subject of sport. Winning has become simply not losing but ‘failing'. It seems an indictment of professional sport when the philosophy of winning is incompatible with the character of the Vinnys of this world.

- Brent Crosswell speaking about fellow Carlton VFL player Vinny Cattoggio who played his final game in the 1973 Grand Final.

Of course, times change, but sport should be played for sport's sake – for pure pleasure. To win, sadly, has become a cult. The face of a player at a losing moment is unpleasant to witness and the ruthless lens makes sure the contortions are seen. Similarly, over-exuberance for a winning moment often reaches a ridiculous level, with players leaping, punching the air and hugging. Finally, I have always regarded sledging with intent to disrupt as exhibiting sportsmanship poverty. What image is being presented to young cricketers – the future custodians of a wonderful heritage?

- Douglas Griffith in a 'Letter to the Editor' in The Courier-Mail (Brisbane) in December 2003.

 

Don't think for a second that the primal drive of our very best sportsmen and women is the desire to represent their country. That's certainly mixed up in there. But more compelling is the existential imperative, to strive and not to yield, to defy the omnipotent, to turn themselves out on the world and to best it. Gold medals, the national anthem and welling tears are simply a warm and comfortable cloak for a much deeper, baser motive; the will to power.
- John Birmingham in ‘We Came, We Saw We Won,' The Weekend Australian (2001).
 
I can remember very strongly one emotion, only one emotion as I hit the finishing line, and it was not exhilaration, it was not joy, it was sheer bloody relief that it was all over. They moment you enjoy is when you actually get up on the No. 1 spot and you turn around and they play the National Anthem and you see your country's flag go up on the mast – I tell you that just really gets to you, and at that moment you realise how proud you are to be representing your country. I tried to get in touch with ‘the hero' that is in all of us.
- 1960 Rome Olympics 1500 metre runner and gold medalist Herb Elliott.
 
As a kid in the backyard, that's the scenario you always envisage: playing for you country and kicking the match-winning goal.
- Wallabies captain John Eales on his last-minute penalty kick that kept the Bledisloe Cup for Australia (2000).
 
Too much concentration in society and the media on winners and the idolisation of winners meant that children learnt that losing was not acceptable.
- Australian Sports Commission Report (1991). Many of Australia 's most dedicated and brightest quit sport early because of the nation's 'win-at-all-costs' attitude to sporting competition.
 
Bugger the silver, I'm going for gold.
- Commonwealth Games 5000 metre runner Andrew Lloyd after a surprise win where he won from world-record holder John Ngugi of Kenya on the line. He had turned on a magical sprint finish.
 
Winning is very important because that's why you play that particular game. If you just want to kick a football around in the park, well that's fine too, there's nothing wrong with that but it's not a game, it's just kicking the football and marking it, but once you start playing the same game for money, there's a definite extra edge.
- Australian Rules football player and coach Ron Barassi quoted in Boys and Balls (1994). Australians demand winners and there is an insatiable desire for winning – winning is important. Australians are often brought up to believe it is a sin to lose.
 
Obviously I have the gold medal around my neck but whether I deserve to be in the same place as people who have won gold medals without the luck I had is something I'll have to come to terms with.
- Steven Bradbury after winning Australia 's first ever Winter Olympics Gold Medal at Salt Lake City in February 2002. Bradbury was coming last in the 5 man final of the 1000metre short-track speed skating final when the 4 skaters in front of him fell on the final bend and he skated past them to win in what was referred to as ‘The Last Man Standing' Gold Medal. He crossed the finish line with his eyes and arms wide, gesturing and mouthing, “No f…king way!” Bradbury recalled thinking to himself after the race, “Hang on, this can't be right, I think I won.”
 
There are three ways to win the meet – the first is by topping the gold medal tally, the second is by winning the most medals, the third is by dominating the points score.
- On July 29, 2001 Australia finally became the top swimming nation at the World Championship in Fukuoka, Japan and a prediction of Australian Head Coach Don Talbot finally came true.
 
Australians, as a result of the demands of their own mythical self-image seem not to be satisfied with anything but successful (winning) performances from even their smallest children. In fact, sporting prowess appears to one of the few ways in which the female of the species can be elevated to any level of public approbation. The sports arena in Australia is the true theatre of the nation but is reserved for the aspiring young and highly skilled.
- Sports historian, John Daly (1979).
 
It's marvellous how a win lifts everyone. Not just the players or the coach, but even the cleaner. People were looking at him and saying he wasn't doing a good job.
- Geelong Australian Football player Bill Brownless after his team had an inconsistent run of results in matches (2000s).
 
When he wins he doesn't like jumping up and down in front of the other players. He shows them respect. He is a competitive person, but he's not someone who wants to win at any cost. He wants to win fair and square.
- Jocelyn Rafter, mother of tennis player Pat Rafter (2001).
 
Oh, man! talk about a dream come true. I don't know if this is the greatest day of my life or what, but I don't know what could beat it. Who would have thought a freckly bastard like me would be wearing this beautiful jersey.
- Cyclist Stuart O'Grady in 1998 after becoming the first Australian in 15 years to don the yellow jersey of the overall leader of the Tour de France. In 2002 he won two stages and the green jersey as the best sprinter of the Tour.
 
Winning at sport has become a part of this country's psychological make-up and victories have become the norm. Winning is not just the end of the match, game of series, it is an excuse to ostentatiously luxuriate in our success to again imprint our superiority on an increasingly sceptical world. While one never could underestimate the importance of positive role models and of striving for excellence in all fields of endeavour, investing too much in winning, especially at sport, can be less that healthy.
- Journalist Anna Reynolds (February 2002).
 
For all our armchair Norms, Australians and sport are synonymous. Losing at sport is not something we accept with good grace. Unlike our British forebears, it is not enough to have played the game. When we do play we want to win, a desire which places a great deal of undue pressure on our athletes, pressure which can often be inhibiting.
- Brian Mossop, ‘Winners and Losers' in: Australians and Sport (1989). International success has been achieved in various sports but Australia has an international reputation based on the success of a comparatively small number of talented sportspeople.
 
Once the gun had gone, I could hear the crowd, everything else was blank and all I could think of was getting to the tape. I can remember when I broke it my grin must have swallowed the world. I was just so excited. I could never explain the feeling. Oh, it was a terrific moment for me.
- Athlete Marjorie Jackson (Nelson) in describing her 100 metre victory at Helsinki in 1950.
 
Dad instilled in us that every game was important. You played fairly but you always played to win. We had cricket practice in the backyard and he would come out and throw balls to us.
- Cricketer Greg Chappell (1990s).
 
You either win or we don't want to know you.
- Olympic gold medal swimmer Mike Wenden on the social viewpoint of sport in Australia (1990s).

Guys can celebrate the win of their favourite team by having great sex. When people are happy they feel pretty high and they want to celebrate and having great sex is a pretty good way to celebrate.

- Sex therapist Jo-Anne Baker on the suggestion that sex lives could suffer during the 2003 Rugby World Cup. Men tend to put relationships on the backburner when there was sport around.
 
What is it with Australians? I‘ve never known a country to gloat so much over winning a sporting event. OK, so they are humiliating our cricket team in the Ashes, but I don't remember us crowing like this when we've thrashed them.
- George Best, former English soccer legend in comments about a lopsided Ashes cricket series (2002). Australians see winning in the international arena as a way of a small country making a mark on the world.
 
The game is not worth playing unless you play it as well as you possibly can. It is important to try with all you have to win, for to do less is an insult to your opponent. But nothing can justify a “win-at-all-costs” approach. To play around the rules, or purposefully against them, is an insult to the game, and the game is always bigger than the individual, or the match, or the premiership. Furthermore, although trying to win is important, once the game is over, winning or losing is irrelevant. If you have tried your hardest as an individual and as a team, and done your very best ... that is all that matters.
- Anonymous.
 
After the capitulations in the Ashes series and the Davis Cup, this was supposed to be the night the Old Country hit back. Instead, the surrender was equally shocking and similarly lacklustre.
- Australia had defeated the England Cricket team 4-1 in the Ashes series and won a Davis Cup tie 4-1. The Mirror newspaper in London under the heading of ‘ROO-BISH' lamented the almost unbelievable achievement of Australia defeating England in a football (soccer) ‘friendly' in London in February, 2003. The Guardian newspaper asked, “Cricket, tennis, rugby and now football. Is there any sport where England can beat Australia?"
 
I accept that rugby is not the be-all and end-all and there's only about eight trillion people in the world worse off than a rugby coach who's lost three on the trot.
- Former Wallaby player and Queensland Reds Rugby Union coach Andrew Slack on the pressures of being the only Super 12 coach without win after three weeks in the 2003 competition. He resigned from the job at the end of his first season.
 
Sport is the key to Australian culture—it is the only area where one is allowed to show enthusiasm or commitment. But even here there is the anti-collectivist ideal of a subordinate Australia : the anathema of “bestness.” One doesn't win because one is better only because one is “lucky.” One is never to “get above oneself” and the tall poppies must always be cut down. A sense of real achievement must always be blunted: what will be next is one is to be cocky about a win at Lord's? Next thing the colonials will do is try for a first-rate education system, then a first-rate nation, and then, horror or horrors, reject the Monarchy itself and open the floodgates to “mobocracy.”
- Ex-patriot United States of America academic David Mosler in Australia, the Recreational Society (2002).
 
Throughout the series, the Barmy Army dug up enough goodwill to cheer the game, win or lose. But for most Aussie blokes, it seemed that a loss to the Poms took on tragic proportions, tantamount to pouring a supertanker of VB into Sydney Harbour .
- ‘Learning Dignity in Defeat,' Sunday Telegraph (12 January 2003 ). The Australians defeated England 4-1 in the 2002-2003 Ashes Series.
 
Losing

Of all my near-misses in majors this is the greatest loss ... I threw it away.

- Golfer Greg Norman after losing the US Open in 1996. There can be only one winner and in some sports such as golf there is a fine line between success and failure.
 
It takes more character to keep turning up when you're getting thrashed than it does to be part of a winning team. We've got the team spirit there, but what we really need is some players.
- Club president Graham Watson after the Port Elliot Bloods had been beaten by 467 points in a game. The ‘Bloods' were branded Australia 's most inept Australian football team and had been winless since 1994, The Weekend Australian (22-23 June 1996).
 
I deeply respected him and I still do, but, bugger it - I wanted to win.
- John Newcombe after being beaten by Ken Rosewall in a 5 set match at Wimbledon in 1970.

Oh, I sit in the dust at the back of the chutes.

It's so quiet now the crowd has all gone.

And I look at the little which I have to show.

And I wonder is it worth goin' on

- Lyrics from the song, Not Much to Show, by country singing legend, Slim Dusty. The words refer to a rodeo rider and the doubts he has about his ability.
 
There's no doubt that at the time I was disappointed that I didn't win, but the truth of the matter is if you're good enough, you don't win, and that's precisely what happened.
- Australian John Landy after being beaten by England 's Roger Bannister in an epic encounter in the 1954 Commonwealth Games at Vancouver. He refused to use the excuse that he ran with 4 stitches in a cut on his foot.
 
Losing is the lowest thing in the world. It's something that gets you down - especially when, like me, you have had greatness all around you. I had never played under a losing coach.
- St. George rugby league legend John Raper after becoming a coach of Cronulla.
 
They are capital winners out here; but I am afraid I cannot apply the same adjective to them as losers.
- Lord Harris in a letter to a friend during a cricket tour to Australia in 1879.
 
I blew it!

- Hot favourite Stephen Holland after winning a bronze medal in the 1500 metre freestyle final at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games.

I got drilled. I came within two-tenths of a second and landed in the dirt. Instead of ten grand I ended up with nothing.

- Bull-rider, Owen Dunn, who went to the United States in 1994 and found himself in contention to win at his first rodeo. With regard to bull-riding as a career prospect Dunn suggested, "Only if you've got the gumption."
 
I've broken bones and I've lost games ... bones heal.
- AFL player Wayne Carey (2000).
 
To play in front of 85 000 people and kick a few goals is fantastic fun. The greatest fun you can have is out on the football field. But it's no fun if you lose.
- AFL Essendon player James Hird (1998).
 
I always think, ‘What if, what if? I try not to. But the thing is that that possibly may have been my best opportunity to win gold.
- Australian cyclist Shane Kelly's foot slipped off the pedal at the start of the men's 1000 metre time trial at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, costing him the race. Kelly says, “In a way, I'll be remembered for that and for how I dealt with it. How I got over it” (2003).
 
Sometimes when I feel low, I simply say I won't let it get to me anymore.
- Walker, Jane Saville, was disqualified 200 metres from the finish line when leading the 20-kilimetre walk at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Saville believes her last-minute disqualification made her more famous than if she'd won gold, “So I didn't feel as much of a loser as I feel now and probably will feel in the future” (2003).
 
You don't get over grand final losses. You cope with them and you move on to your next stage, but you don't get over them. The hardest thing you've ever got to do is put your hand out after the grand final and shake the hand of a winner. It's not lack of respect, it's just that you don't want to be there. You do not want to be part of a losing side on the biggest day of that particular sport.
- Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse wept as he took the field when the siren sounded his team's defeat in the 2002 Australian Football League grand final. Losers still have a good status if they make a great effort.

For all our armchair Norms, Australians and sport are synonymous. Losing at sport is not something we accept with good grace. Unlike our British forebears, it is not enough to have played the game. When we do play we want to win, a desire which places a great deal of undue pressure on our athletes, pressure which can often be inhibiting … We are adept at idolising, at putting sporting heroes on pedestals, at glorifying. It is part of our national psyche that we gain as a nation from the successes of our athletes. This is not in itself a trait peculiar to Australians. What is perhaps peculiar is our readiness to turn our backs on those same sporting heroes the moment they falter, our readiness to cut them off at the legs.

- Neil Cadigan (et al.), in Blood, Sweat and Tears: Australians and Sport (1989).

Rivalry

It is widely assumed that sport has brought Australians together, but in the area of state rivalry, at least, the reverse is more often the case.

- Brian Stoddart in an article entitled ‘Constructing a Culture' (1988).
 
There are some people who think Australians pay too much attention to sport, but there can be no argument that without the healthy rivalries of sport and athletics among our youth the physical standard of the race would surely deteriorate.
- E. M. Hanlon, Premier of Queensland (1951).
 
As a pre-match entertainment at one Lang Park match a man in a cockroach costume was wiped out with ‘insect repellent' at the hands of an ‘exterminator' – causing a roar of appreciation from the crowd. The New South Wales team is met by an avalanche of boos every time they run onto Lang Park.
- Neil Cadigan (et al.), in Blood, Sweat and Tears: Australians and Sport (1989). Rivalry, which many players admitted became a deep-seated hatred once they were on the field has been part of the State of Origin rugby league series between Queensland and New South Wales.
 
The greatest series of ‘grudge' matches in Australian boxing history was between Fred Henneberry and Ron Richards. They fought 10 times. Henneberry won 2 on points and 1 by knockout. Richards won 1 by knockout, 5 on a foul and 1 was a draw.
- Jack Pollard in Ampol's Australian Sporting Records (1969).

I went to the Commonwealth Games when they were in Brisbane in 1982 and to call it a Mickey Mouse event would have been an insult to Mickey Mouse.

-‘Cheap-shot' from Golden League athletics meet promoter Wilfried Meert, of the Brussels Golden League, during the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games.
 
Whenever England meet Australia in this part of the world, the player's zinc cream doubles as war paint, and the smarter T-Shirt salesmen will be offering their usual selection. ‘Custard yellow pommie-bastards', mate? … Whatever the match, it is not a friendly, and importance of this one has generated an unusual tension even by the piano-wire standards of cricket's most ancient protagonists.
- Martin Johnson in The Independent (March, 1992).
 
Let's go over a few little home truths … First the good news. In the history of sport, no-one has been more inventive than you Brits. Practically every international sport worth speaking of … was invented on your once secluded shore … But now the bad news … You can't win them any more can you?
- An Australian reporter, writing in The Daily Telegraph (February, 1992).

It seems that the Australian psyche is unable to cope with any measure of English achievement without bringing in the notion of English arrogance, as if the Australian national consciousness could not exist without the arrogant English to react against. That England had a half-decent rugby team has woken the sleeping – or perhaps I mean lightly dozing – sense of persecution in Australia.

 

The unabashed, self-righteous hostility of it all quite takes your breath away. I enjoy a good bit of banter with my Australian friends, particularly on the subject of sport, but I can't see the point of taking it to the level of hysteria that has been reached by the Australian press. … And I feel like seizing the entire Australian public by the lapels and screaming into its face: For God's sake snap out of it! You're supposed to be a nation that's come of age! Why the hell are you still bothering with this colonial chippiness? The jokes about corks on hats are out of date. The Cultural Cringe no longer stings in a country that has produced Patrick White and Peter Carey. But the oldest joke of them all – the one about the well-balanced Australian with a chip on both shoulders – is alive and flourishing like a coolibah tree.

 

A word about arrogance. The English have no arrogance where Australia is concerned – not when it comes to sport. Rather, the English attitude is one of grovelling subservience, awestruck admiration and hero-worshipping imitation. … What Australia requires in this sporting life is for good old golden hearted, straightforward, decent, ordinary, tough, rough-hewn, good-natured and thoroughly heterosexual Aussies to be confronted by snooty, arrogant, over-refined (the sort Des Esseintes would find over fastidious), over-educated, cosseted, namby-pamby, devious, nasty, cheating, seldom-bathing, Pommy poofters. … So long as the Australians cherish the stereotype of the arrogant Pom, the Australian will remain an adolescent as a nation.

 

And I say this as an Englishman who, like all English people who have been there, loves Australia to distraction, delights in the continuing self-invention, envies youth and vigour and ambition and room to breathe.

- Extract from, ‘Want some sheep dip with your whine and crackers?' by English journalist Simon Barnes in The Times during the 2003 Rugby World Cup.
 
What would be better than to beat the Aussies playing in front of 100,000 convicts!
- Cricketer Ian Botham who was displayed prominently in BSkyB advertisements to promote television coverage of Australia versus England test matches (1992). The reference to ‘convicts' was a reminder to Australians of the British policy in the 19th century of transporting ‘criminals' to the colony. The ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain observed, “The world's a better place when we beat the Aussies at cricket” (The Sun, March 1992).
 
Oh, and there was another thing we Australians found we loved, nay lived for, when it came to sport … Having one of our own, born and bred beneath the Southern Cross, taking it right up to the … Poms and whipping them motherless.
- Peter Fitzsimons in Everyone and Phar Lap: Face to face with the best of Australian sport (1999).
 
How do you tell when you're in a lift with a famous Aussie sportsman?
He tells you so.
- Former All Black Rugby international Eric Rush in a jibe at ‘arrogant Australians.' The New Zealanders love nothing better than to beat Australia in sport and for Australians they as just as determined to make sure that does not happen (2003).

Do you know what KIWI stands for?

Keen Interest Without Intelligence.

- Former Australian Wallaby captain Nick Farr-Jones with a ‘tongue-in-cheek' definition of the New Zealand rugby team (called the Kiwis). Nick in his speech was providing examples of how some of the countries in the 2003 World Cup play a form of rugby that reflects their culture. Apparently the KIWI ‘definition' is a standard one within the Australian team and reinforces the rivalry between the two countries.
 
After yesterday's win Australia can add soccer to a long list of conquests over England including cricket, tennis, netball, swimming, rugby league [don't forget Union !], women's hockey, the speedway world cup, and even darts. We even outrank them when it comes to croquet and Real Tennis.
- ‘Kewell magic sinks Poms,' The Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 14 February, 2002. In a surprise result Australia defeated England in a soccer match.
 
People have made a big fuss of this since it came out at the weekend. But we expect that from them every time we play them. The gouging, biting, spitting … they're done it before.
- Wallabies player Toutai Kefu after a game against the South African Springboks. Kefu was injured in a late tackle in a game marred by allegations of foul play. Two South African players were suspended, including the player who tackled Kefu late (2003).
 
Cheating

It was not in accord with the rules, but nobody ever found out. I did it all over England .

- Herbert Henry (‘Dally') Messenger was rugby league's first and perhaps greatest hero. Messenger carried some resin in his football shorts and before kicking for goal he would rub some resin on the tip of his boot and the ball.
 
I realise that I was very naive and stupid.

- Shane Warne after he and fellow cricketer Mark Waugh sold ‘weather and pitch' reports to an illegal bookmaker staying in the same Sri Lankan city (1998).

 

In 48 hours, the Bulldogs have gone from glorious to notorious, their ambitions this season crippled by the arrogant disregard for ethics, integrity, fair play and sportsmanship on their salary cap breaches.
- Ray Chesterton, in an article in the Daily Telegraph (Sydney) in 2001. The Bulldogs Rugby League Club was discovered to have blatantly breached salary cap restrictions in forming a very successful team. They were stripped of all their premiership points.

 

We expect our sporting heroes to win at all costs. Good manners in sport are now the exception rather than the given, and yet sportsmen are still held up to our children as role models.
- The Australian newspaper in a comment in an unidentified article (1996).
 
When I say I would never cheat, that's not true because when the Australians play this game they have this great belief that if you nick the ball, you stand and let the umpire make the decision and I think if that's good enough for them, that's good enough for me; but if you do that, you've go to be prepared to take the bad decisions with the good.
- English cricketer Ian Botham commenting on gamesmanship in cricket (1990s).
 
Body line bowling ... In our opinion is unsportsmanlike. Unless stopped at once likely to upset friendly relations existing between Australia and England.
- The Australian Board of Control in a telegram to the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1933.
 
You do everything you can to get the win. If you have to cheat you cheat ... I knew it was a try.
- Western Suburbs rugby league player explaining how he attempted to influence the referee that a try had not been scored when it had (1997).
 
Drugs

Elite athletes would do anything to enhance their performances, even if they were unsure whether substances they used worked or not.

- Australian Sports Drug Agency report in 1990s.
 
Australian Sportsmen (footballers in particular) are prone to binge drinking after games ... mateship, masculinity, “happy hours” and the association of drinking with sports with sports success were major determinants of drink-driving.
- Mary Sheehan, Alcohol Controls and Drink Driving – Report (1990s).
 
I would never do it. I'd be disappointed in myself if I ever had to resort to that. It's probably a sign that you haven't got much further to go.
- Rugby league player Peter Sterling referring to using drugs to enhance performance (1990s).
 
I am disgusted. I competed against drugs and lost to drugs. Appointing an East German coach puts a cloud over our athletes.
- Dual Olympic silver-medallist Raelene Boyle on the proposal by Athletics Australia to appoint former East German head coach Ekkart Arbeit as our head coach – before the tide of outrage thankfully caused them to change their minds (1998).
 
They might not have won any medals, but with their curves, their femininity and their amateurism they are worth a great deal more than those European women … and they don't get a five o'clock shadow.

- Queensland Minister of Sport, Mr. Herbert praising Australian women athletes after returning from the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He told of women athletes from Eastern Europe “who shave every morning, have flat chests and baritone voices and carry off buckets of gold medals.”

I'm totally against drugs in sport. Using drugs isn't just cheating, it's stealing victory from someone who deserves it. If you have to use drugs to win, you're not winning at all. I couldn't win knowing that I'd used drugs. I couldn't accept the medal and I don't know how anyone else could either.

- Ian Thorpe, swimmer (1999). Thorpe won gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Before the World Swimming Championships in Barcelona in 2003 Thorpe was to say: "There are thousands of swimmers here and to think that all swimmers are clean is just naive."

Once you get selected and are making lots of money, you stop using them.

- A 16-year-old male rugby league fan speaking about using steroids as part of a survey (1998).

I'm shocked because I do no take performance enhancing drugs and never have and do not condone them in any way, shape or form.

- Australian cricketer, Shane Warne, was sent home from the 2003 World Cup after testing positive to a banned diuretic. Despite his assertions that it was a honest mistake he was banned for 12 months. He was to say: "I feel I am a victim of anti-doping hysteria."

If he's a big enough man to inject himself with steroids, he should be a big enough man to cop the flak. Did he really believe that guys like me, who work their arse off in the gym to reach their physical peak, are going to welcome back to our game a bloke who's taken the easy way out? Does he think his peers will ever show him any respect again? Well, I won't that's for sure.

- Bronco rugby league forward Gorden Tallis on Rodney Howe (Melbourne Storm), who was heavily sledged in matches after returning from a 22-week suspension for drug use (1999).

The greatest drug-free female of her time. Whatever more, whenever she ran, she was poetry in motion.

- Commentator Alan Jones speaking about runner Raleen Boyle who was a top international competitor during the 1970s and early 1980s when drug testing was almost non-existent. Later evidence was to point to widespread and systematic drug abuse during the time Boyle competed (1990s).