Chapter
9: THE ‘NECESSITIES' OF SPORT
For
as long as anyone can remember, most of Australia's sporting administration
has fallen to those who give freely of their time and experience to help run
the local club. Often these folk have retired from their chosen sport as active
participants, and now seek to give something back to the sport and to use
their involvement in administration to enhance the quality of their lives.
To them falls the responsibility of discipline, recruitment, management and,
by no means the easiest of their tasks, fundraising. The sporting club raffle
and bazaar, the weekend dance and the fundraising nights have become institutions
in the Australian way of life.
Mums
and dads, big brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts can be seen on any Saturday
morning taking the little Australians to sport. Four- and 5-year olds going
to swimming, 7- and 8-year-olds in their smart, new uniforms off to the local
oval for footy or cricket; little girls going to gym-basketball, their bigger
brothers and sisters crowding the buses and trains heading for their chosen
pursuit.
- Neil Cadigan
(et al.), in Blood, Sweat and Tears: Australians and Sport (1989).
Australian
sport is among the most unorganised and unco-ordinated in the world...in the
past our champions succeeded in spite of our organisation not because of it.
- Frank Stewart,
Federal Minister of Sport, 1974. In complaining about a lack of support to the
government from sporting officials in the face of criticism in 1975 he said,
“I must admit that I expected at stronger support from the very same sporting
organisations we have been trying to help. Whenever our government is blasted
for allegedly squandering money on sport, the very beneficiaries of these grants
sit in numb silence. To some extent I am disillusioned about the support of
these sporting organisations and their officials, especially at times of outside
criticism. ... This proves to me that sport has no powerful lobby, perhaps doesn't
know on which side its bread is buttered.”
We're seen
as splendid organisers. We showed ourselves as a socially co-operative society,
as a competitive, can-do place. No longer is Australian potential thwarted by
the ‘she'll be right, mate' approach, long lunches of sluggish managers or bitter
industrial fights.
- New South
Wales Premier Bob Carr and comments reported in The Weekend Australian
in the aftermath of the Sydney Olympics (October, 2000).
All administrators,
in sport, business or whatever, start out servicing the people. But as time
goes by, they end up with a personal agenda of self-aggrandisement. The athletes
and those in the field become secondary.
- Australian
Head Swim Coach Don Talbot (1990s).
The infrastructure
for social competitive sports people is not good.
-
David Bycroft Queensland state manager of Life: Be In It, on low
levels of participation for adults (1995).
I've
always thought the selectors were a bunch of idiots. All they've done now
is confirm it.
-
Fast bowler Jeff Thomson after missing selection for the 1981 cricket tour
of England.
He
has a photo of the committee that sacked him on his fridge and he's crossing
them off like a serial killer.
-
AFL legend Tom Hafey on Kevin Bartlett when he was sacked as coach of Richmond.
I have
always thought that players should play, coaches should coach, and administrators
should administrate.
- Australian
player Toutai Kefu in the comment following the resignation of the Chief Executive
of the ARU, John O'Neill. O'Neill had got players like Kefu 'offside' with
his criticism of the Wallabies in games leading up to the 2003 World Cup.
At the
administrative level, the paucity of ideas, bungling, immovable concrete-solid
conservatism, parochial loyalties, insensitivity to players and supporters are,
and have always been, a hallmark of football bureaucracies in every state where
the game is played.
- Brian Matthews,
Oval Dreams (1991). The comment relates to Australian Football.
I'm tired
of the Union 's petty muddling and stupid administration. They've killed my
enthusiasm for football. Until we adopt New Zealand methods and put men at the
head of affairs who understand football, the game won't have a chance. Young
and promising players are not in the race unless they are in big with the executive.
Ability on the field does not mean a thing. It's far more important to go down
to headquarters and pat a few people on the back than it is to play brilliant
football.
- Cyril Towers,
in 1940, in announcing his retirement from rugby union. Towers was instrumental
in promoting the style of 'running rugby' [ball in hand philosophy] through
the Randwick Rugby Club.
The
value of coaching is to pick out departures from fundamental soundness and
build on nature, not to try to mould each player into precisely the same type.
- The
Art of Batting, by Don Bradman.
You can
win with all types of players except dumb ones.
- Legendary
rugby league coach, Jack Gibson. He also suggested that, “You will never lose
a player by congratulating him, but plenty have been lost by abuse.”
You need
to possess four traits to survive in footy these days—you need to be ruthless
and aggressive, have no morals, carry a good array of knives and show no loyalty
to anybody.
- Gary Buckenara
when he was sacked as Sydney Swans Australian Football coach (early 2000s).
- Three-quarter
time speech by legendary AFL (then VFL) coach John Kennedy repeated over and
over at top volume (1960s).
Most
coaches see the job as much more than teaching the skills of a game. It
is all about the skills of life, moulding a player's mind. It's not enough
to learn all the right things to say. You need to know who to apply it to,
and when. For some players it's a pat on the back, for another a blast ...
Bribes played a big part in my early netball memories. Forget the “do it
for the team” approach. The coach paid $2 a goal plus chocolate thickshakes
at the local takeaway. Chiko rolls were season bonuses.
- Journalist
Kathleen Noonan (2003).
I can't
remember any really technical coaching.
- Steve Waugh
in The Cricketer International Magazine (May, 2002).
Sometimes
it is better to be not coached than badly coached.
- Radio commentator
and former Wallabies coach Alan Jones in a comment after the Australian team
were beaten by the New Zealand All Blacks. Jones went on to say, “The tragedy
is Eddie Jones, the unsuccessful coach, has been the permeating influence right
through Australian rugby” (2003). Eddie Jones coached Australia to the final
of the 2003 World Cup of Rugby. Several contempararies say the feud between
the two dates back to club games when Eddie would sledge proteges of the former
Manly and Australian coach, calling into question their sexual preferences.
Some of
you think that all I see are your faults. They're not all I see, but they're
what I comment on, because that's a coach's job - to correct faults. The good
things I take for granted.
- Coach Ron
Barassi talking to his team in 1968. Ron Barassi had achieved legendary status
as an Australian Rules player before he became a coach. As a coach Barassi is
renowned for his ‘motivational' powers.
I make
them wear the club jersey in training to build up their pride and I wouldn't
let anyone train with his socks down. Their boots must be clean. They must look
the part.
- Melbourne
Australian Football coach Ian Ridley (1973).
We were
innovators, we weren't bound by conventions of past eras.
- Swim coach
Forbes Carlile in attributing Australian swimming success of adventurous training
techniques. Carlile at one time coached Shane Gould, a 1972 Olympic champion.
Probably
no single factor had more to do with the success of Australian sportsmen (and
he should have added sportswomen) in the ‘fifties than the coaching of Harry
Hopman, Percy Cerutty, Franz Stampfl, Forbes Carlile, Harry Gallagher, Sam Herford,
Don Talbot and Frank Guthrie. All of them believe basically in conditioning,
and set their charges huge amounts of physical build-up work.
- Harry Gordon
in Young Men in a Hurry (1962).
Stuff silver!
We came for Gold!
- Laurie Lawrence,
coach of Duncan Armstrong, Olympic Gold Medallist in 200 metres freestyle at
the Seoul Olympics in 1988.
If you
don't have the guts to get up there and have a go at something then you're never
going to make it. Everything that I ever achieve I go and thank my coach because
she's the one that put me there.
- Australian
trampolinist Robyn Forbes on her philosophy of athletic excellence (1990s).
If I've
arksed youse boys once I've arksed youse a thousand times, don't buggerise with
the bloody ball on them flanks, kick the bugger up the bloody centre.
- Phillip
Gwynne in Deadly Unna (2002) in a quote attributed to a junior country
AFL coach. Country towns have many sports and facilities but often lack resources
such as access to good coaching.
Junior
coaches are so critical in every sport and Ron wouldn't let his kids play until
they'd learned the fundamentals. Jon was very lucky to have a bloke like that
when he first tried the game.
- Former Australian
cricket captain Greg Chappell paying tribute to Ron Gooda, the junior baseball
coach of his son Jon. Jon had been signed to play professional baseball for
the Toronto Blue Jays (2002).
Whenever
I find myself confronted by adversity in any situation, my first thoughts are
to fight back.
-Rod Macqueen,
coach of the Australian Rugby Union team, in One Step Ahead (2001).
Have nothing
to do with coaches. In fact, if you should see one coming, go and hide behind
the pavilion until he goes away.
-
Bill O'Reilly the great Australian spinner's advice to a young cricket hopeful.
I sometimes
wonder why coaches have to keep on talking to teams because you say the
same thing, over and over. But it's because players forget and fall down
on basic things and you have to keep reminding them. All I know is that
every time we got a kick in the teeth there was a lesson to be learned.
- Legendary
VFL coach Allan Jeans.
I've
come to believe that it [pre-game speech] was overrated. It isn't really
getting a player motivated. It might get them emotionally aroused, but
I think real motivation comes with what you do during the week.
- Four
time AFL winning coach and former legendary player Leigh Matthews.
He put
together a nice blend of enthusiasm, confidence and intellect. He had a broad
base of reading and knowledge on which to base his arguments and his directions,
so that you felt there was some weight in them and his own personal life experience
added to this and so the whole blend of his knowledge and experience gave enormous
believability and credibility.
- Olympic
runner Herb Elliott referring to his coach Percy Cerutty.
To educate
the athletes to become more-reliant and to understand their sport better, rather
than to make them dependent on me, particularly a long-distance runner. On the
creative side, the coach should back his judgement. He has more experience and
has got to lead, you need to explore different initiatives.
- Pat Clohessy,
coach of marathon runner Rob deCastella.
He was
a little time bomb who could explode at any moment—I knew that to teach him
self-discipline, someone had to become his boss. And I asked myself if I could
do it.
- Johnny Lewis
trainer of boxer Jeff Fenech. Fenech recalled, “When I get into the ring to
do my job, I hate the other guy. I have to hate him. It's no use going out there
liking someone if you're going to punch his head in. In boxing, you've got to
knock him out before he knocks you out. It's as simple as that.”
My policy
in regard to coaching is to try to get the players to rely on their own destiny
more than it is to rely on the coach.
-
Lindsay Gage, basketball coach (1994).
We
go out and play well and yes, we like to beat other teams, but a lot of
our incentive to play good hockey is to hear from Ric, ‘That's the best
I've seen you play.' That would be amazing.
- Australian
hockey player Alyson Annan speaking about her hockey and the role of the coach,
Ric Charlesworth (1998). The team won the gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Do
not be limited in your thinking. Being limited makes you predictable. If
you are predictable you are vulnerable and being vulnerable makes you expendable.
- Swim coach
Harry Gallagher with advice to coaches in Sprint the Crawl (1976).
He also said, "To coach is to create and a thing of which to be proud."
A kid's
got to improve if you get him at the right time with the right coaches.
There's no magic formula. It's sheer hard work and timing. Everyone works
hard. We go over videos, we spend hours talking to the guys, one-to-one
if need be. We point them in the right direction, but they find out which
route they want to take. Everyone's will be different. I'm a great believer
that if you work something out for yourself you never forget it.
- Rod Marsh
speaking of coaching at the Australian Cricket Academy (1998).
She's very
determined to do well. She's not afraid of hard work and once she sets her mind
to it she can do anything.
-
Fred Austin, coach of trampoliner Jackie Cully in Sports Escape
(2002).
I am
so disappointed with the soulless, ‘un-baggygreen', immature performance
today, that I question, What progress have we made as a team and as individuals?
… My feelings, while heightened by today's inept display, have everything
to do with you as persons first, family men (for most of you) second, and
players third.
- Part of
a letter 'leaked' to the media. It was written by Australian cricket coach
John Buchanan to Australian players after a loss to India at Adelaide in December,
2003. Australia had a batting collapse in the second innings. Buchanan said
in a part of the letter, "I love each and every one of you," but
described his frustration and anger at the team's lack of commitment and for
allowing deal-making, sponsors and other external issues to contribute to
the eventual result.
It is essential
that we enter this new field now, otherwise we will be left behind the more
scientifically advanced countries in North America and Europe. And it will take
us a long time to close the gap if we don't keep up with our competitors.
- Professor
Allan Hahn (2002) on the new field of micro-technology in sport which enables
coaches and sports scientists to monitor an athlete's performance while in heavy
training or competition.
The Australian
coaching system is fortunate to have many coaches who are well-trained but who
still incorporate some of the toughness of the past into their coaching techniques.
- Prof. John
Bloomfield in Australia's Sporting Success (2003).
The
Olympic Games reinforced some of the things we already know about volunteering.
People respond to a clear task, to training and leadership, to having the
proper resources to be effective and to get good feedback. They are willing
to commit their time and skills if they know what they have to achieve and
get a sense of the larger result to which they are contributing. But too often,
we expect volunteers to work without a clear focus. We don't give them enough
resources, we don't train them or help them learn skills, and we expect them
to work long and hard for little thanks. … The spirit of Australian pride,
co-operation and openness that was abroad during the Games – our sense of
community – is going to be as important to our future as any of the business
and economic spin-offs.
- Martin Stewart-Weeks,
‘Nursing That Public Spirit: A Sense of Community is a Fragile Commodity,' The
Australian (October, 2000).
Australia
's history is rich in the tradition of voluntary association. Surf livesaving,
fighting bush fires or battling floods, organising to look after the poor and
sick, educating our children, building the physical, social and cultural infrastructure
of our farms, towns and cities – none would have happened without the spirit
of volunteering backed by a selfless, imaginative but always practical commitment
to serve a common cause.
- ‘Nursing
That Public Spirit: A Sense of Community is a Fragile Commodity' by Martin Stewart-Weeks
in The Australian (October 2000).
Australia
has a history of disputes between sports officials and athletes. Some would
suggest that many officials in the past have been out of touch with reality
and have had an overblown belief in their own importance and performances.
- Anonymous
source.
For
an official, isolated in a vast expanse of park while being abused from all
sides, it can be a daunting experience, even in the kids' grades. Anyone who
has attended under-age football of any code will attest to this. There is
often a parent, and it's just as likely to be a woman as a man, living out
his or her thwarted sporting ambitions through their hapless offspring. The
older the child, the worse this becomes. Under-sevens might be fun, but by
under-14s it's serious and if young Johnny isn't performing it has to be someone's
fault. The first blamed might be the coach - but that's always muttered under
their breath - and then comes the ref or ump, a sitting duck if ever there
was one.
- The
Australian Magazine (September 1995).
I honestly
think the referees can't keep up to the game today. They blow the whistle to
give themselves a rest.
- Former Canterbury
rugby league player and coach Terry Lamb (2000).
I never
liked too many umpires, I must say. I thought they were sad, unfit blokes who
couldn't play the game and so decided to be part of it in some pathetic sort
of way, i.e. wear white and blow a whistle. Oh no, anyone who becomes an umpire
is in serious need of psychological assessment. It's a cry for help, a cry for
help!
- Roy and
H.G. with a ‘tongue in cheek comment' on officials in the video Boys and
Balls (1994).
I
am sick and tired of the harassment, the abuse, the belittling of officials
in any sport, full-stop. Make no mistake that in the sporting arena it is
no longer a joke, it's a crisis, it's a disaster. ... If
we don't address the problem now we won't get officials out there and sport
will not be played.
- Bill Harrigan,
rugby league State of Origin referee. He outlined how he had had death threats
and abuse directed at him (2002). On how he officiates Harrigan said, “You apply
the rules, but sometimes it's not black and white, so you interpret. If everybody
refereed strictly to the rules, we'd be robots. My philosophy is I like to let
the game run.”
And
just because Bill has retired, I'm not going to say that he always gave
my teams and me an equal shake of the dice, because I don't think he did.
- Brisbane
Broncos rugby league captain Gorden Tallis on the retirement of referee Bill
Harrigan who was recognised as the best referee in the competition (2003).
Harrigan was a controversial referee. Manly coach Bob Fulton acknowledged
his abilities but in 1987 he said of the then 26 year old referee, "I
hope he gets run over by a cement truck."
I didn't
anticipate anything like that.
- Rugby league
referee, Aaron Jones, after being head-butted and punched by a player after
he had sent him to the sin bin during a game in Sydney's western suburbs. The
player was banned for 30 years and charged with assault (1990s).
A Test
match in high summer with an 80,000-plus crowd packed into the Melbourne Cricket
Ground is probably not a nice place to be, particularly if you're listening
for snicks off the bat with the crowd making the noise of 10 jumbo jets taking
off. It makes football seem like kid's play.
- Bill Deller,
national umpiring director with the Australian Football League in commentating
on the ‘toughness' of refereeing (1990s).
He [the
coach] is not going to blame his players because he has to use them next week,
he's not going to blame himself and he's not going to blame the administrators
who pay his wage. There's only one person left who hasn't got too much of a
defence and that's the referee.
- Mick Stone,
who was in charge of Rugby League referees (1995).
I know
blind people, aged 106, at the bottom of the South Island who could referee
better than some of the Australians.
- Auckland
rugby union chairman Gerald Ryan on what he thought of some Super League refereeing
decisions (2001).
‘Stubby'
shorts with grass or dirt stains on the arse, a white or Jackie Howe (navy)
singlet, white towelene hat, white zinc cream on the nose, a large beer gut
hanging over shorts in the front and with the ‘coin-box' (backside) showing,
cheap rubber thongs on often grubby feet, stubby in a stubby cooler in one
hand and a Esky (often made of poly-styrene) full of Fosters beer (or some
other brand) in the other.
- Anonymous
description of a ‘yobbo' spectator. During the 1970s comedian Paul Hogan used
one of his characters (Arthur ‘Arfur' Dunger) to typify the Australian spectator.
It's no
use George, teacher hasn't seen you – you'll have to wait for playtime.
- Bill ‘Tiger'
O'Reilly recalling an incident from the 1930s involving the well-known barracker
‘Yabba.' The umpire George Borwick had his hand in the air for a prolonged period
as he signalled a groundsman to move the sight-board to the batsmen's satisfaction.
For three
or four hours you forget the doom and bloom that exists in the world, or even
your own problems, and become immersed in the game. It's exciting, it's exhilarating
– it's like a dream.
- Billy Rule,
former footballer and sports editor of The Sunday Telegraph (2003).
Australians
like to think of themselves as a superbly it race of sun tanned giants forever
riding the surf or undertaking other spectacular sporting feats like the gods
of mythology. The truth is somewhat less, of course, and any casual observer
will quickly note that, far from being a nation of doers where sport is concerned,
we are very much a nation of watchers. And if the chill winds blow outside we
tend to stay home huddled in front of the telly to watch our favourite sport.
Perhaps it is this lack of physical involvement in sport that makes so many
Australians so stridently vocal and so partisan in the controversies that surround
national and international sporting events
- Bill Hornadge
in The Ugly Australian (1976).
The woman
‘barracker', indeed, has become one of the most objectionable of football surroundings.
On some grounds they actually spit in the faces of players as they come to the
dressing rooms, or wreak their spite much more maliciously with long hat pins.
In the heights of this melee some of the women screamed with fear. Others screamed
‘Kill him'. One of these gentle maidens at the close of the struggle remarked
regretfully that it was a pity they ‘let off' the umpire in the geelong match,
as they should have killed him. Yet these women consider themselves respectable,
and they ‘support' football, which is consequently in serious decline.
- The Argus
(Melbourne) suggested that some female Australian Football -then Victorian
Rules - spectators did not always behave themselves (1897).
I have
told all the people who sit around us that if I die, under no circumstances
is my body to be removed until after full-time.
- Lyn Martin,
fanatical Brisbane Broncos rugby league supporter (2002).
I didn't
want to see a game, nor see no justice done.
It never
mattered wot occurred as long as my side won;
The other
side was narks an' cows an' rotters to a man,
But mine
was all reel bonzer chaps. I was a partisan.
- Writer C.
J. Dennis on barracking in Australian sport.
The stamina
of the pole sitter, the patience of the bill collector, the lungs of a mule,
the temper of a wounded buffalo, the audacity of a lion tamer, the enthusiasm
of a car salesman and the confidence of a tightrope walker.
- Jack Sheppard
in The Sun describing the requirements of a true barracker.
What
a GAS (Great Australian Slob) day … And it wasn't hard to pick him
(the slob) at the ground. He wore loose shorts, a coloured T shirt (usually
with something written on it) and thongs. Invariably he was 18-25.
- In 1975
when a bumper crowd of 85,661 turned up at the MCG for the first day of the
third cricket test, West Indies versus Australia, The Age (Melbourne)
printed an article by Paul Heinrichs. That day there were can fights, fist-fights
and arrests.
Most supporters
are pretty okay but there is definitely something wrong with Collingwood supporters.
They're just not normal people.
- Melbourne
full-forward Allen Jacovich in reference to Collingwood Australian Football
Club supporters. Collingwood is the best supported team but the Magpies have
a following that is both envied and despised by every other club. The term ‘Colliwobble'
means ‘choking' or giving in under pressure in football finals football by Collingwood.
The Colliwobbles term was laid to rest when Collingwood won in 1990.
People
say they are louts at Wests. They are good people. As for Manly ... we all have
a drink after the game, but on the field I hate them to pieces. Whatever a coach
can use to gee you up is fine. If he tells you they're all lying on the beach
while you're working ... anyway, we've given them some bloody good hidings.
- Tom Raudonikis
always played for battlers' clubs: Western Suburbs and Newtown. A radio comment
before one game said, “ It's the battle of the silvertails from Manly and the
battlers from the fibro home belt of the Western Suburbs” (1980s).
If you're
born in Richmond, you have to do two things: vote Labor and barrack for the
Tigers.
- Legendary
AFL player Jack ‘Captain Blood' Dyer. After his death in August 2003 the Tigers
(Richmond) game banner read, ‘Heaven's football team can now take the
field because your captain has now arrived.'
"What's
your name?" and "Who do you barrack for?"
- Dr Margaret
Lindley, historian at the University of Tasmania, in recognising football as
a Victorian social phenomenon (1996).
There are
two types of footy fans - those who support their own team and those who support
whoever Manly is playing.
- Sydney rugby
league sporting comment which refers to the Manly Warringah team.
Bull-shit!
Bull-shit! [Crowd]
You
don't need to be Einstein to work out what the crowd think of that decision
by the referee. [Commentator]
- Channel
9 rugby league television commentator (1995) during State of Origin rugby league
match.
Hey, ref.
give us a go, ya bloody pie eater!
- A typical
comment by a barracker.
Geez, you
are a dirty, rotten, mongrel, no bloody hoper drongo!
- Typical
anonymous call from the crowd.
From
what I can remember when I played there wasn't the booing when the opposition
were taking kicks at goal. There was a polite quietness about it.
- Former
rugby player Des Connor, who played for both Australian and New Zealand rugby
Test teams during the 1960s. Connor thought the practice was unsporting but
Murray Phillips, sports historian from The University of Queensland
said, “But instead of being a case of bad sportsmanship, booing was a reflection
of modern spectator's generally more vocal match behaviour” (2003).
… in an
age starved for ceremony and display the footy is a first-class entertainment.
For over three hours thousands of people can forget all the Alexander the coppersmiths
who have done them great evil, all the frets, worries, crags and failures in
their lives.
- ‘At the
Footy,' by Manning Clark, in The Nation (1962).
Sure the
car's a wreck, the gutters full of leaves, the bank manager's knocking on the
door; the world is buggered in many ways, there's no ozone left, the Sea of
Japan's dead … thank you very much Russians … but when you're at the game you
can just throw all that away and just live for now.
- ‘Well, that's
sport.' H.G. in comments about spectators to his ‘offsider' Roy quoted in Boys
and Balls (1994).
They'll
die. The club was all they had in life. They get up each day and all it meant
to them was they're one day closer to watching their team.
- Australian
Footballer Ted Whitten, on the subject of supporters of Footscray when it was
first suggested that they amalgamate with Fitzroy in 1989.
"Lilleeee
... Lilleeee ..."
- The war
chant used by spectators at Australian cricket grounds in the 1970s. The great
fast bowler was to write later that the chant made him feel like a giant.
We're gonna
belt the crap outta youse Cockroaches!
- Queensland
State of Origin fan commenting about the New South Wales team—the 'cockroaches.'
Warnie,
get a wicket for f***'s sake!
- Frustrated
spectator on the second day of the third test between New Zealand and Australia
at Perth in December 2001. New Zealand had just passed 500 runs in their first
innings and the match eventually ended in a draw. Overheard on television.
“You leave
our bloody flies alone, Jardine!"
- When English
captain Douglas Jardine swatted away flies during the infamous Bodyline tour
(1932-33) 'Yabba' (S.H. Gascoigne) the great barracker of Australian sport remarked.
When he was at a match, other spectators would gather near him. Yabba was King
of the Hill at the Sydney Cricket Ground and was noted for his classic comments.
Ball and
chain, ball and chain. We came with passport, you with ball and chain.
- A ‘Barmy
Army' England cricket supporters chant during the 2002-03 Ashes Tour of Australia.
It referred to Australia 's convict beginnings. In one reply by locals they
sang: “Nick, knack, paddy whack, give a dog a bone. Barmy Army, f*** off home.”
By barracking
for one's team or urging on a racehorse as it turns into the straight, Australians
discharge a lot of harmless aggression and emotion which could not otherwise
be ventilated in safe and wholesome ways. To be sure, there are fights and scrimmages
on the outer of football ovals, an increasing measure of drunkenness due to
the ready availability of beer cans, but disorder at sporting functions is a
world-wide occurrence hardly confined to Australia.
- Russell
Conway in Land of the Long Weekend (1978).
I was sitting
in the opening ceremony, and Christ, I couldn't believe it. When the torch-bearer
came into the stadium and the crowd roared, I began to cry. I remember thinking,
so this is what it's all about. I don't think I'll ever forget that moment as
long as I live.
- An unidentified
young woman on the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
The cheer,
the jeer, the howl, the bawl, the yell, the scream, the bo-haa-haa are as avoidable
as the notes in an octave. To demonstrate the savage in our blood we need only
look at the barracker – the most offensive parasite that has ever battened on
a manly game.
- Dr. Maloney.
Roy, of
course the great thrill about being in sport is to come down to the ground and
be a spectator. … It's a tremendous thrill and curiously enough you start off
with a faint glimmer of this at birth, that that's why you're here, to be a
spectator, and then as your life goes on it becomes stronger and stronger and
when you drop off the twig at the end, it's very disappointing to go, not knowing
what the results would be, say, in 1995.
- H.G. Slaven
in comments about spectators to his offsider Roy quoted in Boys and Balls
(1994).
Come on
boys, we can't stand this!
- Writer ‘Banjo'
Paterson in describing how someone near him sparked a crowd invasion against
Lord Harris's Englishmen at the Sydney Cricket Ground in February 1879. A run-out
decision had gone against New South Wales hero Billy Murdoch.
I
ran to the Coventry End, where the Richmond cheer squad was seated directly
behind the goals. To my sheer amazement, the Richmond cheer squad stood
up as one and started clapping and cheering. You could have knocked me over
with a feather. I'd never experienced anything like it. I'd half-expected
that type of acknowledgement from Kangaroos supporters but it came from
most people at the ground. It was an unbelievable feeling – the rarest privilege,
in fact.
- North
Melbourne Kangaroos AFL footballer Jason McCartney recounting his AFL comeback
in 2003. McCartney was badly burned in the Bali terrorist bombing (2002) in
which 88 Australians lost their lives along with many other nationalities.
McCartney set the goal to return to footballand played one match before retiring.
His team won by 5 points. The behaviour of the spectators says much about
the perspective that many have with regards to sport and tragedy.
Australia
was one of the leading countries for spectator sports in the 19th century. Sydney
and Melbourne led the world in having Saturday afternoons off for working men,
and that meant they were free to attend sporting events.
-
Historian Geoffrey Blainey.
A suburban football ground
has a place in our hearts because of what we think it was, rather than what
it is. It rekindles memories of gates thrown open at half-time and kids and
their fathers flooding in for free. The sound of players' boots on concrete;
the laughter of children rolling down grassy hills; the aroma of hot dogs
and the gruff uncle snarl of the doubles seller. We forget the days huddled
from the rain; the toilet queues and the long wait in the car park after the
match.
-
Roy Masters, 'Taking the Game Back to Its Roots,' in The Sydney Morning
Herald (2003).
Being
part of the Bay 13 crowd isn't a passive experience. From the time the spectator
hears the cricket beckoning, and is compelled to attend, there is participation.
People dress up; groups wear Hawaiian shirts or safari suits or Santa clobber.
Hats are constructed, faces painted. This takes time and gives weight to
the argument that this is a special day, a celebration not only of what's
on the field, but of what happens in the crowd.
-
Writer John Harms and part of his description of the 'new' Bay 13 crowd
at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (1998).
You’d
be pissed too if you’d been here since 9am.
- Cricket
banner displayed during a cricket test at Adelaide in 1991. It refers to
the drinking habits of spectators not to the way the game was being played.
When
it first occurred it offered us some slight amusement. But after a while
it became tiresome and a darn nuisance.
- Former
Australian cricketer Doug Walters on streakers at cricket matches (1980s).
When
you look at public gatherings in this country, the only ones that regularly
get tens of thousands of people together in one place are sports. Try and
think of any others and there aren't any. Australian cities were established
late enough to ensure that sports facilities could be incorporated into town
planning. That's how we've ended up with the MCG right in the middle of Melbourne.
-
Sports historian and sociologist John Nauright outlines how sport has a special
centrality in Australian culture (2000).
For
more than 10 minutes after I gave my decision I was the main attraction
in something that bore a cousinly resemblance to the Donnybrook Fair or
a Brooklyn baseball game. That irate bunch of fans hurled bottles with the
labels of every brewery and soft drink manufacturer in greater Sydney, loaded
and unloaded. And did they keep me sidestepping.
- Famous
Australian sportsman Reg 'Snowy' Baker commenting on his controversial decision
as a referee in a boxing match in 1911.
You
know it's going to be a loud weekend when you check into your hotel room
to find complimentary earplugs on the pillow. And so it is. Ballistic cars,
raucous street bands and the ubiquitous Indy Girls – those patient, curvaceous
women who grace the trackside with four days of almost ceaseless smiling.
The Surfers streets are alive by night with dancers, drummers and fire-eaters.
By day, a thousand balconies overlooking the track are crammed with party
people and the occasional spontaneous striptease artiste.
Air
Force jets boom low overhead in a window-rattling fly-past. The Champ cars,
even on the warm-up laps, sound like 1000 enraged chainsaws. We are, it
seems, a noise-loving species. And what triggers this carnival of sound
and fury is a simple four-word phrase, and incantation that stirs the modern
primal urge, the urban tribalism in us: "Gentlemen, start your engines."
- Writer
John Borthwick in describing the Gold Coast Indy car Race (2003).