You’ll recall that wonderful Jerry Seinfeld riff, in a stand-up routine: “Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify, because the players are always changing, the team can move to another city. You’re actually rooting for the clothes, when you get right down to it. You know what I mean? You are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city. Fans will be so in love with a player, but if he goes to another team, they boo him. This is the same human being in a different shirt; they hate him now. Boo! Different shirt! Booooo!”
With national teams though, you’re cheering more than just their clothes. Ideally, you want to see the green and gold and immediately connect because the way this team carry themselves, the character they display, the way they play, the unbreakable bond between them, embodies the very values we identify with, the ones we want to see triumph.
As discussed last week, the actions of the Diamonds and Donnell Wallam displayed exactly that. Wallam, a Noongar woman, had the courage to say she’d rather not wear on her uniform the name of the man who publicly advocated wiping out an entire swathe of her people – and the Diamonds immediately supported her.
Yes, it quickly buried them all in a vicious culture war but, wonderfully, their week included Wallam on her debut scoring the winning goal for the Diamonds against England with seconds left on the clock.
IllustrationCredit: John Shakespeare
Through the whole thing the Diamonds demonstrated values and character that make most people want to support them even more. They were us, at our best – or at least what we can aspire to be.
Ditto, this week the Socceroos, about to head to the World Cup in Qatar, displayed values and character we can be fiercely proud of.
As detailed in an exclusive by the Herald‘s Vince Rugari, they “become the first FIFA World Cup side to release a collective statement of protest against Qatar’s human rights record, calling for ‘effective remedy’ for migrant workers and the decriminalisation of same-sex relationships.”
As this column has noted, Qatar’s record on all of the above has been disgraceful, and it was outrageous they were awarded hosting rights for the Cup in the first place.
The easy thing for our blokes to do in the face of it was keep their heads down, say nothing, and the hell with what happens to the political prisoners, the gays and specifically the migrant workers who’ve lost their lives in their thousands building Qatar’s infrastructure in the last decade since being awarded the Cup.
But the mighty Socceroos didn’t. They spoke up – and as Vince noted were the first of all the teams attending the World Cup to do so. Their collective video not only shone a light where it is desperately needed, it showed our blokes are a whole lot more than just a bunch of young men skilled at kicking around a bag of wind.
See, Jerry? We can genuinely cheer these sons of the Southern Cross for a whole lot more than just the clothes they wear. Bravo, the lot of them. And you Diamonds.
The signs are good. This rising sporting generation of ours is really something.
No awards for hanging onto Griffin
In the business of story-telling the most prized of all is the multicoloured thread, the single tiny detail from the entire saga which tells the whole. If you can isolate it, pull it out, examine it and hold it up to the light, you can get a fair-reckoning of the full fabric. Weave it into your portrait, and you are half-way home.
Rarely in sport have I seen a better example than the St George Illawarra Dragons’ end-of-season awards night earlier this month when of the 30 players on the roster, just three turned up.
Coach Anthony Griffin has obviously lost more than just the dressing room at the Dragons.Credit:Getty
Yes, all kinds of reasoning was offered – players away on holiday, at the World Cup, didn’t have enough notice, etc – but, seriously, do you need to know anything else? You want to have a chance for next season, pride in the jersey, belief in each other, love of the club, desire to put the body on the line for all of the above and …
And what? Just three of 30 blokes turn up for the end of season do? Mate, it’s over. That is the thread that tells the whole. Back when Anthony Griffin was appointed Dragons coach, this column made several unkind remarks about how it was never going to work, and in that thread you have the proof.
It is a club in free-fall and the incoming chair can either move Griffin on now, or wait until a few matches into the season when disaster has already befallen them. I repeat, when you only get three out of 30 at your awards night, the coach has lost a lot more than just the dressing room. You have an entire culture that is shot through. It’s over.
Get Des.
Windies slide a blow for world cricket
Sorry, what? The once mighty West Indies didn’t even make the Super 12 part of the T20 World Cup? The side that once boasted the biggest hitters in world cricket, dispatched to the far pavilions whence they came, with the likes of Viv Richards, Brian Lara and Chris Gayle?
Their demise from Test cricket is regrettable enough, but it was still thought they could be a power in the “hit-and-run” version of the game. But this? They won the T20 World Cup in 2012 and then again in 2016. In six years they’ve gone from the headline acts to the footnotes of the tournament.
There is only one upside I can think of. Because it is T20, no one will remember the first thing about it in a fortnight anyway. But it really is an enormous problem for cricket when the one-time jewel in the global cricketing crown – the most entertaining side of the lot – is, we must face it, essentially no more.
New concussion study to get legal wheels turning
I know smoking causes cancer. You know smoking causes cancer.
But it was only when – with the tobacco companies fighting them all the way – smoking was proved to cause cancer that things changed and the consumption of tobacco was restricted. With that proof of causation – and with the tobacco companies still fighting them all the way – the legislative wheels were put in motion around the globe to eventually restrict where cigarettes could be sold, how they could be advertised, where people could smoke. And the proof allowed victims of lung cancer to take legal action against those who, despite knowing the proven dangers of cigarette smoking, wilfully exposed their employees to it, etc.
This week, on the issue of whether or not repetitive concussions and sub-concussive impacts from the football codes causing CTE – the condition associated with early Alzheimers, etc – there was an enormous breakthrough. It is that, as reported by The Guardian, “the US National Institutes of Health has formally acknowledged a causal link between repeated blows to the head and the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) … That position is at odds with the one held by the Concussion in Sport Group, which is supported by Fifa, World Rugby and the IOC, among others.”
Get it? What it means is that all the nonsense arguments put against the simple notion that rattling your brain against your skull too many times is likely going to damage your brain are discredited. As the most respected body in the field, the NIH has made it official. It does damage your brain.
The legal wheels will start to turn more quickly accordingly. It doesn’t mean that the football codes will be shut down. Smoking wasn’t.
It does mean that more legal parameters will be put in place, soon, and those who push employees into activities outside of those parameters will be ever more exposed legally. This will be a new, safer era of all the football codes. But they must quickly adapt to it, now, or die.
What They Said
Statement from Hancock Prospecting re netball: “Hancock and Roy Hill do not wish to add to Netball’s disunity problems, and accordingly Hancock has advised Netball Australia that it has withdrawn from its proposed partnership effective immediately.”
Andrew Gaze on SEN ‘The Run Home’: “[Gina Rinehart] could have apologised for her father’s comments, distanced herself from them and told us that she doesn’t believe those things. Instead, she pulled her money out. I am not blaming Gina Rinehart for her father’s comments, but what I don’t understand is why she won’t very publicly disassociate herself from them.”
Anthony Mundine on Lang Hancock’s comments of 40 years ago: “Anyone that thinks like him, speaks like him, believes what he believes, is detrimental to humankind. Donnell should stay strong and stay staunch in her beliefs.”
Donnell Wallam, on scoring the winning goal for the Diamonds, against England, with seconds to go in the match, on her debut: “It’s just really special and it’s been a long time coming. I hope I make everyone proud out there.”
Tennis star Simona Halep on testing positive for the banned substance Roxadustat: “Today begins the hardest match of my life: a fight for the truth.”
Erstwhile Australian cricket captain Tim Paine, in his new book, ‘The Price Paid: A story of life, cricket and lessons learned’, on the key meeting which saw him resign after the sexting scandal: “They’d held a gun to my head. I couldn’t go on without their support …”
Serena Williams: “I am not retired. I still haven’t really thought about [retirement].”
John McEnroe on his relationship with tennis, before winning his first Wimbledon: “If I win it then I could really tell them to f… themselves. If I ever win this f…ing tournament, I’m never coming back.” After winning his first Wimbledon: “This pressure I put on myself, this burden — was that moment worth it?” After winning Wimbledon for the second time: “I’m the greatest tennis player that’s ever played … at this point. Why does it not feel that amazing?”
Ben Simmons unimpressed with the NBA referees: “It’s not a foul, but it was bullshit. It’s frustrating because it’s late game, fourth quarter, it’s a physical, close game. It’s the NBA. It’s not college. It’s not high school. Some people are going to get hit, some people bleed; it’s basketball.”
Ian Roberts to Geoff Parkes in ‘The Roar’on the NRL’s lack of serious action on concussion: “It’s total arrogance. It’s almost like they’re waiting for someone to call their bluff. Everyone knows the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, but until the NRL gets properly called out on it, they’re still pretending that everything is normal. Well, it isn’t.”
Roberts: “Remember when we were young and we were shown the blackened lungs of a smoker, to warn us of the dangers? We should be out there showing what actually happens to the brain when we don’t respect it.”
England LGBT+ fan group 3Lionspride responds to the UK Foreign Secretary – whoever it is this week – telling LGBT+ British supporters to compromise and “be respectful of the host nation” while in Qatar : “To insinuate that an acceptable and proportionate safety measure is to ‘be less queer’ forces us back into the closet and risks mental health crises.”
Rory McIlroy on LIV and Greg Norman: “He has basically found people to fund his vendetta against the PGA Tour. I think he hides behind ‘force for good’ and all that stuff … this has been his dream for 30 years and he has finally found people who can fund that dream.”
Kanye West on podcast ‘Drink Champs’: “I can say antisemitic things and Adidas can’t drop me. Now what? Now what?” Now what, is the podcast was deleted, and Adidas dropped him, cold as a spud.
Team of the Week
Donnell Wallam. After the week from hell, scored the winning goal for the Diamonds against England, with seconds to go in the match. On her debut. Let me hear you say RAH!
Wallaroos. Take on England on Sunday (11.30am AEDT) in the World Cup quarter-finals.
Wallabies. Meanwhile, the men are taking on Scotland at Murrayfield on Sunday morning (3.30am AEDT).
Ireland. Beat England in the T20 World Cup.
Ben Simmons. Back in the NBA after a year out and off to a patchy start. He will hopefully come good, but right now he is unrecognisable from the player of four years ago.
Melbourne Cup. It used to be the race that stopped the nation. These days it feels like the race that stops some of the nation.
Sam Kerr. Scored four in Chelsea’s Champions League win over Vllaznia.
Twitter: @Peter_Fitz
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