They are running out of ticker-tape here in Australia. They keep having to organise welcome home cavalcades for their world champions: women's hockey, netball, Test and one-day cricket, rugby union and league, Davis Cup tennis, even fly fishing!
Each team is greeted handsomely by a Prime Minister keen to bask in any sunshine reflected from their smiling persons. Recently Australian Prime Minister John Howard wrote to Vicki Wilson, captain of the netball world champions, congratulating her team on winning the World Cup in hockey! It was an understandable but not-yet-forgiven gaffe which caused some unkind critics to question whether Australia's top politician and the leader of the Liberal Party knew the first thing about sport.
Apart from the team sports, there are the individual world champions: Karrie Webb in golf, Kathy Freeman on the track, Mark Occhilupo and Layne Beachley in surfing, Kostya Tszyu in boxing, Loretta Harrop in triathlon, Grant Hackett, Ian Thorpe, Michael Klim and Susie O'Neill in the swimming pool. I haven't mentioned sentimental number ones - Greg Norman, Kieren Perkins, Pat Rafter, Mick Doohan and Louise Sauvage come to mind - and there are also world champions in less popular sports like canoeing, sailing, rowing, Ironman, shooting, skiing, 10-pin bowling, squash and lawn bowls.
What has led to this sudden overcrowding of the trophy cabinets in a country with a population of just 18 million people? One possibility is that their elite athletes are putting in an extra effort in the year leading up to a home Olympic Games. Every competitor loves to perform in front of a home crowd, something felt particularly keenly in a country which is so isolated from the main action. Mind you, if the debacle with Olympic tickets is anything to go by, there won't be many ordinary Aussies in the stands to cheer on their champions.
In all of this, by the way, the performance of Colm O'Rourke's Irish lads against the pick of the millionaire Australian Football players was all the more remarkable. It was an achievement that's importance was highlighted by the resounding silence with which it was greeted in the local media.
Australia takes its sport seriously at government level as well as in the pubs and workplaces. Lavishly funded Institutes of Sport have been set up in all capital cities, covering every sport imaginable, some in more than one location. Attendance is by scholarship only, with renewal based on performance.
The programme provided 16 of the 30 players who won the Rugby World Cup, eight of the 11 one-day cricket side, three of the four Davis Cup team, seven of the 12 in the netball squad which beat New Zealand in the World Cup final. And spectacularly, the first two tournaments in this year's Australian golf calendar were won by amateurs from the Victorian Institute of Sport. And we are not talking about beating lowly ranked or has-been pros. In the Australian Open for example, 18-year-old Aaron Baddeley hit off in the last group with no less fearsome a competitor than Colin Montgomerie and finished three shots ahead of him, leaving others like Paul McGinley, Greg Norman, Michael Long and Craig Parry also in his wake.
Psychologists might well interpret this fierce desire to win, or to be associated with winners, as a sign of deep-rooted national insecurity; never mind the quality, feel the muscles, count the trophies. As far as sport and its central role in the national psyche is concerned, Australia has become like the former East Germany without the drugs. Although you occasionally hear about oddly-tasting toothpaste or coffee with an elephant kick in it, the local drug-testing agencies carry on their work with admirable ruthlessness and fiercely-guarded independence.
The glorification of sport in Australia contrasts with the poor treatment of academic research and a user-pays tertiary education system. University students pay for their education through a government loan under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) which they must repay when their annual salary exceeds a certain sum. (That used to be Aus$30,000 until the present government lowered it to about $20,000 - a figure which is actually less than the minimum wage.)
Two young people who start out their married or partnered life after four years of university - say two teachers or a teacher-nurse - will have a combined HECS bill of up to $40,000 before they think of putting a deposit on a house or getting a car loan.
I recently asked students in a Canberra Year eight class of academic high achievers - equivalent to second year in Ireland - to identify some Australian champions in various sports. They loved it, a few minutes stolen from maths, until I asked them who Peter Doherty was. They tried equestrian sports, mountain bike riding, go-kart racing, and it would have gone on until I told them he was not a sports person. That completely amazed them.
Peter Doherty, in actual fact, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1996. He is as Aussie as John Eales or Steve Waugh and even comes from Canberra where he worked at the local university before having to go to the United States to continue his research. When I pointed out to these students that it was sad when young Australians had never heard of their most eminent scientist but could tell me the names and batting averages of their cricketers or the scorers in the rugby World Cup, they looked at me with what I think was pity. "What's he going on about?" you could almost hear them thinking.
You look for signs. For as long as people remember, the leading Australian company was the steel and exploration giant BHP. This year for the first time they have been pushed behind banks and media stocks. The leading company now is Rupert Murdoch's News Limited, the modern equivalent of Barnum and Bailey, as any Manchester United supporter will tell you.
There are other signs. In December, the Australian Senate, with only one dissenting voice, approved a V-8 supercar race around Canberra's parliamentary triangle. So next June the city will be taken over by hot-rod hoons who get their jollies from being around throbbing engines. Bridges and pedestrian walkways will be festooned with signs for Foxtel and Rothmans. And if the thing loses money, the local government will pick up the tab.
There are yet more signs. Australian cricketers, from the days of the Chappell brothers, have been the acknowledged world experts in the ugly art of sledging. Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne of the present squad have pushed boorishness and bad manners so far that their own fans are beginning to turn against them. At a match a few years ago, a middle-order New Zealand batsman whose sister had been killed in a train accident was greeted by close-in fieldsmen discussing the superior record of the Australian rail system. He didn't trouble the scorekeeper for long.
It is of course true that modern sport is a sublimation of war and every tribe wants its own warriors to grind their opponents into the dirt and then carry home the spoils in an imitation of a Roman triumph. The Australians do that well, but instead of showing off their slaves and being garlanded by the adoring populace they are showered with tons of ticker-tape.
If there's any left.
Frank O'Shea, a teacher, can be contacted at donnelly@interact.net.au
