Cheering for the Brits

I have a confession to make. I have a soft spot for the English. They are polite and well mannered and they think we Irish are great fun altogether. They are also really good at queuing which is something they could teach to the Australians. They think ordering beer at a busy bar counter is an Olympic sport here.  The English are so good in fact; that I think every house should have one. Preferably as a butler. They make really great butlers, as Downton Abbey has proven to the world.

I’ve denied these Anglophile feelings for a long time and kept them hidden under the Irish Republican (non violent wing) persona that I have presented to the world. This was easy to do when I lived in Ireland as I was presented daily with the little England jingoism of the British media and the drum banging rhetoric of Irish Nationalism. Now that I’m 17,000km from the epicentre of that debate, I find that I have a fresh outlook towards my old neighbours.

I used to support two teams. Ireland and anyone playing England. When it came to World Cups, I was actually happy if Ireland didn’t qualify and England did. If we were there, I would have only one team to support with little chance of success. If England were there, I had thirty one teams to support and this has resulted in me being successful in every World Cup since 1966.

It took a while for my old prejudices to fade away and they haven’t completely disappeared. Football remains a sore point. Try as I might, the sight of John Terry belting out “God Save the Queen” before a match is enough to make me scream passionately for the opposition. Even if they are the Pol Pot 11.

Other sports offered a gentler introduction into supporting England. My first leaning towards the dark side was in cricket. Maybe it’s because the best Irish players end up playing for England or maybe it’s because they used to be pathetic underdogs. But I was caught up in the Freddie Flintoff revolution in 2005 and found myself cheering for them against Australia.

This support has grown since I moved to Australia, particularly during the Ashes series, because the Aussie media is even more obnoxious on this subject than the BBC ever were. In fact I now find myself supporting any team playing Australia in pretty much every sport. The media are at fault again. When it comes to sport, Australians think humility is how people with a lisp describe hot and sticky weather.

The recent Olympics were a case in point. Channel 9 procured the rights here to show the games on free to air TV. I say free, but this ignores the cost of having to watch ads every ten minutes. And not even funny ads like you see during the Superbowl on American TV, but the same two dumb ads for a vitamin company and a Supermarket which were repeated ad nausem for the duration of the games.

Australia a multi-cultural country; with people from all points of the globe. But you wouldn’t think this from watching Channel 9. During the opening ceremony, their highlight was not Danny Boyle’smagnificent pageant but the arrival of the Australian team into the stadium. They followed the team the whole way around the track and then onto the weird little hill where the athletes assembled.

This meant that when they returned to the parade, Ecuador was coming in (probably with Julian Assange hidden amongst them).

Apparently, Australians of Austrian or Belgian background have never seen their home countries enter an Olympic stadium.

Thankfully, I have Foxtel who offered 9 channels during the games and even though they were also Australian focused, their breath of coverage meant that they occasionally had to show athletes from other countries. Due to the time difference between here and London, I mainly got to see events held in the early afternoon in the UK. This tended to be outdoor stuff like equestrian (what is that horse dancing nonsense by the way?), sailing and rowing.

This led me to realise that there are a lot of posh sports at the Olympics which I guess is not surprising when they the games were reinvented by a baron. Charlie Brooker made a very pertinent point in the Guardian. He said that you would need your own castle and grounds to practice for these sports. It seems that Ireland punches above its weight in these upper class endeavours, which shows that the death of the Celtic Tiger hasn’t impacted on those who want to own a boat or an expensive horse.

We also punch at every weight in boxing and like everyone else of Irish heritage I rejoiced in the victory of Katie Taylor, even if there were only 11 competitors in her competition.

We also won 3 other medals in boxing, two of them by fighters from Belfast. This led to some questions at work because Australians can’t understand how boxers from Northern Ireland can win medals for Ireland while rowers from that part of the world were winning medals for Team GB. I tried to explain the dual citizenship outcomes of the Good Friday agreement but it was met with glazed expressions. I come from a unique country that can compete at international sport in a different manner to how it is represented in international law.

But perhaps it’s not that unique. My new friends, the English, are similarly muddled. They compete under that name in Football and Rugby. But under the name of Team GB at the Olympics. Even this is misleading as they are really Team GB and Northern Ireland. Or Team United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But TUKOGBNI doesn’t really roll off the tongue.

But congrats to them anyway, I loved the games and realise now that I have more in common with the English than any other country. But don’t tell anyone. I’m still getting over the shock of this.

Auskicks is for beginners

Kyle's Dad relocated from Sydney to Melbourne eight years ago, just before Kyle was born. Conscious that his son would need an Australian Rules football team to support in this AFL mad city, Kyle's Dad settled on the Sydney Swans, if only to imbibe his son with a connection to the city of his parents.

As with nearly all kids in Melbourne, Kyle was desperate to join up for Auskicks when he turned five. Sponsored by the AFL, it's a training ground for boys and girls that introduces them to the game and allows them to run around a park on a Saturday morning like headless chickens, while their parents sip lattes on the sidelines and wince at the lack of talent displayed by their offspring.

It was all going well until Sydney won a Friday match against Collingwood. Only one game is played on Friday night and the tradition at Auskicks the next morning is to call up the kids wearing the shirts of Friday's night’s victors to receive the acclaim of all the other kids and to belt out their team's song with gusto. Kyle had received a red and white Sydney shirt the previous Christmas which he wore with pride every Saturday morning. Unfortunately, Sydney are not a popular team in Melbourne and Kyle found himself alone in his swan's shirt in front of what was mainly Collingwood supporters, who were not best pleased at being reminded of their Friday night debacle.

Kyle learned an important lesson that day. It might be cool to support a team from a far off city, but if you're going to carry it off, you'd better remember the words to the team song. Kyle stumbled on the second line, partly from a lack of practice (Sydney weren't winning a lot at the time) but mainly from stage fright brought upon by the angry stares of fifty, feral eight year olds.

Jimmy was an English kid and he had a different problem. His parents had relocated to Melbourne when Jimmy was six, after watching a travel show on BBC that portrayed Australia as a paradise of beaches, BBQs and tanned fit people. Unfortunately, his dad was a city planner and there is not much call for that line of work in the sun kissed parts of Australia. The only job he could get was with the Victorian State Government and he found himself living in a part of the world which looked like his native Manchester, albeit a tad warmer.

By the time the family moved here, Jimmy was already a dab hand at football (or soccer as they call it in Australia) and he found it hard to adapt to a game where you are allowed to use your hands. To onlookers unfamiliar with his background, it seemed that Jimmy had a disability that prevented him from bending down.  Auskicks, like any other sport enjoyed by eight year olds, involves pretty much everyone chasing after the ball. The only exceptions are those slightly introverted kids who are forced into team sports by their parents but who would much prefer to stand in the middle of the pitch and stare at passing clouds.

When the pack of kids would reach the ball, twenty pairs of tiny, delicate hands would reach down to pick it up. Jimmy however, would stand erect and without any care for the fingers in the vicinity, would boot the ball as far as he could. This would draw howls of protest from the watching parents, but an approving nod from the coach who liked the see game flowing. Except on those occasions when Jimmy booted the ball in the wrong direction, which is an occupational hazard in Auskicks, where it often seems as though both teams are kicking in the same direction.

Girls are allowed to take part, at least until they are ten years old when the AFL shuffles them into female only competitions which are ignored by media and the football authorities. Before the reach the ripe old age of ten, they are allowed to muck in with the boys and they are generally successful. Girls tend to develop more quickly than their male counterparts and it’s pretty common to see an eight year old girl burst through a pack of timid boys with pony tail waving furiously behind.

Kyle, Jimmy and all the girls who play Auskicks share one dream. They hold out for the opportunity to play at the MCG. Not as adult professionals but as part of the half time entertainment during an AFL game. Every week, hundreds of Auskick children are dressed up in the uniforms of the teams playing that day and they take part in a ten minute game of football during the interval, watched by their proud and adoring parents and thousands of uninterested supporters. Occasionally the crowd will cheer if a kid in their team’s colours kicks a goal, but only if they are watching at the time. This is rare as most football supporters in Australia spend halftime getting as drunk as possible or in the toilet dealing with the unfortunate by product of getting drunk. Getting a meat pie is also a popular half time activity, if you’re willing to queue with the other 40,000 fans with the same idea.

100,000 kids take part in Auskicks every year and if they don’t go on to be AFL stars, it at least gets them out of the house for a couple of hours every Saturday morning, when they could be at home watching TV or playing video games like eight year olds in the rest of the world. This mass participation is part of the reason why Australians are so good at sport (not that the current Olympic medal would back this up). They get them young and pluck out the ones with talent for hot housing and development. Kyle might go on to become a sprinter or a swimmer. At least in those sports, he won’t be expected to remember any team songs.