WHAT is Australia good at?
On a train ride in The Netherlands recently I found myself in conversation with a slightly inebriated Dutch labourer called Ted (his real name pronounced in Dutch sounded like a lawnmower that wouldn't start so I just called him Ted).
Speaking in the honest, and slightly piss-taking way that Aussie football fans have now come to expect of the Dutch, the man asked me what are Australians good at. Sport, I replied without hesitation. "I didn't think you were very good at sport at all," said Ted. "What sports are you good at?"
As Australians you would understand that the patriotic blood was thumping on my ears at the effrontery of this question.
I had never before been questioned as to Australia's pre-eminence in sporting terms and in my travels people have often congratulated me for Australia's accomplishments on the sporting arena as if it was a personal achievement of mine.
Without a schooner to smash over his head and a pub full of Australians to back me up however I found that I had to rely on my own wit and intelligence to answer his question. This was unfortunate because I don't possess these qualities in abundance.
Well umm, Rugby I replied. I thought the South Africans were the best at rugby said Ted. Yes I said, they are at the moment but we were good once. Ok then cricket, we're good at cricket. Aren't the English the only other country that play cricket and they beat you at it anyway? India plays as well I said, so that's half the world's population covered but ok maybe we did lose to the English.
I thought about explaining this game called Rugby League that was played world-wide in Northern England and Eastern Australia but at this point it occurred to me that Ted knew a bit more about Australia's recent sporting failures than he was letting on in the perceived innocence of his initial question. He would probably be quick to point out the Kiwis are the current world champions of this game. So I turned my argument to the game the Europeans know best.
We did very well at the Football World Cup you know. We made it out of the group stages and would've gone to the quarter finals were it not for the Italians diving in the box.
This last statement always sounds better in my head but comes out sounding like a weak excuse for our failure. It got me thinking though. If we're suddenly not good at sport, like we are now, then what is our national identity? The Federal Government has recently launched a campaign derisively labelled 'Who the Bloody Hell Are We' by the media. The government want a tourism slogan that will describe who we are to the rest of the world and are going to spend $20 million to find it.
$20 million sounds like a lot of money to spend on a crappy t-shirt slogan but in launching the campaign Simon Crean noted that among Australia's achievements are ten Nobel prizes. This is the sort of thing that I need be informed of so I can defend and uphold Australia's achievements to drunken labourers on Dutch trains.
So perhaps $20 million is worth spending to educate idiots like me. Better still they could spend $20 million on importing Dutch Football coaches to ensure that we win the next Football World Cup and hence maintain our current national identity as sporting over-achievers. Come to think of it, didn't we beat The Netherlands in a football match last year? Hey Ted!
Alas, due to the speed of my thought processes (read: as fast as that broken lawnmower I mentioned before) the train had already stopped at Ted's station and he was gone. That would make a good tourism slogan though "We thrashed Holland 2-1". I'm going to print it on a t-shirt and wear it next time I'm in Amsterdam, just in case I bump into Ted.
