Septic Ockers

by MATT QUARTERMAINE

THE Australian summer can mean many things to Australians; sweltering heat, torrential downpours if you're a Queenslander, bodysurfing and sand in your crack. On Australian television in summer it means there are no ratings, programmers take a mysteriously earned break leaving us with second tier programs, endless sport and a promise of better things to come. Across this wide, brown, sunburnt land this summer has seen a festering melanoma of Australians behaving like Americans.

The total capitulation of our culture to ape the yanks has resulted in the adoption of questionable celebratory antics by our sportsmen. Brett Lee, a blonde haired Aussie by all appearances, pumps his fist aggressively into the ground or leaps into the air, when he takes a wicket. I'd like to see more Australian-like celebrations like Greg Chappell taking a blinding catch in the slips and nonchalantly putting the ball in his pocket. If the batsman get a century, don't hold your bat aloft like the lady of the lake and kiss your helmet, take a leaf from Dizzy Gillespie's book when he scored a century against Bangladesh and ride your bat like a horse and gallop in triumph.

Over at the Australian Open, that most American of Australian sportsman, Lleyton Hewitt, has taken the Yank celebration to new obscure heights. Cries of "C'mon" and a Rod-Hull-impression-without-his-emu dominates his playing style. Winners no longer jump the net to shake hands with their defeated opponents, they're too busy soaking up the crowd adulation with Agassi fervour. Many of the female tennis players grunt and scream with each shot, which is supposed to indicate the effort put into the shot, but it is a tactic to hide the sound of the ball coming off the racquet, which may help an opponent.

In the crowd, large groups of Coogee Bay blokes chant and cheer, aping the American one eyed zeal, to back their country's players against the rest of the world, making the tennis unwatchable.

Perhaps if they let a few women into their coterie it wouldn't be so loud and overbearing; maybe they'd politely clap a foreign player's outstanding shot and read a gossip magazine in the breaks.

Perhaps if the Aussie players were more like Pat Rafter, who would cry "sorry mate" when his service ball toss went astray, the crowd would be less inclined to behave with laddish zeal. Maybe more of our tennis players need to be wearing comfy undies.

The win at all costs attitude of the Australian cricketers has seen a backlash by the public. It seems it's not OK to win at all costs, if the cost is the loss of sportsmanship. Being in the crowd or the audience is not being a part of the game; crowds are spectators not participators. Kevin 07 needs to implement his education revolution immediately to teach Australian kids that laconic is not a retired French tennis player and the Aussie wave is used to brush away the flies.

This story first appeared in Big Issue.

23 January 2008

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