Ranting Wombat: “The Australian Sporting Illness”

Oh my, but this one is going to get me in some trouble.

I absolutely hate Australia.  There I said it.  Woah there, put down the shotguns and pitchforks people, I don’t mean that I hate Australia the country; far from it, I’m as patriotic as the next man, and damn proud to call myself Australian.

No, the Australia I hate is the sporting team Australia.  Not for any particular sport mind you, but just in general.  One thing I have always loved about this country is our relaxed attitude towards life; we take things as they come.  We may never bow to those who try to walk over the top of us, but our toughness is expressed through a sense of decency and a laconic sense of humour, rather than the tasteless boasting or over the top displays many other nations use to express themselves on the world stage.

Times have changed for the Australian sporting teams however.  Once upon a time our cricketers (for example) were considered to be gentlemen playing a gentlemen’s game, albeit ones with a little bit of a sense of humour; over the years however, we have become known as the side which is the king of sledging other players, and worse still the sledges aren’t even the intelligent ones from a couple of decades ago.  These days we get random swearing and the occasional piece of racism passing as wit, and it reflects so damn poorly on us that many teams hate to play us; it’s a sad state of affairs where those teams who manage to beat us are celebrating more because they shut us up then because we’re a good, challenging side.

The same kind of thing is true of rugby league (my chosen game), and it saddens me immensely.  After maintaining for years that players who abandoned the Australian game in favour of more cash in England should not be selected into the national side, suddenly we need a centre and boom! Jamie Lyon is playing for Australia despite not having even officially joined his Australian club yet (and despite the multitude of better, more deserving centres in the national game).  Players who have committed offences ranging from illegal drug use (Willie Mason) to sexually harassing an innocent girl (Mark Gasnier, the world’s most overrated player, but that’s another story…), have nonetheless gone on to continue representing their countries, despite there being a whole bunch of other, more deserving players willing to step up who aren’t criminals. 

Hell, speaking of criminals, take a look at the most recent case with this D’arcy bloke qualifying for the Olympics and deciding to celebrate by mauling a fellow swimmer.  This wasn’t some minor punch up; this guy wrecked the face and smashed the jaw of someone who reportedly did nothing more than politely ask Nick D’arcy to keep it down a bit.  You’d probably expect condemnation by the swimming community and the media at large for this abhorrent behaviour wouldn’t you?  Well barring Kieren Perkins saying he should be in gaol, everyone else involved has made comments ranging from “he’s young, it was just a mistake, let him go to Beijing” through to “If Hitler could win us Olympic gold, he’d be goose-stepping along with an Australia flag around his shoulders” (well ok, I’m the one who said the last one).

What makes the whole thing so tragic is that I don’t think the Australian public really expects our athletes to be massively successful and constantly dominant.   Sure we’re used to a certain level of competence at most sports, and we expect our teams to at least be competitive, but I doubt there will be a general boycott of rugby union simply because Australia never wins games anymore, for example, and I’m sure that most people would appreciate the effort of playing hard and fair over that of winning at any cost.

Instead, I think that the media has taken it upon themselves to really develop and drive home the ‘winners-only’ mentality which now infects sport in this country; I mean, let’s face it, bad news sells more papers than good news, and these days anything that isn’t a substantial win is well and truly bad news.

For it to stop we need the people of Australia to stand up and demand a return to the good old days of sportsmanship and rewarding those who truly deserve it.  Representing your country is an honour and a privilege, and should be about more than who can throw a ball the fastest or sink the most baskets.  Bring back the days of players being chosen based solely on their form, skill, and their behaviour on and off the field; reward for merit, not because you helped win a game three years ago but have otherwise been a collosal turd ever since.

Maybe we’ll lose a few more games or not win as much gold, but at least we’ll have the right to hold our heads high internationally and at home. I for one don’t want myself or my country represented by someone that could assault a colleague and cause grievous bodily harm unprovoked; even if they win us the damn Olympic Games.  

    

- The Evil Wombat

    

‘Scoundrel’ by Bernard Cornwell - Book Review

The standalone paperback novel is a strange beast.  Most of my reading time is taken up by multi-book, a-thousand-pages-a-pop fantasy epics, so tangling with a 300 page real world thriller is peculiar to say the least.  Thankfully, I’m already a huge fan of Bernard Cornwell due to his work on the amazing Sharpe series (which I heartily recommend to everyone), and I figured that if anyone could squeeze a great story into such a short book, it would be him.

This action/mystery/thriller/boating-enthusiast-guide (wha?) novel revolves around the character of Paul Shanahan, an American maritime surveyor and former IRA arms dealer, who is currently living in Belgium, and takes place at the outbreak of the first Gulf War.  Got all that?  Well it soon gets even more confusing as Paul’s tale unfolds, and we learn of a love lost, a criminal past, dealings with Palestinian and Syrian terrorists, plots to shoot down passenger jets, and possible connections to the CIA.

Cornwell has managed a couple of remarkable things with Scoundrel.  The first is that he has managed to craft a series of characters who are quite likeable despite all being, well, scoundrels with shady pasts and definite shades of grey in the morality department.  What is most remarkable about this yarn, however, is that it is told entirely from the first person perspective of Shanahan, and yet still manages to deliver numerous surprises and thrills along the way.

The character of Paul Shanahan is infinitely more complex than you first realise, and Cornwell manages to masterfully cast doubt on whether he’s a good guy, a bad guy, a murderer, a terrorist, a hero, or just plain selfish at any given moment; an incredibly difficult feat when it’s Shanahan ‘telling’ us the story from his own perspective.

The story itself is hard to describe without doing a great deal of spoiling, but essentially revolves around an arms deal and a great deal of gold which presents a tempting target for theft.  In the process of all of this Shanahan repeatedly bumps heads with people from his past life, particularly members of the IRA and various terrorist groups, and it soon becomes a race to see who can out-betray the other party.

The pacing of the story is quite good, with things starting at a relatively slow boil before going pretty nuts at the end of the book.  The story twists and turns numerous times, leading the reader through the past life of Paul Shanahan in the context of current events, and manages to paint a very convincing picture of the world of terrorism and those who live well and truly outside the law.  Unfortunately there are a few characters who are introduced into the piece as being fairly important, but the why of this is kind of rushed due to the limitations of the size of the book; I don’t really hold that against Cornwell, since not every novel can have a thousand pages to develop minor characters like the Wheel of Time does, but it is a criticism nonetheless.

One part of the novel that did irritate me a little was the occasional ‘cheap’ twist that was thrown out there to the reader; while the vast majority of the plot was masterfully concocted, there were a few moments where the surprise felt forced by the first person perspective (”I grabbed the secret weapon I hid four chapters ago without telling the reader”).  These kinds of things were few and far between, however, and every novel written from the first person suffers these kinds of limitations; it’s the trade off for the increased emotional connection readers feel with a character that is talking directly to them.

Really, there are a great many things to like about this novel, and the few minor criticisms are pretty paltry in comparison.  At only 300 words, anyone that doesn’t struggle to read the letters to the editor is Playboy will probably manage this one pretty quickly, and if nothing else it’s worth picking up to read what comes across as an authentic look at terrorism, the Irish struggle, and the shady world of espionage as seen through the eyes of a dangerous, sometimes amoral, but entirely likeable old scoundrel.

   

I rate Scoundrel: 4/5

      

- Tim Sweeney