blogging it real

Enjoy it while we can folks. A win in the cricket (as likely as house prices in Auckland falling) would probably cause another sporting orgamism in this household.

End of the world is nigh in Oz
30 November 2005
By GREG TOURELLE

SYDNEY: The Australians are struggling to cope. Life is not the same. New Zealand are world champions at rugby league and top of the planet in rugby union.

Soccer is taking a hold, after the Socceroos won the right to play in next year's World Cup, but the sporting world has ended for many footy fans.

The Wallabies' capitulation on their northern hemisphere tour was predictable enough, and an All Blacks' grand slam rubbed it in.

But the Aussie public wasn't prepared for the Kiwis' win in the Tri-Nations rugby league test final.

The Kiwis' 24-0 was an "apocalyptic vision", writes Daily Telegraph columnist Ray Chesterton.

He can't cope with all the sporting losses, including England's Ashes triumph in the cricket and UK boxer Ricky Hatton's win over Kostya Tszyu earlier this year.

"It destroys nature's balance for New Zealand and England to win at sport," wrote Chesterton.

"Australian sports lovers are on life support, awaiting recovery, but there is little joy ahead. Just an empty grey panorama of sporting devastation."

Perhaps with his tongue making a huge dent in his cheek, Chesterton asks how a country "where being adventurous is rolling up your trousers past your kneecaps to go paddling" beat Australia.

He was talking about England.

"And New Zealand? How could we lose to a country that can swing the poi, but have no poise."

He then veered closer to the truth.

"The whole edifice Australia established over decades of self-congratulations, lies splintered, eaten by the white ants of our smugness."

The Sydney Morning Herald tried to look on the bright side, headlining an editorial: All Is Not Lost.

The newspaper said the Australian 0-24 loss to the Kiwis would breathe new life into international rugby league and the game was in a healthy state domestically.

"There will be Kangaroo victories in the future and they will be all the sweeter for this drubbing."

As for the rugby, the Herald said it seemed that nothing less of a purge would do.

"If (Wallabies coach) Eddie Jones and (captain) George Gregan are sacked, it will be a sad end to two illustrious sporting careers. but it is possible to cry too hard into our beer over the Wallabies' lacklustre performance of late. This is, after all, sport. Performance cycles wax and wane: it is what makes for genuine competition."

And the paper warned that Australia were in dire form two years before the 1999 World Cup, but recovered to win it.

The Australian newspaper said Jones and Gregan had to go.

But in recalling Gregan's past achievements, the paper appeared to stumble: "At 32, his present performance palls against his great achievements, especially the memory of the try-saving tackle in the July 2000 Bledisloe Cup when he stopped the seemingly unstoppable Jona (sic) Lomu, who was on his way to score what would have been New Zealand's fourth unanswered try."

There may have been such a tackle, but the tackle everyone remembers is the one Gregan pulled off to jolt the ball out of Jeff Wilson's hands in Sydney, 1994.

As for dropping the h off Jonah. Sporting grief will do that to you.