Rugby: What a load of ungrateful Ockers

By Wynne Gray

Jeez, these diggers over here have a smart sense of humour and a keen sense of perspective.

The Wallabies have not been travelling so well lately, but the Aussie swimmers have been going great guns in the Pan Pacific Games.

So, instead of the regulation patriotism pap in the papers, the scribes have been going into verbal meltdown about their swimming team.

Television commentators have been equally zealous in their jingoism, or should that be dingoism.

Usual rugby league caller Ray "Rabbits" Warren at the pool has made Graeme Hughes and Daryl Eastlake sound like calm kindergarten teachers.

Our Susie, Thorpedo, legend, superhuman, magic, sensational - the calls get longer and louder each night in the frenzied flurry of verbal viscosity which makes you wonder what you will hear on the next broadcast.

It makes Chris Handy's rugby trademark "go you good thing" sound very tame.

But Channel 7's telecast tomorrow night in Australia, with Handy, Gordon Bray and Co, will carry the brainstorming nationalism even further.

They have a promo trailer of black and white video footage showing the New Zealanders arriving at Bondi in canoes, sauntering off to cash their dole cheques, playing leapfrog on the beach then a follow up visit to a shop called Thongs R Us.

As sheep bleat and cavort in the background, a happy Wallaby fullback Matthew Burke promises that the Bledisloe Cup and "Shazza," a pink-ribboned sheep, will not be leaving the Wallaby pen tomorrow night.

Why the Wallabies would claim a sheep for their own no one knows, unless she is there for the after-match party. It all makes Kevin Roberts' paint-the-plane-black idea seem almost civilised.

The Ockers have plenty of icons of their own. The stubbies, the tinnie holder, the tee-shirt with the action gusset gut-pouch, the corked hat, a New Zealand-born Minister of Sport, Ros Kelly.

And don't forget their creative advertising teams ... such as the one with Channel 7 - again - and the Daily Telegraph which will help distribute 40,000 loud-hailers tomorrow night at Stadium Australia for the crowd to chant the succesful slogan from a recent competition.

Push them hard, run it wide, Go you Wallabies, kick their hide.

Banjo Paterson will be gnashing his teeth wondering why he didn't come up with those sorts of lyrics.

Then there is the language, the one Australians apparently pronounce properly and New Zealanders mangle.

Newspapers are carrying translation guides for those who are gutting to understend the Kiwi ex cent (sic).

For example: Bugger: Larger, as in the bugger they are the harder they fall. Cheer: A piece of furniture on which you sit to watch the rugby. Beer: Endure or understand, as in I couldn't beer to watch the All Blacks lose on Saturday. And so on.

It might have been more profitable for newspapers to issue directional guides to all the taxi-drivers in Sydney who helped cart the 12,000 strong Kiwi-invasion round the city and suburbs before the big game.

There were many accounts of cabbies (none of them Kiwis) who did not have a clue where they were going or how to get there.

The test is expected to push $18 million into the Australian economy with Qantas putting on an extra 19 flights to get the fans across the Tasman to Sydney.

Maybe some of the coin could be spent on an Australian Institute of Elocution or Gracious Graduation classes.

Just kidding, okay. We wouldn't be able to recognise an Ocker if he dribbled out of both corners of his mouth.

Advance Australia fair, mate.