The Scots case prompted Chanel Contos, a woman I have interviewed and whom I deeply admire – to pen a very strong piece in the Herald, decrying the environment which can produce such appalling alleged behaviour.
Contos has done hugely valuable work highlighting the horror of girls suffering sexual assault because of toxic male environments breeding aggressive entitlement that too often goes completely unchecked.
What caught my attention in her piece this week was her sheeting a good chunk of the blame to rugby, specifically.
“In 1828,” she wrote, “Thomas Arnold became headmaster of Rugby School in England and embedded the game of rugby into the curriculum, as an alternative to his students fighting with local boys or illegally poaching game from private properties. Essentially, Arnold domesticated the violence and then made it elite.”
In the modern day, she wrote, “the relentless pursuit of victory in contact sports at elite boys’ schools reflects and reinforces a broader culture in which a win-at-all costs dominance is celebrated”.
I take most of her point. The win-at-all-costs stuff, particularly at elite schools – with scholarships, performance managers, etc – does go way too far and does breed entitlement. After a week like this, you have to figure we have seriously stuffed up.
For what it’s worth, when I have spoken over the years to schoolboys from elite institutions, one of the points I always make is that they have no right to strut around like they’ve hit a century before lunch, as they were bloody well born on 80 runs. But at least one of the upsides of those physical games is they can actually be levellers, where all of your elitism is left behind as the stuffing is knocked out of you.
The danger is when sport becomes so elite and its practitioners so lauded – with no consistent voices telling them to pull their bloody heads in – that toxic entitlement is the consequence.
Ditto, Aussie Rules and rugby league. But it is not ipso facto the case that young ones playing sport seriously will become bad bastards. Two years ago, the great feminist writer Helen Garner wrote a book called The Season, about watching her 16-year-old grandson Amby play and train for his under 16s Colts side over the course of a season.
She enthused that watching him and his teammates through that long, cold winter allowed her to “glimpse what is grand and noble, and admirable and graceful about men”.
Of her renewed enthusiasm for Aussie Rules, she wrote, “I saw that it’s a kind of poetry, an ancient common language between strangers, a set of shared hopes and rules and images, of arcane rites played out at regular intervals before the citizenry.”
I repeat. That from Helen Garner.
Football of all stripes can still deliver wonderful things and be a great developer of character.
It’s at the very pointy end that the trouble lies thickest. The strangest thing of all is that, until now, the Swans had been one of the best examples in the country of the notion that men could be at once both elite footballers and fine citizens. For that fall, I have no explanation.
Yeah, nah, Novak
Bring it in tight, Novak. I see that you feature in a documentary released this week called Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter that takes aim at Australia for asking you to abide by the same rules as everyone else when it came to regulations designed to limit the spread of COVID.
“It was all political,” you said. “I was made villain more than I ever have before in tennis circles. Now I was a villain of the world … Why should I get a vaccine? It’s my freedom to choose.”
I’ll tell you why, Novak. Because we were trying to keep our population safe.
As a nation, we took the decision to enforce isolation on unvaccinated visitors like you so that people wouldn’t die unnecessarily, and it was because of that very strict approach that Australia had one of the strongest survival rates for our population on any international scale you care to name.
The US death rate was about 3.7 times Australia’s, while Serbia’s death rate was about 2.7 times.
If we had taken the looser approach that America did, we’d have lost 90,000, instead of 25,000 – and that was tragic enough.
Get it? We did things our way, and there are 65,000 of our citizens walking around now who otherwise probably wouldn’t be.
But you insist you had the right to buck that system because you’re a famous tennis player? Yeah, nah.
Now, because there is so much misinformation about COVID now – pushed along by former titans of the media world desperate to find a new audience of nutters – and even this mild recitation of “just the facts, ma’am” will see a tsunami of abuse unleashed – let’s put it another way.
Let’s say another deadly virus is unleashed on the world, carried by means unknown. But let’s say that taking vaccines can slash the death rate, which hits old people with particular savagery.
Let’s say that your native Serbia says to the world, “For our own protection, we will only allow in those who have been vaccinated or you’ll have to be quarantined.”
My question to you is: what would be likely to happen to me if I made it clear I don’t care for your laws, that I’m a famous dickhead, and I insist on my rights to endanger the Serbian population? Would I be allowed in, or not? Would you speak up for me, and say that “people like this Australian dickhead must be let in, because it’s clear that visitors’ rights not to be vaccinated clearly trump Serbia’s right to keep its people safe”?
Novak? We both know the answer to this. In sum, pull yer bloody head in!
Nick can still talk a good game
As far as I know, there’s no word to describe that feeling you get when you hear that someone famous has died and your primary emotion is, “Goodness, I didn’t know they were still alive.”
I feel a version of that when it comes to Nick Kyrgios’s suspension for having tested positive for cocaine. Did you know he was still playing regularly enough on the circuit for that to matter? I did not.
At his best, Kyrgios was as breathtakingly talented a tennis player as ever crossed the white stripes. But, one way or another, his tennis career finished shortly after his appearance in the Wimbledon men’s singles final in 2022.
He’ll be remembered as an electric player of nuclear talent who never fulfilled his potential through a combination of physical ailments and a certain mental fragility. Hopefully, he’ll continue to make a go of it in the world of tennis commentary, where he is among the best.
Wallabies Wild man
Taniela Tupou’s feat of scoring two tries in the Test against Japan last Saturday focused attention on another famous Wallaby from nigh on a century ago: “Wild” Bill Cerutti, who was the last front-rower to achieve the feat when he scored twice against the All Blacks in Auckland in 1931.
Wild Bill is a figure who has long fascinated me. Wallaby historian Matthew Alvarez recounts that Bill, of Italian lineage, was initially an extremely good representative soccer player who came on rugby by happenstance when watching a mate play third grade for the YMCA, only to be offered a game by coach Bill Fry.
“But I don’t know the rules,” Cerutti said.
“Never mind about the rules, son,” Fry replied. “Wherever the ball is, you be there.”
And a star was born.
Cerutti tore in, occasioning one spectator to ask another, within earshot of a journalist: “Who’s that wild bastard racing around out there?”
The journo reported it, and a nickname for the ages was born. Cerutti was loved for, among other things, his sense of humour. Brought up on the mean streets of Newtown, Cerutti attended Newtown Public School. But when, on a tour of South Africa in 1933, he was asked where he was schooled, he replied, “Newtown College!”
His good friend Dr Eden “Dinny” Love overheard the answer and said to him later, “You didn’t go to Newtown College, Bill.”
“No,” replied Wild Bill, “but when you fellas were saying Grammar, Scots College, Riverview College, Shore, Joeys, I thought I’d better make it Newtown College. Sounds pretty good, don’t you reckon?”
It does. Onya, Wild Bill. A century on, we’re still talking about you, and Taniela did you proud on Saturday.
What they said
Upon the news that David Warner had tried to switch seats before being busted in a random breath test for being twice over the legal limit, one of the Twitterati, Matt Wheatley, asked, a bit brilliantly: “Was Cameron Bancroft in the passenger seat?” Think Cape Town.
After Cronulla forward Toby Rudolf avoided having a conviction recorded for “mooning” a park ranger – the mind boggles – he said: “I’m looking forward to getting back out on the field – and keeping my pants up.”
Sydney Swans CEO Matthew Pavlich, addressing the alleged events in the Melbourne hotel which have rightly shaken the AFL to its core: “We’re extremely shocked and disappointed that this has taken place and that the players have found themselves in this situation.”
AFLW great Kate McCarthy in response: “Is there really any surprise that women within the industry experience such horrific misogyny when the role models or people in positions of power like CEOs of clubs use language saying that the ‘players found themselves in this situation’?” Her powerful point turns on the word “found” rather than, say, “got”.
Swans chairman Andrew Pridham, showing great leadership, on suspending the five Swans players for the rest of the season: “The only way we can deal with it is to put our foot down incredibly hard, which we’ve done. To effectively torpedo our season by making a decision such as this tells you how seriously we’re taking this.”
WA Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas jokingly compared the chances of Angus Taylor becoming prime minister to his own unlikely prospects of becoming an AFL coach: “I could be Eagles coach.” With friends like these …
Ian Chappell reaches for the long handle as only he can, when it comes to the Australian Test cricket selectors: “They’ve got themselves into this mess because they haven’t been very brave, and I don’t think they’re very good.”
Iceland Cricket posted on X: “Fun fact: Bangladesh now have the same number of Test wins in Australia as England do in the last 15 years!”
Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto after the win: “I think the Bangladesh team should be given the Player-of-the-Match trophy. Everyone contributed in some way or other.” Congratulations to them all. Their joy exceeded our misery, which means – I know it, you know it, and it has to be said – cricket was the winner!
LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil after they cancelled the year-end Team Championship: “We are reimagining LIV Golf as a fundamentally new league owned by the players and anchored in a sustainable business model, with an evolved fan experience built for the markets where the game is growing fastest across the globe and the support of world-class partners.” The comp is dead – it just hasn’t fallen over yet.
Japan coach Eddie Jones, after Taniela Tupou’s double helping of meat pies in the Test at Townsville: “Tupou, he must have thought there was a free pizza every time he scored a try today. I’ll have to go and see him after the game, I might take him a pizza in.”
Tupou on his amazing return to form, after playing in France: “Because I don’t speak French … I don’t go into the field with a lot of information in my head, so I think the less the more for me. So when I don’t go in there thinking too much, I play a lot better.” More, please. His two tries in a Test were the first time a Wallaby front-rower had achieved that since Wild Bill Cerutti in 1931. (See item.)
Rachael “Raygun” Gunn in her documentary: “Right before the Olympics, I went to my therapist, panicked. She was like, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ ‘The whole world could laugh at me!’ She’s like, ‘Do you think that’s reasonable? ’ I was like, ‘Oh, no’.”
Broncos coach Michael Maguire on the players finding motivation difficult: “I reckon that’s garbage. We’re playing the team next week [Canberra] that’s in the same boat. We’re playing for the Broncos … I normally keep calm at these things. We need to have a good hard look at ourselves.” The answer is simple, Madge. You are an excellent coach, but you wear blokes out. It happens. Move on to a fresh club, and start again. I think Brisbane will let you walk. You’ve lost 11 of the last 12 matches!
Team of the week
Lani Pallister. The Australian – daughter of 1988 Olympian Janelle Elford – took down Katie Ledecky in the 800m at the Pan Pacs, handing the four-time reigning Olympic champion her first international loss in the event.
Bangladesh. Smashed Australia by nine wickets.
Charlie Curnow. The Swans’ high-profile recruit looked to have the Coleman Medal – given to the AFL player who kicks the most goals in the regular season – sewn up. Stop press … Who knows now, with five teammates banned for the rest of the year.
Premier League. Gets under way this weekend.
Billy Slater. Hanging up the clipboard as Maroons coach, after a long and amazingly successful stint.
Johannes Liebmann. The German swimmer broke the men’s 1500m freestyle world record with a time of 14 minutes 26.79 seconds – about 17 seconds faster than Kieren Perkins’ best.
Joshua Báez. The St Louis Cardinal became the first in MLB history to hit home runs in each of his first three career at-bats. I think it is like hitting a double century and a century in your first cricket Test, yes?
Michael Cheika. Cue the inevitable Back to the Future headlines, as he is poised for a return as NSW Waratahs coach. I say again: good move.
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Peter FitzSimons is a journalist and columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X.From our partners
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