Australian National Sports - a huge turnaround

In 1999 the media enjoyed inspring the hearts and minds of all sports-mad Australians. They rejoyced when the Wallabies thrashed France and took home the Rugby world cup. Told us we were the greatest country on Earth when we defeated South Africa to take home the cricket world cup. Pat Rafter took out Wimbeldon, our women won the netball world cup......yet the media didn't really make such a deal about that last one.

However it is now 2006. The Aussies lost the Ashes last year, the Wallabies have been dismall for a good few years now, we don't have a star tennis player, and even our women are finding it tough on the court. The only shining lights have been our Socceroos, who had a relatively good world cup this year, and our national basketball teams (both men and women).

So has this huge turnaround been the product of years of arrogance and pride in ourselves? No not really, you see it's never been the Aussie tradition to actually be proud about yourself, we won't even admit we're proud of our own country most of the time.

Is it the fact that our sports stars are ageing and have been around in the same teams for too long? Weeeeelllll that is a possibility, however not the whole truth.

The real reason, the sole factor that has been keeping our past champion teams down lately, is not their own fault, it's not anything they could have prevented from happening. The reason is that those other countries who we have been royally screwing for years, finally found their reason for victory, they WANT TO FINALLY BEAT US.

It's not rocket science and it's not biased at all. If you think about it, our current cricket team, dubbed 'Dad's Army' is not really that old. In fact, I remember when the English toured here back in 1994/95 for the Ashes tour, our media was calling them 'Dad's Army'. And the average age of that team was definitely much older than what ours is now.

There really isn't much else to it, they're not only beating us, they're beating us at our own game. For example let's look at the French national rugby team.

Before I can begin let me give you some fundamentals on Rugby (union, not the made up game of league that only 3 countries in the world play). The game of Rugby is split into 2 types of teams. Northern Hemisphere countries, and Southern Hemisphere countries. Australia, Argentina, New Zealand, South Africa, we all play the same way - the running game. We don't kick the ball as much and like to carry it, holding possession, scoring often with tries and keeping it to us.

The northern hemisphere teams, especially England, love to kick the ball. Kick it long, force the opposition back to their try line and score by kicking goals, not by tries.

However! There has been a change in the years since the last world cup final battle between Australian and England.

The Wallabies have begun to start kicking the ball, not holding it for possession, scoring less tries while England has finally learnt the basics of running with the ball.

France....now the French on the other hand are a smart group of people. Not only are they a northern hemisphere team that PLAYS like a southern hemisphere team, they are the only team that mirrors what the Wallabies were back in 1999 when we beat them in the world cup final!

It's ironic if you think about it. Australia beats france in 99, France adopts (more so) our style of play. England beats Australia in 2003, Australian adopts (to an extent) England's style of play. It's basically the formula that many national teams take on when facing defeat and vowing revenge or victory in the near future.

If you look at France now, they are definitely the favourites to win next year's Rugby world cup. They are simply the fastest, most skilled, and toughest team at the moment. They have all the momentum going into the tournament, and do not lose poorly at all. They will win the world cup next year, that's my early tip and I'm sticking with it.

I've always admired the French team (behind the Wallabies and All Blacks). They have an attitude that suits the game to a tee. They never give up, they run hard, they run fast, they have the weight and the toughness behind them, and they can play both types of the game if they have to alternate.

They are what the Wallabies should be, yet are not, because the team doesn't just need to change tactics, it needs new blood, it needs a star, and it needs to find that winning form that it had 7 years ago.

As for all our other national sports, well the only hope is that there is an overhaul soon. The only hope is that it gets to the point where other countries stop seeing us as the team to beat and finally settle for just playing their best against us. However when we're talking about representing your country in a sport, playing your best won't cut it and you need to win. So it isn't as easy as that. Yet, who knows what the future holds for our national teams. Perhaps our time truly is up and we just have to regroup and go back to the drawing board, build our sports stars from the ground up, focus on fundamentals, take it slowly.

Perhaps we need to rush them in, take risks, make many changes and attempt to intimidate the opposition.

Whatever the path our teams take, we have to trust that they'll make the right choices. We do have some of the best sports and training facilities in the world here and we need to make the most of them. The future is always uncertain, yet we're still a young country and we're still only finding our feet in the international arena, anything is possible.