Nick Cain: Lions tour? Aussies couldn’t give S***!

On the eve of the Brumbies game there was a Wallabies v Lions gala dinner held in the great hall of the Australian Parliament in Canberra. There was plenty of Australian rugby royalty there, including Wallaby and Brumbies legends George Gregan, Joe Roff, Stephen Larkham, Owen Finegan, Andrew Walker and Ben Darwin.
I was on a table with Greg Growden, one of Australia‘a best known rugby writers who is currently working for ESPN scrum.com, and we introduced ourselves to fellow diners, who included three Aussie MP’s.
That was virtually the only conversation we had with the three members, whose disinterest in Rugby Union was matched only by their disregard for anyone outside the political ivory tower that they inhabit.
They didn’t engage any further with us, and the only conversation they had in their corner of the table that touched on sport was some babble about Australian Rules.
They did manage to summon a little interest in the proceedings when Tony Abbott, the leader of the Liberal opposition who is strongly tipped to become the next Premier of Australia in a few months, gave the opening speech.
Abbott played loose-head prop for Sydney University and, as a Rhodes scholar, for Oxford University in the early Eighties, and was also Oxford’s heavyweight boxing champion.
Abbott recounted how his boxing and rugby careers merged.
Having won all four of his bouts, knocking out his Cambridge opponent twice, both times in the first round, as well as stopping the Sandhurst and Royal Marines champions, he soon found himself in the role of ‘enforcer’ for the rugby side.
However, Abbott said this proved more difficult than he anticipated when, playing against Richmond, he was about to take up the cudgels after one of his fellow front-rowers was punched. “The next thing I knew was I was staring up at the sky with a sore head,” was his memory of the episode.
Next on the Oxford fixture list was Gloucester, with the formidable England tight-head, Phil Blakeway, opposite. When a punch was thrown at the first scrum at Kingsholm it was, said Abbott, at that stage he decided his Oxford team-mates would have to learn to look after themselves.
Hopefully, Abbott will get his gloves back on to fight for the Rugby Union code because what is clear from this Lions tour is that it is up against entrenched and often bigoted opposition, with the other football codes – especially traditional rivals like Australian Rules and Rugby League – happy to perpetuate the myth that it is a toff’s game, and push it into the sidings.
The Australian sporting landscape has also changed with the new kid in town, round ball football, making huge inroads over the last decade.
This was evident earlier this week when the Socceroos’ qualification for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, after beating Iran 1-0 in Sydney in front of 82,000 fans, dominated the sporting airwaves.
The population of Australia is a modest 23 million, and the rise of soccer has made League and Australian Rules so twitchy that their pet channels and papers bombard sports fans night and day with coverage, much of it lacking substance.
The reality is that they are sports that exist in an Aussie bubble and have little or no global presence, but they have still ensured that the 2013 Lions have not been top of the sporting agenda in Australia as they were in South Africa four years ago.
This even extended to a morning news sports round-up on a national TV channel failing to mention the Wallaby line-up for the first Test against the Lions, or broadcast anything relating to the tour.
Although the tickets for all matches have been close to sell-outs, the national profile given to the tour has been disappointing.
Part of the problem is that rather than accentuate the historical depth of the sporting rivalry, as happens in cricket, the Lions message is diluted.
This was highlighted when the channel broadcasting the Tests ran an ad for the Lions-Australia series which had footage of England playing in purple, and of France in blue, with the Wallaby captain James Horwill exhorting green-and-gold fans to support his side against “The Old Enemy”. Oui, oui!
The beauty of the Lions is that they are a reminder to Australians that the world of sport does not stop at their shoreline, however thousands of miles it extends.
The other thing that is always guaranteed to make an Aussie sit up and take notice is to beat his team, so let’s hope the 2013 Lions take this opportunity to broaden their horizons.