Mate, Be A Sport

Come on Australia. Can somebody please give your national rugby coach some media training or a lesson in how to handle disappointment?

Teach him to count to 10. Teach him to take a deep breath. Put him in time out. Because his case of foot in mouth disease seems to be getting worse.

The Wallabies gave the All Blacks a pretty good game last night – enough to cause the shortening of fingernails in the lounges of some fans for a good portion of the game. They deserve respect for coming to a ground where they haven’t been successful for as long as some of the current players have been alive, holding possession, breaking the All Black line and making our lads work for their world record. It was great to see – far more interesting than a whitewash.

Sure, there were some controversial calls – but that wasn’t the All Blacks doing. Sure, there was a cartoon in the paper yesterday depicting coach Michael Cheika as a clown – but the All Blacks are professional rugby players, not journalists or cartoonists. They were busy doing their job on Saturday morning at Eden Park, not in a newsroom. Wasn’t our own Captain Fantastic Richie McCaw emblazoned across Australian newspapers as a bug recently? Sure, it must be demoralising, given all the match statistics, that the All Blacks were able to convert so little possession to so many points.

However, the Wallabies coach Michael Cheika needs to learn a thing or two about how to be gracious in defeat. If kids behaved like he does post-match, we’d give them a sound talking-to about sportsmanship. We’d tell them that they were beaten fair and square, and that the referee’s decisions are final. We’d tell them to pick themselves up, to go and shake their opponents by the hand and congratulate them. We wouldn’t put up with a tanty.

Mr Cheika would do well to remember that he is supposed to be leading from the front – when he comes to the press conference with a victim mentality, and sulks like a recalcitrant child, it really doesn’t add much to his team, even when he is bitterly disappointed. The Wallabies have real strengths, but they are easily overshadowed by such an appalling lack of sportsmanship. Cheika refused to even answer or comment upon the All Blacks’ 18 game winning streak to set a world record. How much longer is Australian rugby going to keep him?

Our team raised the bar again last night, in an era where the skill level, fitness level and expectation has never been higher. Bloody good on them.