IMRAN GASHKORI | Sports Editor | Contact
Coming of age during the nation’s sporting halcyon days at the turn of last millennium, a Betoota Grove 27-year-old is currently experiencing what many sports fans and felt before him.
The sinking feeling of crushing loss after crushing loss.
While the national women’s teams in nearly every sporting discipline continue to go from strength to strength, systematically dismantling their opponents around the world time and time again – the focus of the national interest has been on the perennially underperforming men’s teams.
Speaking exclusively to The Advocate on the D11 bendy bus from Betoota Grove into town this morning, Harry Alger said he’s sure cricket, in particular, has hit rock bottom and it’s never been in this much of a crisis.
“People will be quick to blame JL and Tim Paine for this but the problems go much deeper,” he said swinging on a hand strap.
“What the problem is, I’m not sure. But we got flogged last night. Not just a mild flogging, either. We got the worst flogging in history. The Wallabies look as happy as a polar bear at Sea World. The soccer doesn’t look much better,”
“If we get done by the Diet Coke of Scandinavia tonight, then I’d suspect Australian sport will be officially in crisis.”
However, when our reporter asked him if he was aware of what the 1980s was and what it was like to owe money and enjoy sport back then, he said no.
He said he was born shortly before the Soviet Union dissolved on Boxing Day 1992.
“I’m a Cold War baby by two weeks,” he said while another passenger in earshot rolled her 60-year-old eyes.
“But yeah, I heard we sucked at cricket back then but whatever. You had cheap houses. I could live with us being what the West Indies were in the 90s if I could afford to buy a house where I think I deserve to live,”
“Plus we were good at other sports back then. Like sailing and shit. Greg Norman and the Wallabies. Right now, all I have is a drawer full of jerseys I can’t wear, memes and enough money to get too drunk to speak once a week. This isn’t living, Josh.”
More to come.
