CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
THE OLD BOYS CLUB NEEDS A HUG: Australia is set to exit the 2023 Rugby World Cup in the pool stages, after the Wallabies suffered a 40-6 defeat to Wales in Lyon this morning.
This marks another body blow for Australia’s increasingly detached political class that make up our RA board, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that Australian rugby selectors prioritise their focus on young men from the right families and schools.
The Wallabies, who didn’t register a point in the second half against Wales, are symbolic of a greater problem across a whole range of ailing institutions in the top end of town.
From the landed gentry that are driving agribusiness into a wall and irreparably damaging our river systems, to the once-great political parties who have rendered themselves unelectable for refusing to recruit outside of their blueblood caste.
With a winning Wallabies side laying dormant in the reserve grades of Sydney and Queensland’s behemoth NRL clubs, the powers that be at Australian Rugby remain committed to utilising four of five elite private schools and a couple of Kiwi Youtube highlights as their ‘grassroots program’.
The same identity crisis is currently happening within the Liberal Party, with the limping conservatives stuck in opposition indefinitely at both a Federal level and in every state on the mainland.
The slow car-crash of the Australian sandstone university elite’s descent into political and cultural irrelevance is hard to watch – except for those that still think this country is an Anglo-Saxon Protestant utopia – and everything is OK.
The rare bluebloods who are aware that their stranglehold of power and wealth might be coming to an end, due to the fact that they have no idea what Australians look like on the factory floor or suburban football oval, are not doing anything to remedy this.
In fact, all they can do is seek cheap political points, like sacking Wallabies coaches – or undermining once bipartisan national referendums to give their members at least one win.
This comes as the gravitating existential crisis faced by both the Nationals and Libs comes crashing down on the last remaining Federal and State MPs turn their attention to killing an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
This is because because referendums are rarely successful, and by channelling all of the Liberal Party’s resources and Murdoch media favours into opposing the Indigenous Voice might make their shrinking base appear political relevant again.
As in, if it’s an unsuccessful referendum result, the RMs and chinos elites of Martin Place get to cheer like they’ve actually won an election – or a world cup match against a minnow rugby nation!
