seagullwedgee
Well-known member
- Aug 9, 2005
- 3,065
- Thread starter
- #21
Hello chap, Sure your boy will have plenty of opinions of this kind of behaviour from the Aussies. They really do have double standards.
A few weeks back during the Cricket World Cup the mainstream media here were all over the event. ,Our boys doing this, our boys playing brilliantly’ etc etc.,. Once they were knocked out the media coverage just vanished, not overnight, but during that very day. When the team were doing well they were the LEAD story on the news, later that day just a 30 second mention. When England won the tournament there was a seemingly slight pleasure that those from ‘over the ditch’ had lost but England had somehow ‘cheated’ their way to victory via the runs coming from the attempted run out. Cheated? Really?
Once the one day stuff was over we had the prospect of The Ashes. Mainstream media greeted this with slogans like ‘We’re going to smash the Poms!’, and ‘We have the only cricket trophy that matters’. I have learned that Aussies are very, very good salesmen of all that is good, be that sport, weather, a shiny new car whatever. They over enthuse about the slightest positive. When asked a standard greeting like ‘How do you do?’ (In Aussie that is ‘How are you travelling?’) they are always doing brilliantly, amazingly whatever the situation. As a Brit I sometimes give a standard UK response of ‘Not bad thank you, how about you?’. That is a negative answer here, you have not talked up the positive so you must be unhappy/doing badly/whatever.
And so to the Archer/Smith thing. The ball has been described as ‘violent’, as ‘vicious’, and ‘targetted’, as if it was something negative to be ashamed of. It was a great ball, a contest between two gladiators (one of whom is a cheating great player) and it was enthralling. The press here have even tried to say the later ball that caught the sub batsmen was ‘shameful’. In short, yes the Aussies are a tough bunch that face adversity with a strong chin and approach life with a can do attitude, and they will tell you all about it. Once things go against them they hide away and try to claim the moral high ground when the first opportunity arises, in short, yes, snowflakes.
Excellent post WQW. My middle lad is home here for a couple of months taking in the whole series. Flies back to Southbank late Sept then drives across Oz to start a new chapter south of Perth. Met some great genuine Aussie BHA fans at the WHUFC match.