The GAA hasn’t evolved? What about ye? ‘Mate’

JUST before she left her seat on flight EY460, the Australian woman who had been sitting beside me for 13 hours from Abu Dhabi welcomed me to her native city.

“Have a good time in Melbourne,” she said before heading off down the aisle. This friendly and polite gesture is entirely consistent with the natives of this land. Australians are very well-mannered.

Another example. When I boarded a tram on Sunday and struggled to work out how to validate my ticket, two passengers immediately offered assistance. Such forthcoming helpfulness doesn’t generally occur in cities with a population of 4,000,000 inhabitants.

It wouldn’t happen on the London underground, the place where the primary purpose of every journey is to ignore as many people as possible.

This perhaps explains why Melbourne has yet again been voted as the “most livable city in the world”. It’s like Ireland, only there is sunshine and the economy hasn’t gone bust. They even share our fascination with horse-racing and can do that with a bit of style.

On a previous trip Down Under, I got lucky at the Melbourne Cup and made that most joyous of all walks to the pay-out man.

“Enjoy it, mate,” he said as he handed over the multi-coloured dollars with a smile. Even the bookmakers are capable of bonhomie.

But, while Australia and its people radiate warmth, the same cannot be said about some of the country’s sporting ambassadors.

The contrast between the charm of Australians and the charmlessness of their sportsmen borders on the comical. Uber-macho, ultra-belligerent, bad winners and poor losers, their ‘best and fairest’ often don’t hold much global appeal.

The International Rules series has allowed Ireland to sample the Aussie sporting culture and it hasn’t been pleasant. Rodney ‘Rocket’ Eade, the manager of the Australian International Rules team, is the latest offender.

According to Rocket, nicknamed for his explosive temper rather than his speed, the tactics in Gaelic football have remained unchanged for a century.

Clearly, Eade is speaking from a position of total ignorance. The bishop stopped throwing the ball in quite a few years ago.

Eade’s remarks are absurd.

The tactics employed in this year’s All-Ireland semi-final between Dublin and Donegal were unheard of even a few years ago.

Maybe Eade thinks the current game is the one which our forefathers played. Who knows? Ultimately, his comments betray a lack of information and a superiority complex.

In his world, AFL managers are modern, smart and innovative. Their Irish counterparts drink pints of porter, wear woolly jumpers and encourage their players to kick the ball high into the air.

The really unfortunate thing about Eade is that he wasn’t trying to be insulting. He was just expressing his uninformed opinion.

Other Australian managers can’t be granted the same latitude. Kevin Sheedy was a more calculated operator, a despot who masqueraded as a clown. He cracked jokes but there was nothing humorous about the way his Australian team conducted itself.

Using their superior physicality, they deliberately bullied and battered Ireland into submission. Even Australian commentators found the actions of Sheedy’s team distasteful as they observed his players would never have committed the same transgressions in the AFL.

The explanation Sheedy offered after the second Test in Melbourne was gravely insulting. He insisted his players were merely reacting to Ireland’s misdemeanours.

Sheedy wasn’t the first Australian manager to employ unsavoury methods.

In 2004, it was blatantly obvious the Australian side had planned a mass bust up. Just after the ball was thrown-in, a series of brawls broke out in nearly every corner of Croke Park.

Given the fact Ireland had won the first Test at a canter, there was no reason for the hosts to instigate it.

After the match, an Irish journalist asked Gary Lyons if the violence was pre-mediated. Lyons took grave exception to the perfectly valid question and eye-balled the inquisitor.

It was playground stuff. After Lyons stopped puffing out his chest, he provided a laughable excuse why at least half-a-dozen fights broke out at exactly the same time.

Before Lyons and Sheedy, a succession of Australians teams attempted to beat Ireland with their fists rather than the ball.

Indeed, in the history of the series, Mick Malthouse is the only Australian coach who has tactically outwitted Ireland without relying on underhand methods.

It will be interesting to discover if the Rocket can replicate his predecessor’s success. But if things don’t go to plan, it will come as no surprise if the Australians resort to what Eade would call their “tried and true”.