Sydney to Hobart: the class divide is alive and well in Australian sport
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Version 0 of 1. Thankfully yesterday’s launch of the [insert Swiss watchmaker sponsor name] Sydney to Hobart wasn’t marred by the sailing violence we’ve come to expect from the South Head hooligans in their watermelon hats, drinking tinnies of VB. Nothing gets the masses fired up like an investment firm, a Swedish carmaker and a winery battling it out on the high seas. But jokes aside, a mere glance at the Australian sporting landscape is enough to dispel the national myth of a classless society. Australians will rally around a victor, such as in the America’s Cup in 1983, but if we lived in an egalitarian paradise no-one would joke about Collingwood fans’ dental work, Manly would be just another rugby league team, and there’d be as many Audi ads on Friday Night Footy as there are during the Bledisloe Cup. Because if sailing is at the top of the tree, rugby union is close behind. It’s interesting that the two most toff-ish major sports in the land are also two of the toughest. People die during yacht races and rugby players are sometimes on the receiving end of amateur ophthalmic surgery. Something to do with thugs’ games played by gentlemen, I guess. That said, nobody blinks an, er, eye when a rugby league player eye gouges, squirrel grips or casually bites another man’s penis. The class divide that split rugby into league and union persists, and league is still a defiantly working class sport. “Bring back the biff” would never have taken off in the union world, because the biff never left. When a couple of university educated chaps punch on, it’s just jolly good fun. There are sports, though, that are supported by people from all socio-economic backgrounds (usually by pitting them against each other in a vicious class struggle). Aussie rules has always successfully incorporated such rivalries. The toffs go for Carlton/Adelaide/Melbourne, while the the hoi polloi support Richmond/Port/The Bulldogs. Things are a bit different up north, though, where the Swans cater to a strange mix of Victorian expats and eastern suburbs types who think rugby is just "soooo 1980s". The AFL knows a successful formula when it sees one, however, and is trying to establish the GWS Giants as a club for battlers (rather than a club of battlers). They’re only copying the other football (you know, the one with the round ball that used to be for immigrants), who had great success creating a rivalry between the Wanderers and Sydney FC. Of course, gentrification will eventually start to make traditional neighbourhood football rivalries a bit weird. The Collingwood Macchiatos, the Balmain Baby Boomers and the South Sydney Freelance Graphic Designers don’t have much of a ring to them. Cricket is perhaps most successful in breaking down class barriers. Anything that John Howard and Hawke can agree on must have some kind of special properties. Even if the Members occasionally get booed, Australian merchant bankers and plumbers, doctors and labourers can all agree on one thing: we love humiliating the English. Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |