Winging Poms!? you having a laugh - check this.

Poms are winning, call an inquiry

Peter Hanlon | August 19, 2008

SOMETHING utterly jaw-dropping has happened at these Games, and it has nothing to do with a tall man with the weight a nation on his shoulders stumbling before the first hurdle.
The Brits have overtaken Australia on the medals table. This darkness has descended, and yet there has been no declaration of national emergency. Clearly, Kevin Rudd hasn't been the same since trying the Great Wall red at the opening ceremony dinner.
Once, not so long ago, Australians were a proud people who walked tall with jutted jaws. The Poms were a source of amusement, a fallen imperial master weeping over a dog-eared scrapbook, its tattered images of Steve Redgrave, Seb Coe, Mary Rand and those blokes from Chariots Of Fire fading by the day.
As much as it hurt, you'd hear them say: "Why can't we be good at sport, like you Aussies?"
Triumphal, you'd smile, pat their bowed heads, and offer an almost heartfelt, "There, there, at least you've got Amy Winehouse."
Now there's not a hutong in Beijing you can disappear down without a smug cockney voice trailing you on the breeze, Bazza McKenzie impersonation in full swing. "Jeez cobber, what's happened to the Aussies, mate, ay? Bloody crook, fair dinkum!" Oh, the shame.
And there's no point telling them it's cheating to count Scotland, whom they can't even summon the energy to laugh at - until Chris Hoy is flying around the track on his pushbike.
What really hurts is the knowledge that, when they were down on their scabby knees pleading for any sporting morsel to be thrown their way, we came to their rescue.
Here you go, poor Poms, have our coaches, our programs, our secrets to success.
The airings of Land Of Hope And Glory and wall-to-wall Union Jacks have made Laoshan Velodrome feel like the set for an episode of The Goodies this week.
And in one of the director's chairs, guiding Great Britain's all-conquering sprinters, is Shane Sutton.
A gold medallist for Australia at the 1978 Commonwealth Games, Sutton cut his coaching teeth in Wales and is now firmly ensconced in Team GB, saying "we" and "our" with an ease that belies an accent that is still more Bankstown than Blackpool.
He cops the usual stick - "they're always taking the mickey" - but has disturbing news as to how the new world order has been received.
"It goes back to cricket and the rugby, the Ashes battle that everyone likes to build up, but there's a massive amount of camaraderie," Sutton says.

"It's just put to bed the whole Aussie-Pommy thing."
Illustrating his point, Sutton says that when the British men won the team sprint on Friday, "There was a full team of Australians over there cheering our boys as they went up on the podium." And they haven't been sent home in disgrace? Madness.
Sutton insists he is just doing his job, that on this field of battle he is a Briton, but if "we" can't win he would love the spoils to go to Australia. "My heart and through my veins is green and gold, that'll never go away."
Other than John Coates, with his "few swimming pools and not much soap" assessment of life in the mother country, there's got to be someone around here who realises the gravity of the situation.
Someone like Steve Waugh, an athlete liaison officer with the Australian team who must surely have watched the Old Enemy's successes this week with the demeanour he perfected while chewing gum at silly mid-off.
So, what are we going to do, Tugger?
"Mate, I know it's not going to help your story, but I'm just here to see good sport," Waugh said yesterday. "They've prepared really well, put a lot of money and effort in.
"I want to see Australia win, and I certainly don't like being beaten by the Poms, but there's no sour grapes."
I give up.




Taken from the Sydney Morning Herald.