Well there I was at the end of the football season bemoaning the fact that there was no sport for me to yell about. A half-dead West Indies is on the way for a moribund cricket season, the Spring Carnival turned out to be, yet again, all about orange schlappers and C-list celebrities and the occasional sighting of Bart Cummings, what was I to do?

Just as I’m typing lawnbowls.com into Firefox, I’m presented with a couple of ball-tearing, arse-burning, minge-grabbing, diamond-encrusted never-ending Tim Tam packets on a silver platter delivered by Maggie Gylenhaal. Oh, the ecstasy of seeing John Coates whining about the potential confiscation of his cash-ejaculating lollipop. Oh joy, I think, how can I stay under fifteen hundred words in telling you all how and why the Olympics Suck And Should Be Destroyed, and how there’s a chance this wide brown land may just start to treat them with the disrespect they deserve.

Then, like Monty Burns bursting out of a birthday cake singing Happy Birthday Mr Smithers, along come the stinking, cheating French and the woefully inept and incorrigibly corrupt FIFA.

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So where do I start? Since they’re to blame for everything, let’s go with the French. In case you’ve been under a rock trying to avoid Steve Fielding’s latest “look at me, gave me please everybody hey over here, look at meeeeeee” moment, here’s a quick rundown of what Le Stinking Bleu did to our beloved Irish.

Ireland were playing France, in France, for a spot in the World Cup finals next year (oh yeah, the world-game-aroos are already there, BTW). Because of the home/away goal points system, Ireland had to win.

They were winning, until Thierry Henry palmed the ball onto his foot and crossed to a teammate who headed in a goal. Naturally, the ref didn’t see it and Henry didn’t admit to it until after the game. The second the goal was scored, the Irish all ran screaming toward the ref pointing at their hands, to no avail. France won, they’re through, the Irish got fucked over, and there’s yet another example of what’s wrong with the World Game.

Firstly, there was no sportsmanship on offer from the French, who could have and should have refused to accept the goal, and Henry’s post-game defence of this, while he admitted the handball, was “I’m not the ref”. This is not all that surprising, though, because he’s French, but also because the World Game seems to thrive on play-acting, physical intimidation of referees and, in some European leagues, sheer corruption and match-fixing. Of course, all of that is probably a by-product of the massive amounts of money at stake, but mainly it’s because he’s French.

Secondly, there’s nothing from FIFA along the lines of “that was a shocking call and either we award the game to Ireland or they play a re-match in neutral territory”. They just released a statement that confirmed the referee’s decision is final, and there’s nothing we can do about it and even if we could we won’t because half of us are French, and why do you think at every international event we have to put up with everything being read out in French as well as English?

Remember when the Socceroos lost that game when an Italian swan-dived? Refs miss all kinds of shit all the time, but it’s funny how the Big Teams always seem to end up getting the good end of the stick, isn’t it?

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Deep breath now. I think you all know where I stand when it comes to the Olympics; I won’t waste too much of your time on that, but here's the basics. Most of the sports suck, and the ones that don’t I can watch any other time. I resent that people like Tamsyn Lewis and Matt Shirvington train at elite facilities and travel around the world winning nothing on my dollar, and then get themselves big sponsorship deals and repay none of it. I resent that professional board-sitters and officials hang around the elite facilities and travel with the little jerks, again on my dollar. Most importantly, I resent that my daughter’s state primary school has two footballs and a decrepit tennis net while we have dozens of elite swimmers wearing space-age swimsuits that cost more than my entire wardrobe.

So the Crawford report was like a cool change on Christmas Day for me. David Crawford has chaired a number of committees on sport administration and overseen structural change within a number of major sports. The people on his committee, despite being blasted by Coates’ army as pro-AFL, are professional administrators, one of whom sat on the SOCOG board, and another who helped bring the Commonwealth Games to Melbourne.

Here’s an actual investigation into spending on sport at all levels of government, and recommendations into how it could be better spent having regard not only to medal tallies and photo opportunities for politicians, but also to participation rates amongst all age groups, and an analysis of whether $100 is better spent on a pair of socks for Cathy Freeman or a couple of stopwatches for a suburban Little Athletics club.

The Committee called for submissions, and went searching for evidence with which to establish some findings. Not surprisingly, “grass-roots” organizations came up with things like “if we don’t have to spend time running lamington drives and getting one more season out of a matting pitch, we can actually run training for the kids and provide them with decent equipment”.

Also not at all surprisingly, the AOC and the various elite Sports Institutes came up with a lot of feel-good motherhood statements about National Pride and inspiration and Cathy Freeman and Kieran Perkins, but not a zack of actual evidence along the lines of “Perkins won gold medal, six months later, swimming club memberships were up xy%”. Because there isn’t any.

Reliant as they are upon the kind of vague assertions about “stimulating the economy” and “boosting tourism” and “national pride” and “putting Australia on the map” that lead us here in Melbourne to fork out $40 million a year to Bernie Eccelstone, it must have hurt the wankers down at Club AOC to see Offsiders this morning. The ABC ran a quick vox pop outside Flinders St station, asking punters to name one Australian gold medallist from the Beijing Olympics 12 months ago. It took an hour before a woman eventually took a stab at Stephanie Rice. (NB: I hate the Olympics, but I could still name Mitcham, Rice, and that ginger pole-vaulting bloke).

You can read the report here www.sportpanel.org.au/internet/sportpanel/publishing.nsf/Content//carwford-report, it’s about 700 pages, but the Executive Summary and Findings are a good place to start. So what is it saying? I won’t bore you with the details of restructuring the State Institutes of Sport or whether the Australian Sports Commission should be a Service Provider (however the duplication of service and competition between administrations is appalling), but here’s my very brief take on it.

There is far too much money given to Olympic-only sports, to the point that “The Panel believes that the ASC has focused overwhelmingly on elite Olympic sports to the detriment of other sports as well as participation and community sports. It is time this changed. Even in its own submission, the ASC suggested ‘community sport was on the brink of collapse’…”

There are a few fucking alarming facts, such as “… more government funds are provided for archery than cricket, which has more than 100 times the number of participants”, “Water polo receives as much high performance and AIS funding as golf, tennis and lawn bowls combined (my emphasis) – even though these sports can rightly claim to be “whole of lifetime” sports and significant contributors to the Australian Government’s preventative health agenda.”

There are hundreds of pages of analysis and recommendations, but I will leave you with this: “If we are truly interested in a preventative health agenda through sport, then much of (the money) may be better spent on lifetime participants than almost all on a small group of elite athletes who will perform at that level for just a few years”.

Crawford report, I love you. We keep hearing on the one hand that we’re a Great Sporting Nation, and on the other that we’re all obese. Participation in sport is important to everyone of all ages, for physical and mental health, and community-building, and fun, for fuck sake.

I just hope Sports Minister Kate Ellis has the cojones to convince her federal and state colleagues of a few things: Olympic medals mean fuck all, John Coates is a parasite, and there is more to sport funding than the opportunity for them to attach themselves to the legs of medal winners every few years.

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In another one of those “I was hiding under a rock waiting for the Scientology-doesn’t-deserve-tax-free-status debate to die down” moments, Eldrick (“Tiger”) Woods graced our shores with his charismatic presence recently. I will go along with the howler monkeys that pass for sports media in this country and agree that this was A Big Thing.

However, it was, all said and done, a golf tournament. So one is left wondering why Ian Healy was in the commentary box, informing us that “this is one of the greatest moments in the history of Australian sport”. Now aside from the fact that Don Bradman, Cathy Freeman, Makybe Diva and John Eales may have more legitimate claims to this hyperbole, what the fuck is Ian Healy doing in the box??? Channel Nine are always trying this on – remember Ray Martin commentating cricket? That was, um, shit.

I keep thinking of just how inappropriate guest commentators can get, and I discover that Foxtel have signed up Michael Buble for the Winter Olympics next year. Hmmm… David Marr doing special comments from the Sin Bin at a Bledisloe Cup test match? Cathy Freeman virtually anywhere? Fat Vautin for the Tour de France? Jim Maxwell for the Formula Ones? I particularly want to see Julian Clary as a Boundary Rider at the MCG, though.

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