Kangaroos' quotable coach bounding across the land

Published on Sunday 23 November 2003 00:00

AS you will have noticed, support for Australia came flooding out of the woodwork in the week before yesterday’s final with everyone from PM John Howard down to Kylie Minogue (or maybe that should be up to Kylie Minogue) falling over themselves to urge the boys in gold: "Go, Wallabies, go!"

Armed forces in Iraq said it, every schoolkid old enough to wave a flag said it, and even the porcine winner of Australian Idol - main rival to RWC 2003 in efforts to capture the national consciousness - said it.

Support came from more predictable sources, with the Australian rugby league side, fresh from another Ashes series success over the hapless Poms, jumping on the overcrowded bandwagon.

Unfortunately for the Kangaroos’ coach, Chris Anderson, who sent a handwritten note to union counterpart Eddie Jones, the message was reprinted verbatim in every newspaper, and demonstrated that when God handed out educashuns, Anderson was languishing at the end of the queue.

I quote: "Eddy, good job in getting them their, show the same belif you showed against NZ & you can beat the poms. Chris Anderson."

Well, at least he got his own name right.

TO PUT it mildly, All Blacks coach John Mitchell has not had much to smile about during RWC 2003.

His press conferences, even before the semi-final defeat by Australia, and his subsequent sacking by the NZRFU, have possessed all the wit and humour of a coroner’s inquest, not helped by his decision to bring the doleful, monosyllabic wing Doug Howlett to every media session and his choice of personal attire - black suit of a type more usually seen beneath large coffins on church steps.

Mitchell, indeed, makes our own lugubrious Scotland manager, Dougie Morgan, seem like Ken Dodd.

Those sorrowful features, however, cracked after New Zealand’s third/fourth-place victory over France on Thursday night when a posse of Pommie hacks collared the former Sale and England assistant coach to wish him a good journey home.

Mitchell seemed almost ludicrously touched by this gesture - probably the only kind words he heard in seven weeks Down Under - but the smile faded slightly when, after revealing that his contract expired in March and that "after that I could be coaching anywhere in the world", the man from the Express responded: "Ah, well, see you soon then."

MOST of us neutrals were suffering from terminal overdoses of passive triumphalism and patriotism even before yesterday’s England v Australia final, but there’s worse to come.

The IRB are campaigning for competitive rugby to be re- admitted to the Olympics, an alarming prospect when we recall that the reigning champions are the USA. All together now: "Go, Yankees, go!"

DID Uncle Syd Millar know something we did not? On the Sunday of the England v France semi-final, the former Ireland prop was, according to the match programme, "acting chairman of the International Rugby Board".

By Thursday, and the appearance at Telstra Stadium of the programme for the third/fourth-place play-off, Syd had been elevated to "chairman of the IRB" in succession to the late Vernon Pugh.

The council vote, we were told without a hint of irony, had been made earlier in the day. But the programme had gone to press on Wednesday.

IDON’T normally rise to this sort of bait, but I feel honour-bound, on behalf of bashed Poms everywhere, to reply to Aussie columnist Mike Gibson who, writing from his home in the Sydney suburb of Redneckville, was kind enough to compile a list of "boring Poms".

These included cricketer Geoff Boycott, tennis player Tim Henman, snooker star Steve Davis and golfer Nick Faldo - with actor Hugh Grant thrown in as a sort of stalking horse, and a further example of the tedious twits that Aussies love to hate.

Gibson probably lost most of his audience when he described Grant as "the nation’s most popular actor", but if he didn’t, perhaps I could offer some examples of the sort of exhilarating, crowd-pleasing examples of Okker manhood that have charmed us down the ages: ‘Slasher’ Mackay and Bill Lawrie (cricket), Roy Emerson (tennis), ‘Steady’ Eddie Charlton (snooker, with seven world titles fewer than Davis) and Peter Thompson (golf).

As for members of the acting profession, Oz gave us Paul Hogan, Jack Thompson and Alf from Home and Away. Nuff said.

POM-BASHING 3 and 4: Lead letter in Wednesday’s Sydney Daily Telegraph: "I believe it is customary to wish the other side the best of luck. So, Jonny Wilkinson, break a leg!"

Cut-out-and-keep offer in Thursday’s edition of the paper: A Stop Jonny Wilkinson voodoo doll into which sweaty-browed, patriotic Aussies can happily plunge pins, and "wreak all manner of havoc on the superboot from a twisted ankle to a pulled hamstring. You will have then played a role in his demise and share in Wallaby glory".