Okay, first big Rugby World Cup breakfast in Australia and guess what the front page headline reads on the West Australian? “Rejected sheep set for WA dumping”.
Yes, this is the heart-rending tale of the 50 000 Australian sheep who were not good enough for hard-hearted Saudi Arabian butchers and forced to return home.
Blimey, we’ve even got a picture of their non-luxury liner, the MV Al Kuwait, presumably filled with passengers enjoying an unexpected eight week return trip, saying “Strewth, these bloody Arabs don’t know good lamb when it’s offered to them on a plate!”
Hey, and this great sheepish tale continues inside with news of a cutting of trade links worth R2,24-billion with Saudi Arabia over their callous rejection of “the humble sheep, the meat and wool provider which has done so much to underwrite Australia”.
Meanwhile, out in the bush, asylum seekers hoping to find a future Down Under remained caged in inhuman holding camps. Allegedly. And remember that boat load of dying Afghans (people, not dogs) Aussie Prime Minister John Howard refused to accept a couple of years ago? Talk about pulling the wool over our eyes.
But what am I doing talking politics while we wait for England’s world No 1 ranked players to awake after the heavily-pampered flat-bed trip from Heathrow (they got in just after midnight last night)? We must talk sport… specifically cricket.
Aussie captain Steve Waugh will be here in Perth next week for the first Test against Zimbabwe, attempting to score a ton at the WACA, the only home Test ground where he’s failed to reach three figures in 20 years at the pinnacle of the game.
Waugh, set to quit after the tour to India next year, says: “It would be nice to get 100, you always want to go out on a good note,” but then he ruins all the diplomacy by admitting: “I don’t know much about Zimbabwe’s players.”
That’s like a British sports journalist saying he knows nothing about Georgian rugby players. Actually, they’re training out in some farflung suburb this morning.
I was planning to give their fly half Pavle Jimschladze (size 43, European) a apair of Jonny Wilkinson’s boots.
But sadly neither Wilko nor his PR people would agree to it.
Poor old Pavle, a former Greco Roman wrestling champion, has only got “cheap boots, the break all the time” and grew up kicking on gravel pitches in trainers.
This World Cup, already a case of the Haves v the Have Nots, needs a bit of charity.
Current Rugby World Cup holders Australia are showing no charity thus far. Their grim little coach Eddie Jones says this morning: “We won’t rotate players. We’ll pick the best team. It’s important to build momentum.”
The Wallabies, who will crush Namibia and Romania in Pool A, face an awkward tournament opener against Argentina next Friday night and a tough qualifying concluder against Ireland on November 1. Here’s hoping they “do a South Africa” and crash out at the group stage despite being hosts as the Proteas did at the cricket World Cup earlier this year.
The Australians will be rooting for more than one country during the tournament. Already support is growing for island neighbours Samoa.
With two of their top players (Trevor Leota and Henry Tuilagi) stuck back in the English Premiership for financial reasons, there is a general wave of sympathy for Samoa before their clash with England in Melbourne on October 26.
Remember, Samoa have reached the quarter-finals twice and Welshmen will long remember their great giant-killing (it was then, it wouldn’t be now) in 1991.
Coach John Tagaloa Boe says: “If we didn’t come here to win, we should not have come.”
Boe, also hit by New Zealand’s decision not to offer him the Samoan-born players who did not make the All Black squad, admits: “Our player pool is drying up. Nobody can deny that. We’re sad to say we might not be at the World Cup. That’s a fact.”
With Georgia, Namibia, Fiji and Tonga suffering similar problems, isn’t it about time the IRB acted and sorted out the gulf between the giants and the minnows?