Drought focus

If you haven’t stumbled across a website called Players Voice, it’s worth a visit, especially for a post that went up this week from Wallabies lock Ned

Hanigan on the drought gripping Australia. Players Voice allows players and coaches to write in the first person, unfiltered if you like. And Hanigan’s essay on his home town of Coonamble is as good a piece of writing as you’ll find anywhere. It’s thoughtful and stoic but doesn’t tip over into sentimentality or begging for sympathy. It starts: “I heard the pounding of hooves before the yelling. It was 2002 and Coonamble was in the middle of the worst drought in my lifetime to date.” Hanigan goes on to describe an intense dust storm — the pounding of the hooves was his mother riding back to the homestead at full gallop to take shelter. He goes on to talk about about how farmers are dealing with the drought and how sport — particularly tonight’s test between the All Blacks and Wallabies — is a brief respite from the trauma of trying to survive when the land turns barren. He finishes by talking about his dad, Peter. “He is the most positive man in the world. He says that every day without rain is a day closer to the rain coming. ‘I’ve given up going to church and praying for rain,’ he told me the other day. ‘I’ll go there and say thanks when it comes’.”