Games a happy holiday from professionalism
Celebration of Commonwealth may be an anachronism but it is well worth safeguarding.
Look, I’ve got a brilliant idea for the Commonwealth Games in Australia. I’m going to get some of those mechanically minded Ockers to build a giant, six-tonne kangaroo out of a fork lift truck. Call her Matilda, if you like. She could even wink and blink as she hurtles around the athletic track, driven by a man high on cannabis.
When Waltzing Matilda starts up, in the brave tradition of Steve Smith and little Davey Warner, a cataract of tears will stream down Matty’s cheeks. Her mascara will start to run and the Duke of Edinburgh will gurgle with joy.
Matilda’s marsupial pouch will then open and a troupe of trampolining young joeys and josephines will rush out and begin to bounce. Their tails will jiggle. The music will swell. Rolf Harris will then appear standing on a float, granted special leave from her majesty’s prisons.
The world famous paedophile will wear some sort of powder blue safari suit that flaps in the wind. The rolf meister will wave his hand like a benevolent uncle and sing, altogether now:
‘‘Can I welcome you to the Games, friends,
I don’t know all of your names friends,
But can I welcome you to the Games.’’
In a medley of awesome Aussie tunes, the band will then segway into the national anthem. Smith and Warner will join Harris on the float, in homage to Australia’s national game, and belt out the words:
‘‘In history’s page, let every stage Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing, Advance Australia Fair.’’
It’s bizarre, but weirdly only the stuff about Smith and Warner is pastiche. The rest of it took place at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane. And Matilda is now parked up somewhere outside a Brisbane Service Station. Harris is banged up. Only Smith and Warner are still on the run from the authorities.
All of which brings us to the question, why is this nonsense still going on? Does anyone know when Commonwealth Day is? I can tell you it’s on March 9, the same day as my son’s birthday, and he wouldn’t have a clue. Neither did I until I looked it up.
Once upon a time it was the British Empire Games. All of that is gone. Half of Australia yearns to be a republic. Our last prime minister tried to get rid of the union jack from the flag. And most of the 53 countries that form the Commonwealth actually have very little in common with each other.
It is over 50 years since Hugh Gaitskell, the then leader of the British Labour party, said of Britain’s proposed entry into the European Union: ‘‘How can one really seriously suppose that, if the centre of the Commonwealth is a province of Europe, it could continue to exist as the mother country of a series of independent nations? It is sheer nonsense.’’
And yet a part of me thinks that this whole Commonwealth shebang is a good idea precisely because it is such an absurd anachronism. This is a place where people wearing Victorian clothes can become national heroes. This is a place where activities like lawn bowls and netball are celebrated as sports.
And so they should be. Most sports have been ravaged by professionalism. A stash of needles have already been found in the Gold Coast Games Village. It’s possible that they belonged to the participants in the opening ceremony, but it’s a dirty business.
The world is fed up with all the grubby cheating that passes for a lot of modern sport. Advance Australia Unfair will doubtless soon be sung by cricket’s Barmy Army. And in truth that bunch of cheerful miscreants have much more in common with true sport than the army of overpaid, amoral men and women who are routinely hyped on our television screens.
It seems to me that the Commonwealth Games could get us back to something slightly nobler than a sort of cheating Arms Race. Any athlete caught blubbing (and incidentally, why don’t boxers ever seem to blub?) will be stripped of their medal. Fans and media won’t be strip searched, but welcomed. And people will be able to have a drink without showing a passport, a driver’s licence and a national identity card.
Strict sanctions will only be applied against those jobsworths caught uttering official-speak. Should anyone suggest that the Commonwealth Games ‘‘looks to uphold peace, prosperity, good governance and human rights’’ or that it ‘‘stands for some things that are different: gender equality is one, inclusiveness is another’’ they will have to sit in the Australian parliament building until the Games are over.
And how fortuitous – that sensible sanction has already got rid of David Grevemberg, the chief executive of the Commonwealth Games Federation, and Games chairman Peter Beattie. Note to Beattie – sanctimoniously waffling on about gender equality when the Games embrace netball, a sport that excludes men in its rules, is pretty daft.
And why not bring in some new sports. New Zealand’s very own cheerful professor, Burton Silver, came up with the notion of the Fringe Games at the turn of the century. And why not. The 1900 Paris Olympics had obstacle swimming in the Seine. Much more recently we had solo synchronised swimming.
Silver advocates the assisted jump, where competitors are launched over the bar by other athletes. Rolf Harris is already in training near a prison wall. Silver has also come up with synchronised cycling and the 100 metres unicycle sprint. There is lateral running, ‘‘often described as running ballet’’ and mechanical running whereby able-bodied runners also use artificial mechanics to increase their speed.
So why are you sitting there smirking and thinking this all sounds a little daft. Let’s really make these the Friendly Games. Let’s try to get back to some of the invention and camaraderie that were there in the beginning.
Is that really such a mad idea?