If you have never heard of an Australian named Jamal Idris, don’t beat yourself up.
According to Wikipedia, Idris’s own family has sometimes mistaken him for former Wallabies league convert Lote Tuqiri, thanks to his massive build and dreadlocks.
Apart from being rated “better than Israel Folau” at the same age by one Wendell Sailor at 19 and being struck on the neck with a Samurai sword by his own cousin at a family reunion, the Penrith Panthers centre-back-rower’s other main claim to fame is that he threw a mean javelin when he was at school.
Until rugby league reportedly came with a truckload of money and asked him to try his hand at union’s working-class cousin.
By most accounts the 24-year-old’s true calling probably lay in athletics, where he was already a junior world champion at the javelin, but the windfall made up his mind.
That’s probably the problem with Australian sport at the moment: money talks too loudly. It’s a simplistic way to put it, but money, as opposed to sporting culture, is becoming Aussie sports most valued currency.
In a way, that is probably what has afflicted the Wallabies in recent years.
For the umpteenth time, their tour of Europe is once again a mission to regain credibility with the rugby world and relevance within their sporting population back home.
In the last four years or so, barely a season has passed without Quade Cooper, James O’Connor or Kurtley Beale making a nuisance of themselves off the field.
Whether it was allegedly breaking into a property to steal a laptop, getting thrown off a flight or sending lewd messages about team management, one got the impression there was a sideshow contest to see which of a bunch of rich young men could get away with the worst behaviour.
Australian players have always come with a similar reputation to the Dutch – they question the coach’s methods. But scrutinising a coach’s methods to understand what is required isn’t exactly the same as questioning authority.
Maybe it’s the choices they have due to what Australian commentators call the three boots syndrome. More often than not, if you can play rugby in Australia, you probably can have a bash at league and Aussie Rules as well.
This creates a market in which any time a player runs into trouble with the one code, as Beale did with rugby union recently, there is no shortage of other teams trying to “rehabilitate” him in theirs.
Maybe it’s the culture of entitlement of the so-called Generation Y. Not to come across as a Generation X “when-we” or anything, Generation Y kids appear to think simply having ability means they are owed recognition and respect.
But whatever you aim to master in life has to have the ability to humble you. If that’s too much to ask, maybe one just needs to have a healthy respect for what puts food on the table.
As a result, the Wallabies have moved from a team with a culture of excellence and innovation (think John Eales, George Gregan and Stephen Larkham) to a culture of Prima Dawgs, as someone once said in the NFL film Any Given Sunday.
The sad thing is one day they’ll wake up and their careers will be behind them, only to find a hollow feeling where the satisfaction of having given everything while they could should have been.
New Wallabies coach Michael Cheika is apparently independently wealthy and doesn’t coach for the money. Here’s hoping he can show his charges that being loaded means nothing without achievement.
Money is not the be-all or end-all in sporting sphere
According to Wikipedia, Idris’s own family has sometimes mistaken him for former Wallabies league convert Lote Tuqiri, thanks to his massive build and dreadlocks.
Apart from being rated “better than Israel Folau” at the same age by one Wendell Sailor at 19 and being struck on the neck with a Samurai sword by his own cousin at a family reunion, the Penrith Panthers centre-back-rower’s other main claim to fame is that he threw a mean javelin when he was at school.
Until rugby league reportedly came with a truckload of money and asked him to try his hand at union’s working-class cousin.
By most accounts the 24-year-old’s true calling probably lay in athletics, where he was already a junior world champion at the javelin, but the windfall made up his mind.
That’s probably the problem with Australian sport at the moment: money talks too loudly. It’s a simplistic way to put it, but money, as opposed to sporting culture, is becoming Aussie sports most valued currency.
In a way, that is probably what has afflicted the Wallabies in recent years.
For the umpteenth time, their tour of Europe is once again a mission to regain credibility with the rugby world and relevance within their sporting population back home.
In the last four years or so, barely a season has passed without Quade Cooper, James O’Connor or Kurtley Beale making a nuisance of themselves off the field.
Whether it was allegedly breaking into a property to steal a laptop, getting thrown off a flight or sending lewd messages about team management, one got the impression there was a sideshow contest to see which of a bunch of rich young men could get away with the worst behaviour.
Australian players have always come with a similar reputation to the Dutch – they question the coach’s methods. But scrutinising a coach’s methods to understand what is required isn’t exactly the same as questioning authority.
Maybe it’s the choices they have due to what Australian commentators call the three boots syndrome. More often than not, if you can play rugby in Australia, you probably can have a bash at league and Aussie Rules as well.
This creates a market in which any time a player runs into trouble with the one code, as Beale did with rugby union recently, there is no shortage of other teams trying to “rehabilitate” him in theirs.
Maybe it’s the culture of entitlement of the so-called Generation Y. Not to come across as a Generation X “when-we” or anything, Generation Y kids appear to think simply having ability means they are owed recognition and respect.
But whatever you aim to master in life has to have the ability to humble you. If that’s too much to ask, maybe one just needs to have a healthy respect for what puts food on the table.
As a result, the Wallabies have moved from a team with a culture of excellence and innovation (think John Eales, George Gregan and Stephen Larkham) to a culture of Prima Dawgs, as someone once said in the NFL film Any Given Sunday.
The sad thing is one day they’ll wake up and their careers will be behind them, only to find a hollow feeling where the satisfaction of having given everything while they could should have been.
New Wallabies coach Michael Cheika is apparently independently wealthy and doesn’t coach for the money. Here’s hoping he can show his charges that being loaded means nothing without achievement.
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