Sally Breen, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Publishing, Griffith University/The Conversation, Australia
When you grow up with no books in the house except maybe the full Readers Digest set of Catherine Cooksons and Bert Ryan’s Guide to Fishing you worship other heroes. The great battles in life are not going down in drama theatres, they’re not happening in-between the dusty covers of old books, they’re happening every weekend on sporting fields. I know this because my dad and everyone else in my suburb is into sport, and really, I have no choice. The other thing is – I like it.
This is the 1980s and the passion that flares in the smoke-filled lounge rooms of suburban houses and public bars is addictive. The ribbing and the rivalries funny, even if they do sometimes edge toward the dark side. The passion is the same whether the action is broadcast from big ticket fields or live on scratchy little league ovals. In fact, the passion is actually worse when it’s occurring on the two lane driveway in my front yard – my dad presiding over cricket matches with improvised rules. Six and out, wheelie bin for wickets and when the ball cannot be retrieved even by the dog – definitely out.
Life moments are one-day matches between the West Indies and Australia going down to the wire, 16 runs off seven balls, everyone sunburnt and screaming at the TV. Cut to the underdog thrill of watching Wally Lewis get right up into Mark Geyer’s face in a tense State of Origin decider or the excitement I feel racing out of bed at dawn to witness an unlikely Australian victory in the America’s Cup even though I’ve never been on a yacht in my life – a bright blue day when I learn that drinking beer out of a yard glass is a national and political skill and not just something that happens at BBQs.
Sport is a dominant thread in Australia’s cultural DNA. But it’s also divisive. I didn’t realise how much until I started hanging out in underground art scenes and falling asleep under tables in my university tutorials. Not liking sport was something that could set you apart. Sport was the enemy. I wasn’t sure why you had to choose sides. For people who were heavily into pointing out the problematics of binaries on a day to day basis I was pretty surprised they couldn’t see when they were making one.
Most of the artists I knew were always looking for excuses why art couldn’t seem to compete with sport. Publishers chatted to me in mild tones about rugby union over lunch but when I got too excited about sport and my working class roots started showing they tended to change the subject.
That’s why I wasn’t so surprised when around the turn of the new millennium no one except me seemed to like Lleyton Hewitt. Lleyton was a fighter. He wasn’t so different in spirit from many of the Aussie cricket players I’d watched. Or NRL stars. He had that same take no prisoners attitude my dad worshipped and had instilled in me but by the time Lleyton erupted onto the world stage no one was really listening.
When you play tennis there’s no team and no 20 metres of paddock to protect you. Still. I didn’t understand why telling a few inept lines people to go back to the satellites was so harsh, especially when I’d heard worse. By then my dad was gone. His ashes splayed out in sad ceremony over Manly Beach and I watched Lleyton win his first ATP tournament in Adelaide alone. When I watched Lleyton play I admired his skill and his attitude but he fired something else in me. I believed I could win. Achieve things. Make things happen because deep down I doubted if I really could.
Crazy five-hour slogs
By 1999 I’d graduated honours, I’d enrolled in a PhD. I was still poor and hungry but kicking goals and one golden summer day in November my mates and I car pooled it down to the polling booth at Main Beach to vote in the referendum on the republic, slightly stoned, taking great pleasure in freaking out the royalists in their “no” t-shirts. We went home and partied but by six-o-clock the bad news became clear. Australia had voted no. When it came to winning in the political arena, we were getting used to disappointment.I watched Lleyton’s US Open victory in 2001 alone. The match started at 3am Australian time and ended at 9.15am when a big serving Pete Sampras was summarily dispatched. At 8.15am I rang my boss and said I’m not coming in until he wins. He said who? I said Lleyton Hewitt and then I hung up. I nearly lost my job that day but my boss let it go. I wanted him to fire me. A Gold Coast businessman riding on the coat tails of a Howard government-sponsored sell out of welfare – I spent most of the day taking resumes off people the company rolled through the database tubes like stale bread rolls.At around 9.15am Lleyton went for a dig down the line and Sampras lost and said he wished he had legs like him and I got on the bus and wondered why there weren’t people screaming in the streets – I’d seen streamers hanging off Yatala pies when Paddy Rafter made the final at Wimbledon but he was a Queenslander and better looking and said “sorry mate” when he fluffed a serve. He also sweated so much he cramped up and lost. People loved Paddy and people didn’t love Lleyton. So I went in to work.