By Guy Smiley
January 29th 2009 @ 12:20am
Loading ...Symonds way off the mark, yet again
Andrew Symonds‘ latest outburst is the latest in a long line of thoughtless and small-minded comments he’s seen fit to share with us. The selection of Brendon McCullum for NSW in the Twenty20 final was “un-Australian”, he said. Granted it was cynical, but un-Australian?
The press laying into Matthew Hayden about his terrible form slump was also un-Australian. Maybe the press should have ignored Hayden’s latest figures and just damned him with faint praise.
I don’t know, but again Symonds is off the mark with his cultural slur. I’d wager that if you don’t spend your weekends fishing, hunting roos, drinking with the boys and getting a Southern Cross tattoo you are the very definition of un-Australian in Symonds’ book.
The term itself has become so meaningless as to be all but useless.
Un-Australian behaviour is simply that which offends the basic moral precepts most societies try to adhere to and it is not exclusively Australian. It is just our insularity which has bred in us the belief that this moral high ground is a little bit loftier than everyone else’s and exclusively ours.
Symonds’ rants are idiotic at best but would be better served if he was in form – players at the top of their game can afford to make these sorts of comments and get away with it. Symonds is in no such position.
You could argue that in the deathly dull world of catching quotable quotes from sports stars, Symonds’ sound bites have value You’d be half right, but it doesn’t make them intelligent or worthy of consideration.
Regardless of whether or not he was painted into a corner by Roy & HG he was true to form with his latest outburst.
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(9)
The Cougar said | January 29th 2009 @ 7:30am | Report comment
What are “un-Australian” looks, Savvas?
Should we all look the same? Perhaps we can clone a few Ricky Pontings, a few Shane Warnes and a few Glenn McGraths to play Test cricket for Australia.
Then we can then insert them with specifically designed sports cliche software, programming them all to give the same response to the same questions.
We can call them the Australian Test Droid XI.
LeftArmSpinner said | January 29th 2009 @ 9:31am | Report comment
Symonds is in serious trouble, make no bones about it. drinking problems cannot be hidden. they have the habit of raising their ugly head at the most inopportune times. Team meetings, press interviews etc.
he needs professional help from someone who realises that cricket is just a game, and at the top level, only able to be played by players who are completely healthy in mind and body.Symonds in neither.
sunshinecoaster said | January 29th 2009 @ 9:35am | Report comment
It does appear Symonds spends alot of time worrying about how to act Australian,look Australian and talk Australian,i guess the white zinc cream is another pointer to that,he wears it for games at night under the roof,not sure what all thats about.Maybe you have hit on something there Savvas,we know he wasnt born here so maybe there is something deep inside trying to prove hes a fair dikum aussie,either way he just comes off looking like a walking cliche
Papa Romeo said | January 29th 2009 @ 10:05am | Report comment
It is dead-set unAustralian to say that use of the word unAustralian is unAustralian!
“The term itself has become so meaningless as to be all but useless.”
Almost.
Replace ‘has become’ with ‘is’ (and possibly ‘and always has been’) and strike out ‘all but’ and you have hit the nail very squarely on the head.
Can we move on now?
onside said | January 29th 2009 @ 11:04am | Report comment
And whilst people pontificate, Shane Warne ,the Grand Wizard of common decency
and family values laughs at us daily from the siteboards at all major cricket venues.
Sponsored of course by a brewery.Its hair raising.
fillbee said | January 29th 2009 @ 11:22am | Report comment
The McCullum thing is a little over blown since South Australia had Younis Khan and Sohail Tanvir (Pakistani test players) playing in thier team for more than one game and another Pakistani test player Umar Gul plying his trade in Western Australia.
Sorry Andrew, you made a very bad mistake.
onside said | January 29th 2009 @ 11:28am | Report comment
If you want to experience the essence of Australian values go to Schoolies Week on the Gold Coast.
Young people that go to schools often professing pragmatic if not spiritual Christian values spent a week
getting dreadfully drunk,dropping pills,and ‘hooking up’ (shagging for the uninitiated). The Salvation Army
run vomit tents .Attendants place extra long hairpins in the hair of young girls to keep it out of their face
when they spew in recepticles. All this with the tacit approval of parents that fund the ‘rite of passage’
The Australian sporting public often lament the lack of a ‘grog’ culture in some cricket teams from countries
with alternate values and morality systems to their own.
Lets not get too precious about Symonds.The cornerstone of Australian sport is alchohol. Its a drug.
Me? I’m a pony shandy off the horrors, and I wish I was young enough to go to Scoolies Week.
drewster said | January 29th 2009 @ 4:57pm | Report comment
Aren’t we taking the “un Australian” slur a bit too far? After all we live in a multi cultural society and a democracy, So people are entiltled to their opinion and being Australian has different meanings to different people. A Queenslander bagging NSW in any sport has been going on for ages and McCullum was made an honorary ‘Blue bagger” for a day. The comments were out of line, No question about that, But if McCullum Doesn’t care about it why are we taking such offence to it?
We should all be laughing at Symonds (not with him) and saying “Symonds You Idiot”.
PS Would love to be a fly out in the middle if Symonds plays against the Kiwis in any of the one dayers coming up. I bet there will be a few “un Australian” comments thrown around then.
Guy Smiley said | January 29th 2009 @ 9:13pm | Report comment
Savvas I wasn’t aiming for xenophobia in my post. There is no Australian ‘look’ anymore unless you mean aborigines. And not sure what Ron Bakir has to with sport.
Filbee you make a good point about Tanvir & Gul, Symonds would never have chosen those two as targets.
All up Symonds was probably just having a bit of a laugh and whilst I wasn’t personally offended by it and neither it seems was McCullum I am just sick of the term un-Australian. It’s a cop-out like and a lazy soundbite that continues to generate headlines. No problem with him having a few beers but his track record indicates that he does.