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With the Wallabies to be crowned world champions on Sunday morning, I urge City Hall to ignore any logistical barriers and cost factors and arrange a grand-scale ticker tape parade for their return, just like the ones from the good old days.
Because frankly, it’s been way too long.
Remember those famous scenes of yesteryear when an underdog Aussie triumph would see the squalid sidewalks of our capital cities briefly beautified with unified celebration and enormous stacks of wasted paper?
When city-goers would flock in their tens of thousands to toast belting the Poms, stealing back ‘Bill’, sweeping our 245th netball title and overachieving in the Olympics, all while intoxicated on a mix of national pride and sleep deprivation, back in headier times when George Street was actually open.
Personally, I never made the effort to attend because I didn’t have a job that I could call in sick to, but man, do I miss those parades. The images are vivid and rich in my mind – the emotional outpourings, the council workers slacking off in the background – simply because I treasure them so deeply, and also because they’ve been flogged to death on television.
Steve Waugh’s squinty eyes piercing through confetti like fricken laser beams at the commemorations for Boonie’s death-cheating cans record. Phil Kearns and Nick Farr-Jones making the special trip across the bridge from the North Shore after pinching world rugby supremacy. Throngs gushing over Olympians who’d become household names for something other than the creative use of Stilnox.
And there, adoring from the roadside would be thousands of deliriously thankful punters, all pardoned from work after lying to their boss about a rare toe fungus, giving thanks and praise while workplace productivity suffered.
Some would stand ten rows deep for blocks on end, while others would hang dangerously out of high rise windows like the offspring of Michael Jackson, desperate for a glimpse at Cameron Lillicrap, Steve ‘Monners’ Moneghetti or the guy who won bronze in the 5000-metre walk.
Road closures would kneecap the city’s traffic for hours, resulting in a crippling chain reaction that saw commuters returning home for dinner the following Wednesday. An abundance of streamers would drape the multitude of long-lunchers while causing small forests to pray for Australia to never win anything ever again.
Then, we would leave the mess behind and someone else would clean it up, and all because we won.
Unfortunately, much like blasé attitudes towards blatant littering, the demand for massively-patriotic ticker tape parades has deteriorated in recent years. In their place have been baby-sized processions through quieter streets, cut-priced civic receptions and in the most indifferent responses, easy-to-produce newspaper liftouts.
So why doesn’t Australia love converging en masse to throw paper at our splendiferous returning heroes anymore? Or why won’t someone in a suit just arrange one? We’ve beaten the USA in a Rugby League World Cup since then, so it’s not like there hasn’t been an opportunity.
It seems the reasons for the demise of the parade are many and varied, and as you will read, vague and unproven.
Unfortunately for the ticker tape and barricade industries, ‘punching above our weight’ on the world stage isn’t the chest-beating novelty for Australians it used to be. We’ve been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and developed an icy indifference. Or maybe just a hatred of crowding on the footpath to stare at the back of someone else’s head for an hour. I’m not quite sure.
Maybe we are also fixated elsewhere, our attention spans the victim of the rise of visual arts and the Apple Everything? Or perhaps we just take success for granted, preferring to expect victory and simply bang-on for answers when we lose? Perhaps the modern day ticker tape parade comes simply when the public doesn’t call for your head?
Whatever it is, none of it is the Wallabies fault, so the establishment should get cracking. They need to firstly work out exactly what ticker tape is, source a walloping truckload, and then allow the people to plaster a lump across the bruised and battered heads of these kings of the world while we bask in the reflected glory of their top-of-the-heap swag.
Will it happen? And if it doesn’t, will we ever again see those euphoric days of yore like 1999, when 200,000 people showed across three separate parades for our world champion cricket team, netballers and Wallabies?
Maybe the standard has now been set for only the most unlikely of unfathomable triumphs. Perhaps the only way such glorious abuse of the environment and workplace efficiency could happen if the Socceroos were to win the World Cup. Thoughts?