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First it was the cricket, with the Australian side thrashed three-zip to a team we have previously only ever lost to once in the Test arena.
Then our national hockey teams fell below their usual standards of excellence in Rio, comfortably defeated in quarter-finals.
This is the first time neither our men’s nor women’s side has made the semi-finals since Los Angeles in 1984.
The Australian swimming team talked the talk, even a little about themselves in the third person, but couldn’t match their language of a nuclear arms race with a rampaging US swim squad.
On Saturday morning, the NBA-laden Boomers also talked a big game but were absolutely pantsed by Serbia in the crunch of a semi-final. The fancied Opals also crumbled to the Serbian team in the quarters.
Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, cue Tim Shaw from Demtel – “But wait there’s more!”
In this instance, although not entirely unpredictably, the Wallabies were humiliated at home to a ‘rebuilding’ All Blacks.
Blame and opinion are being cast left, right and centre, but the collective collapse of many of our sporting institutions over the last month has raised a few interesting conundrums.
Are we getting bang for buck with our investment in sport? Has professionalism and the corporate dollar ruined the pride in the jersey? Have the media created complete hyperbole and inflated expectations on where Australia really sits across various sporting pursuits?
Have we lost the lustre of our sporting enigma – the backs to the wall, rearguard, never-give-up Aussie spirit? The Aussie battler who punches above their weight, no matter the conditions?
Are overwhelmingly friendly and relatively sterile home conditions, particularly in the case of our cricket team, softening our ability to perform on the road?
Are we seeing the results of the first generation of ‘mollycoddled’ academy graduates across various sporting formats – the ones hand-picked in their teens and told how good they are, without having to serve an appropriate apprenticeship?
Or is it simply that we have collectively a weak group of teams currently representing the green and gold on the international arena?
Famed 19th century Victorian author Anthony Trollope described our love with organised sport, writing in his 1870 book Australia, “The English passion for the amusements which are technically called ‘sports’, is not a national necessity with the Americans, whereas with the Australians it is almost as much so as home.”
This early assessment was an apt judgement on an obsession which many argue goes to the core of our national identity.
Which brings me to the final conundrum – has the Lucky Country simply lucked out, or is there a more fundamental malaise?