There have been some great moments in Australian sport, and others that reeked of scandal, ineptitude and just plain bizarre. Here are four.
‘Deportation, Mr Djokovic’
Novak Djokovic couldn’t have picked a worse time to pack his bags, log onto Instagram and announce he was heading to Melbourne. At the beginning of 2022, the city was so divided, with tens of thousands of Covid cases. Melburnians were so exhausted that a mass brawl broke out in a supermarket, with a customer being hit over the head with a pan. Then Novak strolled in with his crazy ideas about vaccination, his sloppy paperwork, his twenty grand slams and hundreds of millions of tennis earnings. He had no prayer.
The saga of medical exemptions, visa fraud and entry rights continued. The grinning mug of “No-Vax” led the news every night. His supporters sang Balkan folk songs outside his hotel. His visa application was a circus. The livestreaming was plagued by long outages, porn, spam and bootlegging.
Jonathan Liew of The Guardian noted how Djokovic treated it all like a tennis match, “with an unwavering and messianic belief in his own supremacy. He contested his deportation as if it were a crucial breaking point – as if it were his last stand against total oblivion.” The problems, Liew wrote, “arise when you begin to confuse the hard, white lines of the tennis court with the messy compromises of the world at large.”
Essendon get to work
It was driven “by incompetence rather than malice,” according to Chip Le Grand in his book The Straight Dope. That is being generous. The Essendon supplement scandal ensnared an election-year prime minister, the country’s most powerful and defensive sporting body, mysterious new drugs, warnings about susceptibility to organized crime, an underfunded anti-doping body, a haughty AFL boss, a rabid press, controversial sports scientists, high bureaucrats, crack silk, human rights experts, golden boys, conspiracy theorists and flag wavers.
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It was a perfect sporting shitstorm and the scandal needed a face. For months it was James Hird’s ashen face plastered all over the front and back pages. The AFL, as always, tried to control the narrative. Essendon responded with numbing press releases and lame hashtags. The natural tendency, whether you were a columnist, tweeter, keyboard fanatic or water-cooler, was to adopt as strident a stance as possible. It earned several Walkley awards. It cost others Brownlow Medals. It drove some crazy and drove others out of the sport. Few can explain with any clarity what on earth took place. Essendon has never been the same since.
Fine Cotton is quenched
There were always ring-ins in horse racing. In the 1970s, a gentleman named Rick Renzella – whom journalist Andrew Rule called “a man of many parts, most of them stolen” – orchestrated a series of successful stabbings. The key, Renzella realized, was that the nags had to look vaguely similar. But the Fine Cotton/Bold Personality ring-in was a misplaced mess. It featured a cast of chancers, charlatans and idiots, most of whom were untroubled by intellectual concerns. For starters, Bold Personality was a full shade lighter and half a furlong faster than Fine Cotton. He also had a large white star on his forehead. Applying food coloring and peroxide did not help. A half-smart sixth grader could have come up with a more effective scam.
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The fascinating thing about the Fine Cotton affair is that it has never been fully explained or resolved. Although the Waterhouse family was not accused of being involved in the ring itself, they were found to have had prior knowledge of the switch. Bill Waterhouse, Rule wrote, was “a liar, a cheat and a bully.” When it emerged that he and his son Robbie knew about the ring-in, they were ‘warned’ of every race track in the world. But the Sydney racing world forgives all transgressions and Robbie eventually returns to bookmaking. Big Bill himself, with a straight face, a beautiful turn of phrase and without an ounce of shame, published a book What are the Odds? and took his truth to the grave in 2019. Robbie went on to marry his wife Gai, whose horses won all over the world, and his son Tom’s ads made up around 75% of all ads on Australian television.
The forearm incident
The little girl pulled Greg Chappell’s arm. “You cheated!” she cried. “You cheated!” On a horrific MCG pitch, in 41 degree Celsius heat, he had made 90 and bowled 10 overs. Now, with one ball remaining in the limited overs match against New Zealand, the series completely square and the Kiwis needing a six to force a replay, the Australian captain was on his haunches midway through the match. The spectators – who adhered to the MCG’s two-plate limit and lived in a pre-ozone world – had a great time. But Chappell was in complete mental disarray. He longed for a day off. He later called his biography Fierce Focus. At that moment he focused on two things: rest and the stone outhouse that was on its way to the fold.
Brian McKechnie was a double All Black and represented New Zealand in rugby league and rugby union. As a batsman he was a good full-back. But he was a big boy. If anyone was going to hit a six, Chappell convinced himself, it was this guy. He asked his brother Trevor: “How are you at armpit bowling?”
It was something you could only ask a younger brother. Trevor wasn’t a world beater but he rolled a nice grubber. McKechnie threw his bat in disgust and all hell broke loose. The New Zealand Prime Minister called it “an act of real cowardice and I think it was appropriate that the Australian team wore yellow.” In the dressing shed, Mark Burgess threw his teacup against the wall – a real Kiwi tantrum. Greg Chappell retreated to his hotel, slept well for the first time in months and was booed at the SCG just days later. He then received a standing ovation after his match-winning 87.