David Edwards
NormTaking a Trip Back to the '90s..
May 7th 2009 02:34
The time was the early 90s. Keating was still Treasurer and Bob Hawke was smashing schooners like they were soon to be unfashionable. Yeltsin was asserting his authority in a newly democratised Russia, with revolution having swept the Iron Curtain.
The internet was in its absolute infancy. Youth culture was evolving, with tattoos, piercing and heroin going hand-in-hand with the grunge aesthetic. Gangstas began to rap, which resulted in gangsta rap.
Vanilla Ice was cool, with his quick rhymes and predilection to dance front-on, a trait shared by MC Hammer. Enya was dominating the adult contemporary market and could be heard in every department store across Australia. Michael Hutchence was starting to get weird.
But most poignantly, Australian sport was never better. Not in terms of financial stability or performance-wise, but the intangible qualities that have since disappeared thanks to new business models. Let me run through some of the more lamentable changes.
Rugby League and Cricket were still sponsored by cigarette companies. Parents were smoking while pregnant and no one cared. These were good times. Cricketers would slide, in an attempt to save a boundary, into the fence, which would often result in injury. The advent of the “rope boundary” has ruined this aspect of the game, just another of the many ridiculous OH&S rules that have swept the sporting landscape.
Australian men would drink VB as a rule. Low-carb beers with the obligatory ‘Blonde’ title were still at least a decade away. Beer advertisements were strictly of sweaty, hairy men cracking open a “cold one” after a lengthy day spent lifting concrete, slaughtering animals, or indeed any pastime or profession that screams masculinity. Nowadays, modern beer advertisements are so glossy and ambiguous they could just as easily be promoting tampons.
Retiring cricketers had testimonial matches that were broadcast on free-to-air television. Zoe Goss got Brian Lara out; Paul Vautin took a splendid outfield catch. These matches were designed to send the retirees out into the sunset, much like a funeral. A public forum. People can gather to pay their respects and, most importantly, to let go. These days sportsmen do not so much retire as enjoy a seamless transition to the “media”. Back only a decade or two, players would finish their playing career and attempt a trade. Generally, players would struggle to make the transition and end up bankrupt. This is how it should be. I don’t want to see Adam Gilchrist “popping” up in the form of an advertisement on a Fairfax website, spruiking some telecommunications company; hosting the irrelevant “Wide World of Sports” program; or churning out cricket puns for some oil company. I’d rather he faded away like most retirees do. Like your 70-year-old grandfather who worked all his life for the one company, only to settle for a one bedroom unit overlooking Surfers’ Paradise with enviable proximity to an RSL.
Rugby Union was a partially acceptable sport. Was. Campese, bless his soul, offered a semblance of personality to an otherwise soulless game. Bob Dwyer had, according to an AP Nielsen poll, an 85 per cent approval rating among Australians. Now, the average Australian would be hard pressed to tell you who is in charge, or which marsupial the team is named after.
The NBL was awesome. Dwayne “D-Train” McLean, “Leaping” Leroy Loggins, Ricky Grace and Mark Bradtke, not to mention the evergreen Steve Carfino. Kids would trade cards in the playground, knowing full well that a Shane Heal rookie card would fetch $6000 in only a few years time.
AFL was emerging in Sydney. I was the impressionable age of five, therefore, free of cynicism. To me, Warwick Capper was the embodiment of cool: a rock star footballer with attitude and six-pointers to boot. Cheerleaders were instructed to dance every time Sydney kicked a goal. While the AFL has dispensed with cheerleaders on the grounds that they demean women, cheerleaders remain in the less-female friendly NRL. The AFL needs to lighten the fuck up.
Soccer was "gay". No one cared about it. People would brandish the sport as a game for sissies and ethnic minorities. Ned Zelic was captain of Australia, with Terry Venables in charge. Now it is mandatory for every Australian to vehemently support an English Premier League team. One must scour the internet for results and brag about how their “team” performed, while offering plagiarised insight into possible transfers and relegation candidates. These people are, ironically, the same people who once proclaimed the sport to be homosexual. Supporting an EPL team gives one a certain social advantage: a wealth of knowledge should one be devoid of conversational skills and in a pub past 2 am – the time that football is aired in Australia. It also allows the unintelligent Australian to, absent-mindedly, learn some European geography that they otherwise wouldn’t know.
These are just some of the fond memories I have of the Australian sporting landscape during the early ‘90s. If only sport could return to the way it was, then perhaps SportingMind would update his blog more often.
-SportingMind
The internet was in its absolute infancy. Youth culture was evolving, with tattoos, piercing and heroin going hand-in-hand with the grunge aesthetic. Gangstas began to rap, which resulted in gangsta rap.
Vanilla Ice was cool, with his quick rhymes and predilection to dance front-on, a trait shared by MC Hammer. Enya was dominating the adult contemporary market and could be heard in every department store across Australia. Michael Hutchence was starting to get weird.
But most poignantly, Australian sport was never better. Not in terms of financial stability or performance-wise, but the intangible qualities that have since disappeared thanks to new business models. Let me run through some of the more lamentable changes.
An enduring image of the '90s
Rugby League and Cricket were still sponsored by cigarette companies. Parents were smoking while pregnant and no one cared. These were good times. Cricketers would slide, in an attempt to save a boundary, into the fence, which would often result in injury. The advent of the “rope boundary” has ruined this aspect of the game, just another of the many ridiculous OH&S rules that have swept the sporting landscape.
Australian men would drink VB as a rule. Low-carb beers with the obligatory ‘Blonde’ title were still at least a decade away. Beer advertisements were strictly of sweaty, hairy men cracking open a “cold one” after a lengthy day spent lifting concrete, slaughtering animals, or indeed any pastime or profession that screams masculinity. Nowadays, modern beer advertisements are so glossy and ambiguous they could just as easily be promoting tampons.
Retiring cricketers had testimonial matches that were broadcast on free-to-air television. Zoe Goss got Brian Lara out; Paul Vautin took a splendid outfield catch. These matches were designed to send the retirees out into the sunset, much like a funeral. A public forum. People can gather to pay their respects and, most importantly, to let go. These days sportsmen do not so much retire as enjoy a seamless transition to the “media”. Back only a decade or two, players would finish their playing career and attempt a trade. Generally, players would struggle to make the transition and end up bankrupt. This is how it should be. I don’t want to see Adam Gilchrist “popping” up in the form of an advertisement on a Fairfax website, spruiking some telecommunications company; hosting the irrelevant “Wide World of Sports” program; or churning out cricket puns for some oil company. I’d rather he faded away like most retirees do. Like your 70-year-old grandfather who worked all his life for the one company, only to settle for a one bedroom unit overlooking Surfers’ Paradise with enviable proximity to an RSL.
Rugby Union was a partially acceptable sport. Was. Campese, bless his soul, offered a semblance of personality to an otherwise soulless game. Bob Dwyer had, according to an AP Nielsen poll, an 85 per cent approval rating among Australians. Now, the average Australian would be hard pressed to tell you who is in charge, or which marsupial the team is named after.
The NBL was awesome. Dwayne “D-Train” McLean, “Leaping” Leroy Loggins, Ricky Grace and Mark Bradtke, not to mention the evergreen Steve Carfino. Kids would trade cards in the playground, knowing full well that a Shane Heal rookie card would fetch $6000 in only a few years time.
AFL was emerging in Sydney. I was the impressionable age of five, therefore, free of cynicism. To me, Warwick Capper was the embodiment of cool: a rock star footballer with attitude and six-pointers to boot. Cheerleaders were instructed to dance every time Sydney kicked a goal. While the AFL has dispensed with cheerleaders on the grounds that they demean women, cheerleaders remain in the less-female friendly NRL. The AFL needs to lighten the fuck up.
Soccer was "gay". No one cared about it. People would brandish the sport as a game for sissies and ethnic minorities. Ned Zelic was captain of Australia, with Terry Venables in charge. Now it is mandatory for every Australian to vehemently support an English Premier League team. One must scour the internet for results and brag about how their “team” performed, while offering plagiarised insight into possible transfers and relegation candidates. These people are, ironically, the same people who once proclaimed the sport to be homosexual. Supporting an EPL team gives one a certain social advantage: a wealth of knowledge should one be devoid of conversational skills and in a pub past 2 am – the time that football is aired in Australia. It also allows the unintelligent Australian to, absent-mindedly, learn some European geography that they otherwise wouldn’t know.
These are just some of the fond memories I have of the Australian sporting landscape during the early ‘90s. If only sport could return to the way it was, then perhaps SportingMind would update his blog more often.
-SportingMind
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Comment by Norm
Consumption Malfunction
Equal and Opposite
Arses and Elbows
Footy Power
I love hearing Tim Gilbert talk about European Football.
He says, "Bargthelona."
There's no way the late Kenny Sutcliffe - may his soulless vacuum rest in peace - would have stood for such a bastardisation of his mother-of-a-tongue.
Sit next to Graham Kennedy in only his underwear, that's another thing.
I remember when basketball nearly took off. Then Michael Jackson retired and everyone seemed to change back to the old Empire's games.
Like whipping the West Indians.
Comment by Anonymous