Triple Js guide to winning

I do not mind listening to "Today Today" on Triple J in the car of an afternoon when I get a chance to leave work on time. Their apathetic, indifferent brand of searching sarcasm is a touch better than listening to caller after caller ring other stations to discuss how they were picked up by their eventual second husband at their former mother-in-law's after-wake drinks.

I do get annoyed, though, as an avid sports lover, by their deriding attitude generally directed at sporting heroes, events and idols. That is not to say that I do not have time for people that are completely disinterested in sport. For example, I don't really put myself headlong into adding a spoiler to a car and rigging up fifteen gauges around my steering wheel like some do. However, I hope I am not looked down on by those automobile enthusiasts because of that fact. I don't choose to deride their hobbies; I just generally don't comment on them, or if I do, it is a passing slight at the apparently pointlessness of their pursuits, said tongue tightly touching the inside of my cheek.

Chris Taylor and Craig Reucassel take this derision of their topic of disinterest to a new level. Instead of leaving sport alone on their daily slot and spending their time dissecting whatever it is that interests them; they decide to take after Australia's sporting hysteria with a verbal pick axe and aim to make our love for sport seem petty and pointless.

Over the last few weeks we have seen a whole show dedicated to downplaying the spectacle of the Melbourne Cup, and parts of the following day’s show dedicated to downplaying the enormity of Makybe Diva's achievement.

Similarly last Wednesday we heard a show dedicated to telling anyone who cared to listen that if you support the Socceroos you are a bandwagon jumper and that "after they lose" everyone would jump off again. At one stage listeners had their ear drums grated by a less than hilarious spoof that went down the line of players already booking holidays for island holiday destinations at the same time Germany 2006 will take place.

(Before I note the lack of traction their arguments create I just want to point out that the butt of their jokes, on both occasions, turned out to be victorious. There may be something in that.)

Unfortunately, such is the strength of the sporting culture in Australia that all their satire succeeds in doing is splitting their listeners into two groups, on one side the small minority who have taken a stance against sport to display some symptom of "conforming through attempted rebellion syndrome," and the vast majority of listeners who drink beer, enjoy sport and either listen with scowling faces or turn on the CD player.

The important point to be made on this point is that while some don't see the reason for 80,000 people packing into a stadium to watch 22, 26, 30 or 36 blokes kick around the modern, synthetic version of a pigskin, it is our passion and one derived from two factors.

First and foremost the active reason is historical in that, during Australia's hardest time, the 1930s, it was two sportsmen (or one human and a horse) that gave Australians something to be proud of; two athletes that gave Australians a reason to dream and to dare ourselves out of the depression. It has now become a part of our nature to turn to sport, and the sportsmen that play in that realm, for inspiration and a reaffirmation of ourselves and who we are as Australians.

I am very careful there to point out that sport does not create us, but like any cultural medium is certainly an expression of us.

The second reason is a passive one. Sport is our passion because we don't have gangland warfare to any measure that is seen in other parts of the world. There are no warring factions in our streets launching grenades in a bid to secure parcels of land and racism and oppression are of the kind that are the envy of the vast, vast majority of the world, underdeveloped, developing or developed.

And while I don't think that every Australian cricket captain should be Australian of the Year upon retirement, sport has a very high place on the Australian list of priorities and it is a place richly deserved.

So, even though sport may seem trivial by comparison to the lives that are lost daily on the West Bank or the struggles in Kashmir, I would prefer to live in a nation that has publicly funded pariahs call my sport watching pursuits futile than have to wake up to the sound of bombs, death and destruction.