Sydney to steal the Australian Open tennis tournament?
October 12th 2008 04:14
Barrie Charles Robran MBE, the best Australian rules player ever
I am not a man given to strong opinion or repetition of sentiment, but I think Melbourne, Victoria, should be cauterized, razed and raked into the sea. I loathe and detest and abhor Melbourne, and I am furious that my thesaurus doesn't have more synonyms for the sentiment.
All this started when I was a kid in Adelaide, South Australia, and Melbourne kept pinching our best footballers. In those days, before the national league, before sponsorship deals running to millions and before television broadcasting rights running to gazillions, clubs relied on gate takings for revenue. Melbourne, the bigger city, had bigger footy crowds, and used their fatter wallets to pinch our stars. The best footballer ever, Barrie Robran, told them to stuff it of course, but a lot of others headed east and we never got to watch them except on grainy black and white highlight packages.
But all that was nothing to what happened in 1995 when Melbourne stole our car race. Adelaide had hosted the Formula 1 Grand Prix since 1985, and the city loved it. And suddenly we discovered that it had been stolen from us, the result of clandestine negotiations between the Victorian government and the Formula 1 people. Just like that. I loathe and abhor and detest the Formula 1 people too.
I have never been able to explain to Victorians just how much that hurt South Australians.
Until now. Until the news reported this weekend that Sydney has launched a secret bid to steal the Australian Open tennis tournament from Melbourne. This news elicits disbelief and shock. The Aussie Open is a major part of the Melbourne social and sporting calendar. It's inconceivable that someone could take it away.
I know the feeling.
FOOTNOTE: I don't really hate Melbourne. Not any more. I moved here last year and it's a great place to live. I refuse to go to the Grand Prix on principle, although maybe I should because another news report recently said both Moscow and Beijing want to steal Melbourne's spot on the F1 calendar.
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