E&OE..........................................
LORD:
The Prime Minister, John Howard, has had a pretty big year, as
with any PM, with highs and lows because, simply, that goes with
the territory but his eyes light up every time he talks about sport
and that is exactly what we will chat about today and nothing else.
Well thanks for your time and a merry Christmas Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you very much David and to you as well, it is very nice to
talk to you.
LORD:
Thank you, I appreciate that. Well, would it be accurate to say
your sporting pecking order would be cricket number one and rugby
league number two with one red eye and one white?
PRIME MINISTER:
That's pretty accurate although when it comes to football,
I played more rugby union and soccer than I did rugby league. I
played both league and union at school and then soccer for several
years after I left school, but I guess I have followed league more
closely over the last few years. But, like all people who grow up
in Sydney, unless you are absolutely fanatical you tend to follow
a range of football codes.
LORD:
Well that is very true. Well let's get to the league in a
minute because cricket is your agreed number one. Now on your recent
visit to Lords, was that the first time that you have seen the baggy
green caps in action at the home of cricket.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes it was....no, no, no, I'm sorry. It wasn't - I correct
myself - I saw them in l993. I actually saw Michael Slater get his
inaugural ton against the Englishmen in 1993, that was the Test
in which Warne bowled Gatting with that extraordinary leg break
that seemed to break about 10 yards, much to the surprise of the
batsman. And my wife and I were in London and we saw it then. Then
we were able to see the Lords Test in 1997. Now that was the first
time I have done so as Prime Minister, of course. It is quite an
experience to see a Test match at Lords.
LORD:
Yes there is something rather special about Lords isn't it.
It is a bit like Twickenham for Rugby and it is a bit like....
PRIME MINISTER:
It does have an atmosphere but something that I have remarked to
a lot of my friends about is that when I was overseas in the middle
of this year I went to the Lords Cricket Ground and to Yankee Stadium
in New York, which, of course, is the headquarters of baseball and
whilst it was a great experience going to each, particularly Lords,
neither of those grounds compares in size and conception to say
the Melbourne Cricket Ground. And it reminds you of just how good
the major sporting fields in Australia really are.
The facilities at the Lords Cricket Ground have been improved a
lot in recent years. I thought Yankee Stadium was a bit colourless.
It didn't seem to have a lot of atmosphere, the facilities
were fine but I was a little bit disappointed, having as a child
thought of sporting arenas in America as comprising Yankee Stadium
and Madison Square Garden - both in New York - I was just a little
bit, sort of, let down.
But, it does drive home to you how good are our high quality playing
fields in Australia. We have good surfaces, good facilities. Our
cricket and football grounds, by and large, are much bigger, so
we really do extraordinarily well given our size.
LORD:
And after the Olympic Games it is going to be better in Sydney
as well.
PRIME MINISTER:
It's going to be even better.
LORD:
It is going to be fantastic isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it will just, sort of, make a very good situation even better.
LORD:
Well you mentioned there about your boyhood dreams. Did you ever
have a boyhood dream of wearing a green, baggy green cap?
PRIME MINISTER:
For a fairly short period of time. Really, the men overtook me,
David, and I realised that wasn't going to be achievable but
I continue to have an enormous affection for the game. I was a very
average cricketer. I enjoyed it and I continued to play it well
into my thirties. I stopped playing regularly when I entered Parliament
at the age of 34. I still have two or three social games a year
but I was never a great chop at it, but I enjoyed it immensely.
LORD:
I thought you might have donned the creams for your 11 against
South Africa at Manuka?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, that's become of course, and very understandably, quite
a serious encounter. And it is an opportunity for a lot of players
to show how good they are and it does remind people of the depth
of cricket in Australia.
LORD:
Well how do you rate the current Australian team in history then,
Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
I would rate it highly. I don't think one could rate it quite as
highly as the 1948 team or indeed the team at various stages when
Ian Chappell was the captain. And I thought there were times when
Allan Border was captain, when particularly 1993 we were doing very
well. But, it is capable of great heights and the victory over the
West Indies, a couple of years ago, was quite extraordinary.
LORD:
Back-to-back, there and here which made it even better.
PRIME MINISTER:
Quite extraordinary. Now it is true that the West Indies has hit
a period in its own cricket cycle which is not as strong as it was
but it doesn't alter the fact that that back-to-back achievement
was quite remarkable.
LORD:
Well you are very keen on history and the way things happen. Now
history has been made with two Aussie skippers this season, with
Mark Taylor for the Tests and Steve Waugh for the white ball game.
Were you a bit surprised with that decision in breaking with tradition?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, it seemed as though it was being hinted at. I know it is very
easy for people to criticise the selectors when they do things like
that. I am a great Mark Taylor fan, as you all know, but the idea
of trying a separate captaincy is defensible and it ought to be
given a bit of time to work and I don't think people should
rush to judgement and say because we have lost a couple of one dayers
that means the whole idea is a failure. I don't think that
is fair.
They are different games although they are manifestations of the
same game, the qualities required or the emphasis in the games are
different and each contributes to the other. There is no doubt that
the quality of fielding, overall, in Test cricket now is much higher
than it was. It was always quite high with some teams. But I think,
for example, without sounding patronising, Englishmen field better
in Test matches now than they used to and part of that is due to
one day cricket.
LORD:
Very good point, now you mentioned, Mark Taylor, that was a very
moving fax you sent to him after he had broken that run of outs
with a century in the first Test of the last Ashes tour, you obviously
have a lot of admiration for him?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I do, I thought he took over the captaincy and was instantaneously
easy in the job. His leadership skills were very good and the achievement
in relation to the West Indies, that we have just canvassed, was
marvellous and I just know what it is like from one's own experience.
You can go through a very difficult period of time and everything
would seem to go wrong and I just felt a certain degree of understanding
and I am just glad he stuck to it. He is such an even sort of person.
He wasn't somebody who was blaming this or that circumstance
or this or that person. I found him incredibly even tempered and
whatever with the constant questions about his run getting performance
by the media. Now, fair enough the media ask those questions, not
blaming them, but he displayed an evenness and a lack of bad temper
that is, I guess, an example to a lot of people.
LORD:
No, fair comment, in fact anyone that can survive the brutal British
press can survive anything.
PRIME MINISTER:
Survive, indeed anything.
LORD:
Now what about rugby league, the ARL/Super League war, has that
dented your love of the game a bit?
PRIME MINISTER:
Everybody got disappointed with that. I thought Rugby League from
about the middle of the early part of the 1980s through to a couple
of years ago had transformed itself. It had become a game that all
sections of the community began to follow and not just a particular
section of the community. And those who were leading the game and
promoting it had done a first class job then along came the Super
League development.
The public is always turned away by division and if you look a
divided sport, a divided code, you turn people off. You'd threaten
the locality base of the game which is always a threat to any kind
of football and of course it set off - with the high salaries and
pay - it set off a chain reaction amongst all highly paid professional
sportsmen and women which still hasn't worked itself right
through the system. So, of course it was bad and I am pleased that
it looks as though it has been finalised. There are still a few
loose ends about sponsorship to be tied up but it does look as though
it is finalised.
It was always going to be the case that the size of the competition
had to be worked down but I hope it doesn't occur in a way
that you destroy the locality base. That is one of the great strengths
of football - any code - it has of course always been the great
strength of AFL, the VFL originally, that tremendous locality base
that it has got and still has.
LORD:
Well the Kerry Packer inspired World Series split, 20 years ago,
vastly improved the game of cricket. Can you see the league war
achieving the same result?
PRIME MINISTER:
Different situation David, because what World Series Cricket produced
was a different type of game. That hasn't happened with Super
League, has it?
LORD:
No.
PRIME MINISTER:
There have been some marginal changes in the rules, very marginal.
LORD:
Well I must think Prime Minister, along the lines of the World
Club challenge - I thought the concept of that was great.
PRIME MINISTER:
The concept was great but the way, I have got to say, in common
with a lot of other sports followers, I have found the frustration
of not being able to see the first session of that Cricket Test
while I had to watch a fairly low grade club game between an English
club and the Sydney club which was not even a proper contest, a
bit annoying.
LORD:
Yes true. But you wouldn't expect though, the Northern Hemisphere
clubs to be so inferior to the Southern Hemisphere, that came as
a bit of a shock.
PRIME MINISTER:
Although the quality of English rugby league compared to Australian
rugby league has declined enormously or our's has got a lot
better - I think probably the latter - over the last 20 years. I
can remember when, 30 years ago, a Test match between Great Britain
and Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground was a real contest and
a great Rugby League encounter but I don't think it has been
since 1970 that the Englishmen have been a real threat to Australian
Rugby League.
The quality of our game has improved enormously, our coaching techniques
are much better and I think, overall, it is a much better game here
than it is in England. Whereas 30 or 40 years ago, it was very much
an even contest.
LORD:
Well St George is your Rugby League team, why the Dragons Prime
Minister?
PRIME MINISTER:
I grew up in Earlwood, which is in what I might call the top end
of the St George area, if you grew up in Earlwood you either followed
St George or Canterbury and I followed St George and that's
a loyalty that I have retained even though I haven't lived
in that part of Sydney for the last 30 odd years, or 26 years since
I have been married. But, I came from that part of the world and
of course, in those days, St George was a very powerful club. It
had worked its way through that great series of - what was it -
11-13...
LORD:
11.
PRIME MINISTER:
11 consecutive premiership victories.
LORD:
Yes you were certainly with the strength.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah. But I did have a geographical connection too.
LORD:
Now, Prime Minister, what about other sports, because you are a
sports lover. Do any others really tickle your fancy?
PRIME MINISTER:
When I was very young I must confess I used to follow boxing very
closely. I could recite all the heavy-weight champions of the world
from Bob Fitzsimmons right down to the then...the ones around then,
which were people like Louis and Marciano and Walcott. But I must
say as the time went by I lost interest in that and I play golf
regularly when I am on holidays. I quite like golf. I play tennis.
I follow the golf and the tennis. I follow soccer, my two sons have
played soccer regularly. Like probably 2 or 3 million other Australians
I felt very let down when we lost that game in Melbourne against
the Iranians. It demonstrated what an arbitrary game soccer can
be. You can get a result utterly against the flow of play and that
certainly was the case with that particular game. I try to follow
all of the other sports. You naturally have your own interests but
the ones that I have mentioned are the ones that I follow most keenly.
LORD:
Well every sports lover has heroes and heroines, who are yours?
PRIME MINISTER:
Certainly in cricket, although I only saw him play once, everybody
of course worships Don Bradman. I guess of the people that I saw
a lot of in the earlier period amongst the Australians, Keith Miller
and Ray Lindwall and later on the Chappell's and Marsh and
also Allan Border. They were people who I think have - just leaving
aside the current ones just thinking of those who are no longer
playing Test cricket - they are the ones that made the most vivid
impression on me.
And of non-Australians, Sobers, is certainly the greatest player
I saw over an extended period of time. He was absolutely fantastic,
one of the most, natural athletes I have ever seen play any kind
of sport, whether it be cricket, or football, or sprinting, or long
distance running, or swimming or anything I thought he was just
absolutely extraordinary. He had a natural ability and a hand-eye
coordination that I have not seen the like of from anybody.
LORD:
What about the ladies. Any of the ladies over the years that have
really, you admired, from their sporting prowess?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh I thought, I think over the years, certainly in tennis, Evonne
Goolagong-Cawley and before her Margaret Smith or Margaret Court,
as she later became. They were the two that stood out in tennis.
I think in swimming you couldn't go past Dawn Fraser although
I thought, in more recent years, people like Tracey Wickham and
before her Shane Gould, also two great ornaments of swimming.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well how important then Prime Minister, is sport to the Australian
psyche, the Australian way of life?
PRIME MINISTER:
It is one of the pillars of the Australian way of life. There is
a very special place in the Australian psyche for sport. You don't
really understand what makes the Australian nation tick unless you
understand the great affection Australians have for sport. We are
remarkably successful and very competitive, given our size. I mean,
our performance at the Atlanta Games given that we had only 18.5
million people was just amazing.
Our dominance for a long time of various competitive sports is
terrific. Now, none of this is to deny the importance in Australia's
life of culture and the Arts. In fact one of the very pleasing things
about Australian life in the last 20 years has been the way in which
we have become broader in our interests and as well as continuing
a very strong, indeed fanatical commitment to sport, we have become
a nation of museum visitors and theatre goers in a way that earlier
generations may have not thought likely.
And the other very pleasing thing is the way in which sport has
become, particularly football, has become a lot more national. If
you grew up in Sydney years ago you tended to follow cricket and
rugby league, a few people followed union and a few have still followed
soccer. Now you will follow rugby league and you will find out what
is happening in rugby union, or you will follow union and ditto
with league but you will also follow Australian rules. You'll
know what is happening.
Television of course is responsible for this but also the greater
sense of nationalism that Australians have now and they don't
see their sport in quite the provincial terms that used to be the
case in the 1940s and 50s.
LORD:
Well fascinating stuff. Many thanks for your time Prime Minister
and I hope you have enjoyed the change of pace.
PRIME MINISTER:
Indeed.
LORD:
Have a merry Christmas, you and your family and a great 1998.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you very much and you haven't bowled me many bumpers.
LORD:
I didn't intend to.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good on you.
[Ends]