Sporting Nation

Two sport stories have effectively pushed the pre-election campaigning off the front pages – an outbreak of equine flu and the confession of former top Rugby League player Andrew “Joey” Johns that he’d taken recreational drugs throughout his career.

I’d been puzzled by the amount of coverage given to equine flu, which is not fatal and is just, well, flu for horses. Even in this betting-mad nation it seemed a bit over the top until I read that horse-racing is Australia’s third largest industry (and I thought we were a muscular provider of raw materials to the world). I should have recalled that nearly everyone in Coffs Harbour gets a day off for the Coffs Cup and the whole country grinds to a halt for the now-threatened Melbourne Cup. So it’s good to see there’s an alternative - yabbie racing.

Meanwhile, Andrew Johns was picked up by British Transport Police in London with an ecstasy tablet in his pocket (“someone put it there, honest” was his first response) which led to a full confession. Apart from making quips like “putting the E in Joey”, many are wondering why he wasn’t picked up here years ago if the British Transport Police managed to collar him on a busy night in London. It’s all about attitude to sport, I guess.