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RUGBY, AUSTRALIA IS THE WORLD "QUEEN"
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Once again sport and politics interlace. This time in a less evident, yet very odd way. In fact, the Australian rugby team wins its second world championship once again in the country where this sport originated. So far, there is nothing strange, except for two side aspects that have turned this event into a series of embarassing situations.
The Wallabies, as Australian players are nicknamed, have once again won a title in that country that colonized them for more than a century. It is well known that in the past the British sent to Australia the dregs of their society: thieves, murderers and even mad people. This could somewhat explain the streak of madness and unpredictability typical of the Aborigines or white people living in Oceania.
In Cardiff, many years later, the story of sport has written another chapter that talks of revenge. The Australian team defeated the surprising French team under the eyes of Queen Elizabeth II and the team leader, John Eales, received the World Cup from the hands of the chief of the English monarchy. Leaving out all merely agonistic aspects, it is the "politic" aspect that more impressed us, given the twist of fate that confronted colonized people and their colonizers in a sort of impossible remake.
The prize-giving ceremony was the most intriguing and delicate moment in that dull English afternoon. Right in the day when Australia chose through a referendum between a Republican government and Monarchy, the leader of Wallabies had to put on a brave face before the symbol of that nation his ancestors had fought for years. With an accomplished diplomatic smile, he told the Queen the usual words suited to the occasion after those said in 1991, when even the English team had to give in in Twickenham. And while raising his trophy, he must have thought that nobody is likely to live a day like this.
He, John Eales, like probably his teammates, had voted for the suppression of monarchy, for that link with motherland England has been trying to keep alive for years but which Ozies have never felt.
Righ in the day of liberation, Eales received the most important prize by a woman who has embodied the enemy for many years. What's more, in the Anglo-Saxon sport "par excellence" that is played in stadiums that are considered as "temples" of this discipline. If 8 years ago the Australians had lived a day of revenge, they would have never expected to celebrate this second victory with these concomitant events that, after all, go in their favour. Historians have already remarked Great Britain excessive expansionism and grandeur. We can only add that the English cannot always win.
 

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