A Poms Ashes

Well what started as an adrenaline fuelled day has kind of pierterson’d (excuse the pun!) out.  I came into work and immediately seized on ‘Bruce’:

 “Good day for a thrashing by the Poms”

He immediately took the bait and said that we’d be in for a lesson on how to play the game.  At this point I raised the fact that the Barmy Army had already inflicted the first defeat on Australia this series by beating the ?????? and we both couldn’t remember what they called the Aussie fans (‘Fanatics’ apparently).  He said that this is not the real series and that it wasn’t that important but one thing I have noticed since being here in Oz is that Aussies will take any sport victory and milk it, but if they lose there is always some excuse.  The recent Rugby Union and League games are a classic example:

Australia lose to Ireland in union – “Terrible weather to blame” or “We didn’t turn up”.
Australia beat England last weekend in League and I get loads of stick, but then I highlight that the week or so before England beat them in Sydney – “Yeah we didn’t turn up” or “Yeah the team wasn’t full strength ”, etc.

You can see a familiar pattern here.  The Aussies love winning but they cannot take the losing at all.  The World Cup was and is still a sore point.  The fact they lost via a bad referee decision (penalty decision in the last minute) is still causing them pain.  I know we (England) still go on about losing to the Germans but we have had many similar failures since then and we moan for a few days and then its history.  I’m sure they will get used to it soon enough.

Anyway back to the Ashes and today is not looking to good.  Currently its 296-3 and I am being told by ‘Bruce’ that they’ll get 500+ and make us to follow on.  Come on ENGLAND!  Why oh why didn’t they play Monty in this test.  We should have come out fighting in this series.  Maybe tomorrow will be different.