Hinds: Officaldom in the dark ages

(l-r) AFL boss Andrew Demetriou, FFA CEO David Gallop and ARU chief Bill Pulver. Picture: Brett Costello Source: Brett Costello / News Corp Australia

THE heads of our major sports bodies climbed into their ivory tower again. This time the message was homophobia.

To be more accurate, anti-homophobia. Although, given how far most sport lags behind the rest of society on gay rights, it surely knows more about the disease than the cure.

Despite the inevitable platitudes sprouted by the leading administrators who signed this new Hooray For Gay! pact, the very idea of a gay athlete remains so ridiculously novel that they must be gently coaxed out of the closet. ''It's OK, we're down with the whole gay thing now and we'll treat you as an equal,'' sport was saying. ''It might even be good for merchandising!''

Admittedly this was not the entire message. There were encouraging noises from the various acronyms (NRL, AFL, FFA, ARU and CA) doing more to promote awareness and understanding about homosexuality in their ranks. About ensuring the environment for a gay athlete who felt emboldened — as, depressingly, he would still need to be — to express his sexual preference was supportive.

But as the self-appointed, self-congratulatory cause merchants they have become, our leading sports officials could not help but revel in their role as educators and inspirations.

The AFL is always eager to link itself to a cause and — coincidentally — milk the promotional opportunities and government funding that might come with it. So it had already initiated a campaign in which players looked down Big Brother style from giant stadium screens and lectured crowds on the treatment of homosexuals.

On the NRL website an editorial lauded the NRL's involvement in the anti-homophobia campaign and planted a flag on the moral high ground. The game is in a powerful position to educate, has taken a genuine leadership position and so on.

None of the administrators pledging their support seemed faintly embarrassed about how self-serving and self-deluded such statements seemed to anyone who bothered to take a peek over their back fences.

None seemed to realise if gay rights was the Tour de France, they would be stuck on the start line with a flat tyre while the rest of us tackled the Alps. Or that the major football codes and cricket preaching about sexuality is akin to a visiting North Korea dignitary lecturing the Senate about democracy.

Admittedly this is the perception of someone living in an inner-city suburb with a diverse and mostly tolerant demographic. And it is certainly not to suggest that homophobia has been defeated and gay rights fully achieved. Visit Canberra or cyberspace if you think otherwise.

But as the mardi gras has become more of a victory parade than a protest, there are relatively few occasions where homosexuality is not considered — again RELATIVELY — passé. That sport still debates the very idea of gay athletes because its environment has discouraged an open acknowledgment of sexuality leaves it in the dark ages.

Meanwhile, for many of us, the sexuality of our workmates, our friends or the bloke in the bottle shop is a matter of indifference. We can joke with a mate that we will only support his right to get married if having children is compulsory — because he and his husband should have to suffer like the rest of us. Sport tiptoes about the subject as if walking through a minefield.

Some sports are still trapped in an age where the possible presence of a gay athlete in the sheds is an issue. If not among a hopefully more enlightened generation of players, then among some older coaches and support staff who think: ''Well, you know, he might look at our blokes in the shower.''

Meanwhile the rest of us change at public baths or the gym and couldn't care less whether the guy at the next locker dates Michael or Michelle, and can't imagine why you would.

Has it therefore occurred to the sporting bodies jumping aboard the promotional bandwagon that they are the ones needing the lecture? That because of the retrograde environment they have fostered it is more likely to be the players on the big screens, rather than those in the crowd, who harbour objections to having a gay colleague in their workplace?

The same can be said of some of the other causes which sport purports to champion. The NRL, for example, will hold its Women in League round next month.

We'll all feel pretty in pink. But it won't change the fact females are badly under-represented at board room and administrative level, or that the overwhelming female presence on game day is scantily clad nymphettes jiggling about for the gratification of a — not surprisingly — male dominated audience.

The message might be right. But it tends to be less powerful when the messenger has so little credibility.

Time for O'Farrell to consider NRL

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell stood in the Members Pavilion at the SCG a few weeks ago and told the visiting LA Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks they would be playing in the greatest sports stadium in Australia.

As much as the statement might have bemused the fiercely parochial burghers of the self-proclaimed ''sports capital of the universe'' Melbourne, O'Farrell had a case to make.

The SCG's eye-catching, on-going redevelopment has given Sydney the world class facilities local sports fans deserve. Well, it has given cricket and Swans fans the stadium they deserve.

On Sunday the Swans play their first game at the SCG since the completion of the new grandstand. Great seats, great sight-lines, excellent catering. The experience AFL fans enjoy throughout the country.

The NRL? Outside Sydney the game is well catered for. The NRL drove the development of Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, AAMI Park in Melbourne and the Gold Coast stadium among other projects.

But Sydney will remain a black hole until ANZ is set free of AFL and reconfigured for rectangular sports, Allianz Stadium is modernised and – perhaps – a new purpose-built 45,000 seater is built in the west.

Which is why the half-baked $29 million refurbishment of Parramatta Stadium that will add only 1800 seats, along with local member Tony Abbott's pledge to spend $10 million on Brookvale Oval, are badly misguided.

Government spending on Sydney stadiums should be concentrated on improving/building facilities that will attract and cater for larger crowds in greater comfort. Then O'Farrell can puff out his chest about the stadiums in which Sydney's main game is played.

Not quite The Man he said he was

ASSUMING he overcomes a bad case of indigestion from eating so much canvas, Anthony Mundine will fight on. But now seems a good time to consider The Man's legacy.

In a nutshell: Nowhere near as good as he said he was while promoting his pay-per-boo fights with faux-Ali bravado. But far better than many of us thought he would ever be.

If not quite one of Australia's boxing greats, Mundine has earned his place in the worthy realm of the very good.

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