Nation's Transcendent Love For Wallabies Really Just Deep Homesickness For An Australia That Doesn't Exist Anymore

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

Across Australia this week the same line keeps getting repeated. This is the worst Wallabies side to ever go on a spring tour. People, and journalists, say it flatly and without argument. And looking at the results, it is hard to push back. The Wallabies have come home from Europe winless after four straight defeats. They conceded 48 points to France, 46x to Ireland and wrapped up the year with 10 Test losses, the most ever recorded in a single season. It is the first time since 1958 that Australia has gone an entire European tour without a win.

But in Betoota this morning none of those numbers mattered.

Not really. Because for the people still watching, the Wallabies are no longer about rugby performance. They are about something deeper and a lot harder to describe.

Sitting outside the Tatts Hotel this morning in the French Quarter, local polo shirt wearer Malcolm Fenton explained it in the way only a bloke on his first schooner can.

"Everyone keeps saying this is the worst spring tour team ever," he said.

"But I do not care. I watch them because it is love. And love is the only thing that can transcend time and space. The Wallabies winning is like going back through a wormhole to the year 2000 when we were all happier."

He was not joking. He meant it. And around the table a few others nodded because they knew exactly what he was talking about.

For many Australians watching the Wallabies is not about lineouts or defence patterns. It is about remembering a time when the country felt different. More relaxed. More united. Less brutal. Back when the middle class was not an endangered species and a Bledisloe Test could fill a stadium with one hundred thousand people. Back when the nation felt optimistic instead of tense, competitive and expensive.

Malcolm said a single Wallabies try, even in a heavy loss, can bring back the feeling of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Olympics. Gregan. Eales. Pressed pingers that just made you hug each other. $2 schooners and $5 smokes. And a national mood that did not fluctuate with interest rates.

"You get five minutes of it," he said.

"Five minutes where it feels like life still makes sense."

No one at the table demanded sackings or called for another rebuild. They all knew the tour was a disaster. They just did not feel the need to talk about it. Because for them the Wallabies have become one of the last connections to an older Australia. A calm one. A generous one. A stable one.

"They might lose again next time," Malcolm said as he pushed his empty glass forward.

"But for a moment they make me feel like I'm 21 walking through Darling Harbour again. Matt Dunning is shirtless in Wallaby Bar. Christ. We were alive."

More to come.