Graham Gooch once described playing against Australia as being like a “fart competing with thunder”.
An entire generation of English cricketers will know exactly what the Essex legend meant and it’s a sentiment many British rugby league players could sympathise with too.
You see, Australia is quite good at cricket and rugby, particularly when they play the “mother country“. If you have ever met an Australian you will know this already - they tend to point it out - but what you might not realise is just how keen the rivalry has become across Olympic sports.
So much so that it is time to open a new front in the battle for sporting supremacy; step aside Warney, move over Gladiators, let the new Ashes commence.
But before we fire the starter’s pistol, let’s see the scores on the doors.
In the head-to-head medal tally contest Britain leads the series 15-10 but has lost 10 of the last 15.
Much like the cricket, the rivalry has seen periods of domination by one side or the other.
Pre-WWII, it’s all Britain and we win again on home turf in 1948. The Aussies finally get on the board in 1952 and then win the next five in a row, only to have a stinker at Montreal in 1976 and let us in for four wins on the bounce.
Australia step up a gear in 1992, take advantage of our Montreal moment in 1996, ram home their advantage in Sydney and maintain the good vibes in 2004.
Which almost brings us up to date: almost but not quite, because the intervening years have seen two important but related developments.
First, London won the right to host the 2012 Games, instantly raising the profile and ambitions of Olympic sport in the country. And second, Team GB started to do much better in the various world championships of the respective Olympic sports.
So much better, in fact, the Aussies have noticed.
And a recent forecast by Italian statistician Luciano Barra has the team from dear old Blighty taking Australia’s fourth place in the table in Beijing, pushing them down to sixth.
With a Michael Phelps-driven US swimming juggernaut expected to reduce Australia’s traditional haul in pool, and Team GB tipped to take a big slice of the pie at the velodrome, there is little doubt the gap between the two rivals will shrink in China.
So how has this come about? What’s the secret of Britain’s resurgence?
Well, the Australians think they know. They’re certain it’s down to two simple reasons: money and Australians.
It all goes back to our Waterloo in 1996. Just as the Aussies came home from Montreal and said “never again, let’s try the East German way (but without the drugs)”, our failure in Atlanta led to a massive reappraisal of how we funded and managed top-level sport.
After considerable consultation between government, the national federations and anybody else with an opinion, it was decided we should scrap the existing mishmash at the top and…erm…copy exactly what the Australians did after 1976.
So better talent identification, a more professional approach to training, lots more sports science and plenty of foreign expertise. And then throw more National Lottery money at it.
Come 2005 (and the start of the big push for London glory), that lottery lolly was topped up with treasury money - and it was being allocated, managed and spent by a sizeable population of ex-pat Aussies.
Well, you know what they say about imitation.
Not that they’re feeling too flattered about it on the other side of the world. Recent months have seen a number of leading figures in Australian sport sound distinctly crook about the growing threat.
Last summer, Swimming Australia had to move fast to stop British Swimming from poaching its head coach, Alan Thompson, to replace another Aussie Bill Sweetenham. No matter, thought the Brits, we’ll have Michael Scott instead.
A few months later, the Australian Olympic Committee announced new financial incentives to encourage its athletes to stay ahead of Team GB.
“Our arch-rival Great Britain has made dramatic advances at our expense,” warned AOC president John Coates, pointing the finger accusingly at our gambling-derived wealth.
Coates was back at it a few weeks ago. “I think our sports are in need of a significant boost of funds,” he said, whilst rattling the biscuit tin aggressively at the Australian government.
Professor Peter Fricker, the director of the Australian Institute of Sport (the “gold medal factory” we so reverentially ripped off), was another to sound the alarm.
“It’s fair to say the Brits have watched what we have been doing over many years and taken all the best elements of that and put them in their own system,” said Fricker.
And then last week AOC director of sport Fiona de Jong spoke the unspeakable.
“It is going to be tough (to maintain recent standards),” she shuddered.
“I believe the money the Brits are throwing into their athletes makes them a real threat to us on the medal tally.”
But just when you thought a chink was appearing in the armour-plated self-confidence of the Australian Ashes warrior, track cycling star Brett Lancaster came out with this little beauty: “I know a lot of people are talking about the Poms, and they’ve certainly put some runs on the board.
“But remember: nothing’s better for an Aussie than beating the Poms.”
And then, to reassure you all was right with the world once more, Australian cycling coach Shayne Bannan (even their names fit the bill) lobbed a Fergie-esque mind game grenade for good measure.
“I think you’ll see us push the British, who’ve really raised the bar in the sport,” he said.
“But when you win nine (gold medals) at the world championships (as Team GB did in March), there’s a bit of pressure there, isn’t there? So we’ll see how they go.”
Unsurprisingly, British athletes and officials have been a bit more circumspect on the subject (although noted Ashes warrior and current British Olympic Association performance guru Sir Clive Woodward has made his feelings on the rivalry fairly clear, he even counts the size of the two teams).
But they have not been above a bit of Douglas Jardine-style skulduggery, according to the Aussies, that is.
The first real salvo in the Beijing battle was fired when the Modern Pentathlon Association of Great Britain asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport to kick out an Aussie qualifier and admit Britain’s Nick Woodbridge instead.
Alex Parygin, a former gold medallist for his native Kazakhstan in 1996, thought he had qualified for the 2008 Games when he won the Oceania Championships last year.
We disagreed, pointing out that he had failed to attain the required number of points for Olympic eligibility at the event in Tokyo (which was hardly surprising as the show jumping had to be cancelled due to an outbreak of equine influenza) and at three subsequent events in Europe.
The Lausanne-based court agreed and gave Woodbridge, the next highest ranked athlete and 2004 junior world champion, Parygin’s place. Cue barely stifled celebrations from the British camp and considerable carping from the Aussies.
Who knows, the modern pentathlon may well take on a sixth discipline between the Brits and the Aussies in Beijing, bare-knuckle boxing.
But will Woodbridge win the medal that sees us reclaim the Olympic Ashes? Perhaps, but I don’t think so. He’s more of a 2012 prospect and so is the rest of the team.
It will be close between us next month but I suspect we’ll lose a few rowing and sailing medals to the Chinese and the Aussies will do enough in the pool to keep their hands on the urn. London, however, is another matter. Roll on 2012.
