When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took a break from the campaign trail to offer crisis-management advice for a badly behaving South Sydney mascot Reggie the Rabbit, it should have been a sign that sport and politics don’t mix.
But the news that a cameraman was left “bloodied” by a ball kicked by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton – hoping to show his athletic prowess just days after the prime minister fell off a stage – suggests the Liberal leader didn’t get the memo.
If you watch the build-up in the casual kick-to-kick at a Northern Territory footy ground, Dutton tries to act natural – but anyone who has tried to pass a soccer ball back to some schoolkids while wearing dress shoes can sense the unease in his movement. He should know better.
Here’s the sometimes bloody history of Australian politicians’ attempts to win our hearts and votes through sport.
Bob Hawke
Beer-sculling, first-grade-cricketing, hole-in-one-hitting Bob Hawke had a fair dinkum claim to being a true blue sportsman. His 1983 comment when racing yacht Australia II ended 132 years of US domination in the America’s Cup – “Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum” – and his declaration of an impromptu public holiday seems almost Trumpian in its breezy disregard for the economic impact, but somehow he got away it.
Prime Minister Bob Hawke is attended to after a cricket ball smashed his glasses into his eye in 1984.Credit: David James Bartho/Fairfax Media
But even the greatest political athletes came unstuck, though in this instance it wasn’t the fault of Hawke, but the political class’s natural rivals, the media. While batting in a 1984 cricket match against Canberra journalists, a cricket ball struck him in the face. Hawke, who was wearing glasses, suffered a corneal abrasion, was hospitalised and had to wear an eye patch.
John Howard
The former prime minister’s love of wearing a full Wallabies tracksuit made him look less like captain of Team Australia and more like one of the lucky youngsters who gets to walk on with the players. If he lacked Hawke’s athleticism, Howard made up for it with enthusiasm, avidly following rugby league, rugby union, soccer and boxing, as well as presiding over arguably Australia’s greatest sporting moment yet, the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
But one incident – and one sport – remains eternal. While visiting Pakistan after earthquakes in 2005, Howard was invited to join in a game of cricket with local children. He bowled three balls, none of which made it to the batsman. Howard was reunited with the rudimentary tape ball, which he blamed for his failure, at the Donald Bradman Foundation Gala in 2019, where he described the event as one of the greatest regrets of his political career. Howzat?
Paul Keating
Even if Keating may have preferred reading to sport, he was very wrong to think Australian sports fans couldn’t spot a fake.
Prime Minister Paul Keating at the post budget Collingwood football team lunch at the Hyatt in 1994.Credit: Photographic
There has been much speculation about Paul Keating’s interest in the AFL after the then-treasurer woke up one morning and declared himself a Collingwood supporter, as he sought to broaden his appeal to oust Bob Hawke for the Labor leadership in the early 1990s. In sport, as in politics, allegiances can be fickle.
Keating became the No.1 ticket holder for the historically working-class club in the Labor heartland. Both men were interviewed on their way into the 1990 Grand Final, which Keating said he hoped would be “Collingwood’s first win in 30-odd years”.
Swans fan Hawke was not to be outdone. “I was at the 1958 final that Collingwood won,” he said.
Bob Carr
It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts. By that logic, Bob Carr, former Labor premier of NSW and foreign minister in the Gillard government, who once brought a Tolstoy novel to a match, deserves a prize for – er – showing up.
NSW Premier Bob Carr talks with Souths player Willie Peters in 2003.Credit: Sean Davey
Giving a pep talk to the NSW Blues ahead of a State of Origin clash with Queensland, Carr told players “this traditional bet between NSW and Victoria is now on”. An immortal exchange at a NSW cabinet meeting in which Carr boasted that he’d “been to the footie”, saw him asked, “Was it league or union”?
“Don’t ask trick questions!” he responded. “Under Gestapo torture, I couldn’t explain the difference” he told this masthead years later.
Malcolm Turnbull
What goes through the minds of politicians when they agree to a public test of their sporting ability? Are they thinking, “If I get this one in, I’ll win the election”? Is it old-fashioned peer pressure or does some competitive drive kick-in? Perhaps self-proclaimed “handball king” Kevin Rudd has the answer.
This moment, when a suited-and-booted Malcolm Turnbull misses a basket from embarrassingly close range at a basketball stadium in Perth in 2017 – the ball pinging sadly off the rim – is puzzling.
Perhaps this was when the sheen started to come off his prime ministership. Less than a year later, after being ousted by Scott Morrison, Turnbull had left parliamentary politics for good to commentate from the sidelines.
Scott Morrison
In thousands of years time, when all written memory of Scott Morrison – the intrigues, the highs, the lows – has faded, all that will remain is the image of the-then prime minister’s tackle-gone-wrong on the 2022 election campaign. (Dutton has been quick to deny he’d had his own Scott Morrison moment.)
Scott Morrison collides with Luca Fauvette.Credit: Nine News
Children at a Tasmanian soccer clubbed cheered and one declared Morrison “better than Ronaldo” before the then-prime minister accidentally tackled seven-year-old Luca Fauvette and both crashed to the ground.
“Where’s Luca, where’s Luca? He’s probably gone off to hospital!” he joked after the accident. Two years later, the former prime minister handed back his No.1 ticket for the Cronulla Sharks and started an overseas role with a defence consulting firm. “Where’s Scott?” Luca might say now.
Boris Johnson
It’s not just Australian politicians who love to ruin the fun: former British prime minister Boris Johnson – or BoJo – walked so ScoMo could run. He has been involved in sporting mishaps with at least two small children: ball-in-hand, he crashed into a 10-year-old schoolboy at a casual rugby match in Japan in 2015, just one year after the then-Mayor of London tripped a small child over during a soccer kickabout in London.
There was also an illegal rugby-style tackle during a 2006 charity soccer match, and a promotional stunt for the 2012 Olympics when he ended up stuck midair on a zipline, waving miniature flags.
Donald Trump
Golf is a politician’s sport: the snazzy kit, the expensive membership fees, and the privacy provided by playing in hectares of private land.
Who’s to know if Donald Trump’s handicap is really as low as 2.5, as he has claimed? A rare video of Trump shanking the ball at Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles suggests that might be fake news.
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