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Flat White

Our very woke Wallabies

23 October 2020

4:00 PM

23 October 2020

4:00 PM

Having gotten rid of their star black player, the Australian rugby team is set to take a knee at the start of their next game in support of Black Lives Matter.

The Australian Rugby Union chased Israel Folau out of the sport and eventually out of the country for his supposedly outdated minority views.

Now, with Folau out of the way, the woke Wallabies plan to signal their support for minorities.

Confused?

That’s because you’re thinking. To enjoy performative virtue you must be woke enough to feel, but never conscious enough to think.  

Senior Wallaby Dane Haylett-Petty revealed this week that the team will consider taking a knee during the national anthem before the third Bledisloe Cup Test against the All Blacks on October 31.

“We’ve got a very diverse group and we see that as a big strength of ours,” he said.


Not strength enough to tolerate diverse views though, or Folau would still be playing for Australia rather than running around for the Catalans Dragons in France. 

But again, you’re overthinking things. And that’s no way to enjoy politically correct sport.

Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan said the Wallabies would be wearing their new Indigenous-designed jersey for the October 31 game. 

“We’re very proud of our Aboriginal and Indigenous heritage, and we’re going to promote it proudly,” the proud chairman said with pride.

Except that no player of Indigenous heritage has been picked in the squad. 

I think it shows that we’ve got to open more player pathways for indigenous rugby players, but what it also says is that we’re very committed to an inclusive culture,” he said. 

So there are no indigenous players included in the squad but the non-indigenous players will wear jumpers featuring indigenous squiggles to prove rugby has an inclusive culture.

It makes complete sense, provided you don’t think about it.

The Wallabies also made a big deal about the fact that new coach Dave Rennie has been encouraging players to embrace different cultures, even teaching them to sing Fijian and Tongan songs. 

If this news makes you wonder how much better the Wallabies would be at singing Tongan ditties had they not punted their star Tongan player for expressing views commonly held in Tonga, stop it. You can’t square a circle any more than the Wallabies can beat New Zealand.

And there is no point wondering why, if our footballers are going to sing, they don’t instead learn the words to the Australian national anthem so that they can actually sing it before games rather than pretend.

Of course, the winless but very woke Wallabies could ditch all the virtue signalling and focus on winning rugby games.

But that thought doesn’t seem to have occurred to them for a long time now.

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