Thursday 23 September 2010

View from afar

Surprisingly, I came across an article on the Commonwealth Games that isn't all about the site or security fears. Being in London, James Schloeffel is in good position to tell us how much inattention the Games are receiving from the Brits. The cliched description of Australia's disproportionate love of sporting victory is also not altogether empty, but let's hang on a bit here.

What is the disinterest in London being compared with? I don't know when Schloeffel left his hometown, but surely he wouldn't consider his current experience analogous to being in Melbourne four years ago. He's also a long way from the Australia supposedly preparing for lock-down in 2010.

The Games haven't been seen much outside ads from the broadcasters who need to make money out of them. I expect most of us have just laughed at TEN's hyperbolic announcements, and to be fair to them, even they wouldn't be disrupting normal broadcasting so much if the planned revision to the anti-siphoning laws was already in place.

Quite simply, I think it's been quite a while since anyone outside the host country paid too much attention to any Commonwealth Games.

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