After the dark years of distancing, 2022 found fans filling empty stadiums again, standing together in a common love of sport and sharing in the agonies, ecstasies and controversies that go with it. Without crowds, sport had lacked a pulse. With their return, Team Australia re-emerged stronger, closer, deeper principled and needing (and finding) fresh inspiration.
Australia’s athletes had missed the fans as fans had missed them: the adulation and fanfare, the noise and clamour, the privilege of representing others with their deeds on and off the field.
In 2022, Australia’s athletes took their cue from Peter Norman’s vow to fellow medallists Tommy Burns and John Carlos before their Black Power protest at the 1968 Olympics, an action that won this year’s Sport Australia Dawn award for “courage that challenged the status quo”. United on the dais and in their humanity, Norman promised: “I’ll stand with you.”
The first to stand together were proud Indigenous women Ash Barty and Evonne Goolagong. In summer, Barty became the first homegrown Australian Open champion since Goolagong in 1978, and their joyful, tearful embrace with the trophy was a beautiful unifying moment.
So too the Open victory of Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis, friends in each other’s adversity and now major doubles champions. When wheelchair tennis titan Dylan Alcott became the first person with a disability named as Australian of the Year, national spirits were soaring.
Alas, autumn brought the fall. Barty, 25 and at the peak of her powers, shocked the world by retiring. Then Shane Warne, so full of life and larrikinism, died suddenly aged 52, leaving behind three kids, 708 Test wickets and fans in places high and low. It came 24 hours after another cricket great, Rod Marsh, succumbed to a heart attack.
Australia stood united in sporting grief. The MCG’s Great Southern Stand was renamed for Warne and Pat Cummins’ men sang Marsh’s Under the Southern Cross to his statue at Adelaide Oval in November.
Australians came together again, this time in celebration, when Lance Franklin – an Australian rules football legend born in Perth, forged in Melbourne and canonised in Sydney – kicked his 1,000th goal. It banished the spectre of Covid, unleashing a torrent of happy humanity on to the SCG to share the turf and moment with a people’s champion. Daisy Pearce was chaired off by fans too, after a long-coveted, much-deserved flag in the year’s second AFLW grand final.
When it came to following Norman’s lead and speaking out on China’s human rights abuses, Australia’s women led the way at the Beijing Winter Olympics, in representation (52%) and achievement with Jakara Anthony’s gold in freestyle mogul skiing, Jaclyn Narracott’s silver in the skeleton and snowboarder Tess Coady taking bronze. Meanwhile, Sam Kerr kept slaying them in the WSL en route to the PFA’s player of the year award, Alyssa Healy’s unbeaten 170 won Australia a seventh ODI World Cup and Steph Gilmore won an eighth world surfing title.
It was a winter of discontent. Australia won 67 Commonwealth Games gold medals (six alone for Emma McKeon) but Hancock Prospecting’s sponsorship of the swimmers muddied the waters for many. Kyrgios caterwauled into the Wimbledon final but a new villain – mulleted maestro Cameron Smith – celebrated a back-nine 30 to win the British Open by joining the LIV Tour, in a win for Saudi sportswashing and what some saw as a money-over-morals defection endorsed by the South Australian government who welcome LIV’s first Australian event next April.
As Queensland sprang another State of Origin upset and the Kangaroos and Jillaroos won Rugby League World Cups, Australia’s sevens women took the triple crown (World Cup, Commonwealth Games gold, World Series) and Geelong and Penrith justly won AFL and NRL premierships. The Wallabies went within a whisker of beating the All Blacks, world No 1 Ireland and white-hot France but their most meaningful victories were community triumphs: singing the national anthem in Yugambeh and publicly honouring captain Michael Hooper’s courage in leaving camp to attend to “mindset” issues by then blitzing the world champion Springboks.
The Socceroos had hung tough on a low road to World Cup qualification. After 20 matches and 1,008 days on the road, Australia’s quest for a fifth finals appearance – and Graham Arnold’s tenure as coach – looked over until the coach subbed in Andrew Redmayne for the penalty shootout against Peru. Jumping and jiving, gurning in goal from behind a red beard, the “Grey Wiggle” saved the spot kick – and the Socceroos – setting Australia up for a thrilling run in Qatar, where they won back-to-back games and crashed the last 16.
Just as inspiring was the team’s world-first video standing with LGBTQI+ communities against Qatar’s hardline lawmakers. Less so, the chaotic scenes during the Melbourne derby that sucked away any goodwill the game had garnered of late.
Australia’s netballers did what their swimmers didn’t, making a stand over a $15m deal from Big Mining in loyalty to Indigenous teammate Donnell Wallam, a stance rewarded in instant karma when Wallam then nailed the winner on debut against England. As retired Wallabies captain turned senator David Pocock fought more sportswashers in parliament, Cummins stood with him, refusing to spruik Cricket Australia’s major energy sponsor, organising a Cricket for Climate forum that will see 4,000 cricket clubs introduce solar panels to reduce the sport’s footprint and leading his men in traditional earthing ceremonies and taking a knee during this summer’s series.
These might appear to be small wins in a big world still fighting its way into the light in 2022. But when there’s a triumph of the human spirit behind every victory, everyone’s a winner.
