The NRL Vs The NBA

When it is all said and done, Australian's don't do (or like) big and flashy!

We like things to be done well, informally and simply, and done with self-deprecating humour wherever possible.

The NBA is full of big flashy individuals, the 'team' are the other guys who make up the five to fill out the numbers (google Luc Longley if you are not sure what I mean!).The NBA is massive, in a massive country and supported by enormous and impressive management structures and big $$$. It is a game built around the impressive individual.

The NRL is a small but well loved competition, which absolutely needs it's brilliant individuals, but is all about the team. Each member of the team needs to be able to hold their place in the line, and everyone else has to be able to trust them to do it. The competition is loved despite the monkeys who run it (google Dennis Fitzgerald if you are not sure what I mean!).

Australian's are team players and that is when we are at our best (and what we often do better than other nationalities), even our individuals like the swimmers see themselves as part of a team that is bigger than the individual. We love to work in teams - and we don't do BIG management well - we just never have had to with our small population, and really aren't all that interested in the formal and analytical nature of running something BIG. We are at heart informal people.

Do we chop down the succesful individual? - yep
Is this good? mostly not (and definitely not all the time)

But what I am getting at is, we like teams, we work best in teams and not as individuals, so why are we persisting with putting our best out on their own, and not actively and intentionally directing them into teams and building that way??

Another reason to put the 1 parish 1 rector system out to pasture I suspect..