Letter From Australia:The former Co Down footballer Marty Clarke astounded a nation, perhaps two nations, when he made his debut with the Australian Football League club Collingwood at the weekend. Clarke (19) had played 10 games of Australian football before running out with the biggest club in the land before a packed Olympic Stadium in Sydney.

Stories preceded the match of Clarke toe-poking the ball off the ground and into his hands during a wet match the previous week, when he was playing for Collingwood's affiliate club in a second-tier competition.

Spectators had never seen such a sight. Clarke was no less astonishing on Saturday night when, before a crowd of 64,000, he played as if he'd been born with an oval ball in his arms. His performance was one of the factors that lifted Collingwood to victory over the highly fancied Sydney

In a part of the world closer to Clarke's birthplace, Australian racing followers were disappointed, but not entirely surprised, when rain teemed down in the lead-up to the Golden Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot. Just like the English to do something like that and ruin Miss Andretti's chances, the punters thought.

Four days earlier, the four-year-old mare had scored a brilliant win in the King's Stand Stakes, with fellow Australian horses Magnus and Takeover Target running third and fourth respectively. Australian distance horses might not be much chop, but our sprinters seem to be quite fast.

Viewers in Australia, betraying a cultural cringe that has never gone away, saw footage of all the top hats and tails, and the lovely frocks and hats like flying saucers, and felt proud that our horses had done that to theirs.

Miss Andretti ran like a duffer in the wet on Saturday, while Magnus was no better. Takeover Target, a scrubby gelding trained by a taxi driver in the bush outside Canberra, the national capital, failed by just a nose.

Takeover Target has shown his class the past two years at Ascot, winning last year and very nearly winning again this year.

Trainer Joe Janiak bought the horse for a song. Australians love him because he shows the English, who've always questioned our bloodlines, that breeding isn't everything it's cracked up to be.

On a more solemn note from the weekend, all matches in Melbourne's amateur Australian football competition on Saturday were preceded by a minute's silence for a former player who'd been shot and killed.

During the 1980s, Brendan Keilar was a rover with University Blacks while studying law at Melbourne University. Usually the smallest player on the ground, he was renowned for his courage as well as skill.

In 1985, he won the Blacks' best-player award and was considered among the top players in a competition highly regarded in Melbourne's suburbs.

About 8am last Monday, Keilar was returning from a jog and about to head into the chambers of his city law firm when he saw a man dragging a woman by the hair. Keilar instinctively approached the man to demand that he let go. A 25-year-old Dutch tourist did the same.

Before an audience of horrified city workers, the assailant took a step back, drew a handgun from his jacket and shot one man, then the other. He also shot the woman. When Keilar hit the ground, the gunman, who was later identified as a motorbike gang member with a record of multiple offences, shot him again. The 43-year-old died.

The tourist and the woman were taken to hospital, where they were reported to be stable at the weekend.

Keilar's death, leaving behind a wife and three young children, as well as five siblings, prompted not only shock but also national debates about motorbike gangs and the wisdom of interfering in strangers' business.

In the eulogies, Keilar was described as a man of principle. His forthrightness in approaching the stranger was in keeping with his character.

Usually in these circumstances, when a citizen's actions against another citizen have earned misfortune, hundreds of nervous Nellies ring radio stations to celebrate the fact their doomsaying has been proved correct. Nothing's safe these days, they assure listeners. You're better off pulling the curtains and knitting socks.

After Keilar's murder, there was no such gloating. Most callers to radio stations seemed to admire the city lawyer for acting on his principles. His willingness to engage in life, rather than shy from it, suggested a life well lived, if far too short.

Keilar's former team-mates from University Blacks said he showed the same values on the field as he showed off it. Footballers throughout Australia agreed that, through the game, you learn to stick up for yourself and others.

Keilar's actions in trying to help a young woman were a setback for those who deride football as a pastime for sexist yobs. The naysayers were given cause to concede that there are good values to be learned from sport, even football.

Certainly, Brendan Keilar's death was a shocking tragedy.