I swore I'd never begin a column like this, but here goes: G'day mates. Gidday. Gidday. Gidday. How ya goin'?

Things are different. As of yesterday I am officially an Australian. I have renounced Irishry and all it stands for. I now come from a land down under. Let me explain.

You'll remember Jimmy The Greek Snyder, of course. Jimmy The Greek was the man whose impromptu exploration of sporting Darwinism had him removed from the airwaves in America before you could say "Jackie Robinson". Jimmy The Greek felt that black athletes might owe their greatness to their ancestors' years of slavery. Displaying profound ignorance on a range of issues Jimmy mused that slavery had bred black Americans to be good at the sort of things which athletes are now good at.

Jimmy The Greek was wrong and what's more he was a moron but I feel his analysis should be brought to bear on the current crisis in Irish sport. Surely it's time for even the most diehard ole ole ole merchant to wake up and smell the whatever is rotting where the coffee should be.

We are not a great sporting nation. We never have been. We just like the idea of being one. If being a great sporting nation is going to cost us more than a couple of shillings count us out.

I write this as a proud Australian and as one who has been slightly involved in compiling the list of war dead that is the daily report of Irish involvement in the Olympics. I feel the OCI should have two forms of standard letter to send to families of the failed.

Dear Mr and Mrs -------,

It is my solemn duty to inform you . . . it may be of some solace . . . he/she was eliminated doing his/her personal best . . .

Yours etc,

Or

Dear Mr and Mrs -------,

It is my solemn duty to inform you . . . I am obliged to add that he/her was eliminated without coming near their personal best. Yours etc,

In this Olympics we Australians are expected to win medals of one hue or another in 21 different sports (that is counting track and field as one sport). In Atlanta we medalled in 14 sports. Ireland has a chance of winning a medal on the track, to go with the last one - for the marathon - which arrived 16 years ago. Between times there's been three swimming golds which, as Susie O'Neill would say, were pretty suss. And two boxing medals, one for Wayne McCullough, who had the benefit of the pommie system, and one for Michael Carruth, who was trained by his Da. You might ask how five million of you Irish can fairly be compared with 19 million of us Aussies but, look mates, when we are beating the Americans at swimming we don't make a fuss about there being 272 million Americans.

Including swimming - include it if you must - Ireland has won Olympic medals in four sports in 27 Olympiads. Counting Michelle de Bruin Ireland has 19 medals in over a century of Olympic competition. Nineteen!

Here I would like to call Jimmy the Greek as an expert witness. See. I blame the Irish middle classes. I do. Big fat self-protecting bunch of soft-ass sheilas. I ask you to bring the Jimmy the Greek analysis to a brief comparison of the Irish and Australian experience of sport.

From the Flight of the Earls to the Famine to the recession the brightest and the best have always scarpered. Add me to that list now. The rest, the dumbest and the worst and the least co-ordinated, have always stayed behind working for their daddies and running for office in the junior chamber. So. Irish sport is riddled with the Irish class system. The more middle class the sport the worse Ireland are at it. Rugby. Golf. Yachting. Cricket. If Tallaght ever gets independence the soccer is sunk too. We Australians on the other hand have the opposite experience. We had to endure five months of scurvy just to get here. The weakest died on boats coming over and if they didn't they died soon after. The tough, adventurous ones served their time or moved through the bush till they found enough viable land to make a farm.

Once settled, they set about making a society which, superficially at any rate, is classless.

Take a few stories. Bob's me mate and he drove me in a taxi down the Gold Coast last week. I said to him about our Australian nation's ability to be good, bloody good at a range of sports simultaneously. He gave me a 20-minute talk about his life.

As kids he and his friends would organise bike races across the sands on the little spits and islands along the Gold Coast. His Dad, a truck driver, was captain of the golf club, so all Bob's family played and Bob, who is nearly 70, still plays. Bob swam all his life and was captain of the swim team at school. Until recently everyone played in a regional tennis tournament which lasted through the summer and guaranteed a couple of games a week. "But," said Bob reflectively. "I was never really what you'd call sporty."

Then there's Chen. Chen's me mate too. He arrived here 15 years ago having squeezed out of Vietnam with his family and having spent two years in a hellish camp in Indonesia. He plays rugby but prefers running and has joined a triathlon club. His younger brother is a good golfer and the two of them have taken up surfing. His cousin, a swimmer, is hoping to get into the Australian Institute of Sport.

The AIS is what this country created after the Montreal Olympics, which went badly. The purpose is coaching and training and education. The philosophy is the propagation of sport, the development through a whole raft of policies of both an elite class of sportspersons and a massive well-catered-for underclass of people just healthily playing whatever they enjoy. The grants are good, the science and facilities are world class, the results are on display every day here at the Games. Any wonder we're putting on the happiest Olympics ever. Any wonder I've evolved into an Aussie.

"Best land in the world," Chen tells me.

"Who ya tellin' mate," I say to him.