Apart from the weather and Kylie, the nicest thing about being an Aussie is the little surprises. An Australian won the archery gold medal the other day! Then the women's water polo team (so little regarded that we haven't given them a nickname yet) won the gold medal by beating the Yanks with a goal on the buzzer/whistle/whatever. We get these little surprises because we deserve them. Fair go. We invest in sport. We believe in sport. We participate in sport. We see sport as an important part of life. Hence, we have some people who are very good at sport.

For you Irish, well, how awful it must be. Sonia O'Sullivan is a freak. She somehow got into the right place and the right time for her talent to be noticed. Million-to-one shot mates. She just slipped through.

She just had that hellcat character so she went and did it. I know, I know, you throw a few grand at her every year, but it's just buying your ticket on the open-top bus.

You can spot the Irish at these Games. Nothing but miraculous medals around their necks. The swimmers have waterwings, the cyclists have stabilisers, the runners faint at the sound of gunshot. Yet they represent you all better than you deserve to be represented. These poor kids busting their guts for nothing but the chastisement of the general public are the product of a country that thinks that tax breaks for rich bastards are the only things worth spending money on.

Ah! We Aussies have more medals than we can count. Feels good. No school kid could name all our medallists so far. There's a reason. Here in Sydney, if I want to go swimming there are 115 municipal pools I can go to. Push me out of a plane over Sydney and I'll perform a neat double pike and land in a pool. That's just swimming. The high end of the investment scale.

You see mates, in Australia, sport is part of an integrated policy of well-being, it's a social activity with benefits that are physically healthy, psychologically healthy, sociologically worthwhile, politically profitable. We look after the roots. The tall poppies then grow with a bit of help. This Olympic success was part of a six-year, $135 million programme to win medals. Softball got $1.4 million since Atlanta. Rowing got $3.4 million. There's 19 million of us Aussies, but work out the figures on a per capita basis and see how you do. Worse, there's 40 per cent of Aussies claim to be Irish and 44 million Americans. Why aren't you squeezing them?

The by-product of a funded national sports policy is elite athletes. Not the other way around. Roche, Kelly. Then what? You didn't deserve them but you had them. Where's the next generation? McGuigan, Collins. And then? One boxer at these Games. Sonia for 10 good years? And then?

Tell me this. If music can be a Leaving Certificate subject why can't sport? Why can't the achievement of a certain level of fitness and athletic proficiency together with the understanding of some ethics, theory, history of sport and the basics of recreation management be the basis for a course? Why can that not be a subject?

There, at the top of Sonia O'Sullivan's website yesterday, was a little message from Bertie wishing her the best for this morning and letting everyone know that he was at the national championships and had a word with herself there. Hurrah!

Is this the same Bertie Bigguns who is playing a top-level game of "mine is bigger than yours" with Bernard O'Byrne? The same Bertie who has serenely presided over the Dr "Bojangles" McDaid v Pat "The Knife" Hickey eye-scratching 12-rounder? Why not one big stadium and one decent Irish Institute of Sport to administer a municipal sports policy, a coaching programme, an infrastructure drive? Just before the recession comes round again.

The whole philosophy of Irish sport is wrong. Top to bottom. Take the past 10 days in Sydney. The OCI allegedly has a press officer here. The team has had no press conferences, no press releases, and, almost unique among 200 countries, no little announcements on the Games' Intranet as to what they were doing. Most Irish journalists have never seen the OCI press person. It's a two-day job to get access to the athletes' village, so most federations bring their stars to the media centre. Ireland doesn't. At the only time in four years when Irish athletes can put themselves squarely in the window for sponsors they get far less coverage than they should, and what coverage they get reads as chirpy as an altar list of the dead.

We're on a roll, so why stop. The Irish tradition of school sports is unhealthy in all sorts of ways, too. It's patchy. Some schools scarcely bother, others are unhealthily obsessive and compete in knockout competitions where a huge head of steam is built up about one game and then that's it. Bye for now. This isn't really sport for kids: it's bragging rights for adults. I once commented to a well-known Irish sporting figure about what a pleasure it was to see kids out on an adjacent field on a sunny Saturday morning being put through their paces. His response was splenetic. "That's not what wins championships, that's an effin' babysitting service that is." Ooops. Sorry. I thought it was a good thing in itself.

There are exceptions. UCD is striving to be a progressive centre of sporting excellence. The coaching centre in Limerick is making progress. These are good people fighting their way through the ambushes, the lack of cohesiveness, the personality clashes and the parsimony which hinder Irish sport. So be proud Ireland. Whatever Sonia achieves today is more than you deserve. Whatever the Irish Olympic team have done is more than you deserved. Steady on there, Bertie and Bojangles, the old bandwagon is comin' round again boys. Like you always knew it would.