ext_114804 ([identity profile] pathology-doc.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] fpb 2009-08-25 02:00 am (UTC)

It was, in short, the kind of victory of which people will be speaking in years (well, perhaps not in Australia).

Oh, we'll be speaking of it all right. Just not in the sort of language one should use in front of small children. ;)

Everyone gets their turn at the top eventually, and Australia's has been quite long - perhaps over-long. Have been brushing up on the Napoleonic Wars lately (R.F. Delderfield's The March of the Twenty-Six), and the parallels are interesting - a formerly invincible side gradually finds itself struggling to win victories that used to come with contemptuous ease; then it drops the odd hard-fought contest here and there; then it is convincingly beaten on occasion; and finally it is toppled from its pedestal.

Unfortunately, unlike the Schneider Trophy air races of the 1930s, there's no holding of the trophy in perpetuity for the side which wins X contests consecutively. Eventual defeat is inevitable!

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