I'd like to offer the warmest of welcomes to all the Mark Philippoussis critics. Coping with the cold, are you, after all that time tucked away in the woodwork?
You must be the same people who regularly teed off with your unwelcome diatribes about sporting malingerers such as James Hird, Garry Lyon and, dare I say, Pat Rafter. Anything for a headline.
Surely you wrote that Hirdy's feet problems were never that bad. Why, you even saw TV footage of him running on the training track (too cold, no doubt, for you to actually go to training), and if he could run on the track, surely he could in a match. And what about his hand? Could it be that bad? After all, Darren Millane played a grand final with a broken thumb.
No, you didn't write any of that stuff because you accept that Hird is a champion and accept that he is injured. As you should.
What about Lyon's dodgy back? Were we treated to stories of how he stayed in the comfort zone, happily accepting his weekly pay cheque when, with a bit of extra effort, he could have actually earned it on the playing field more often than he did?
No, we didn't see those stories, because nobody would ever question Lyon's champion status, his loyalty to his club, nor would anyone question that his injury was not debilitating. Nor should they.
What about the Pat Rafter stories? I mean, there was talk of retirement not all that long ago. Didn't any of you critics have an inkling that his shoulder wasn't as bad as he said it was? Didn't you feel that maybe Rafter had simply had enough of the tennis circuit, made all the money he was ever likely to need and was prepared to live happily ever after in some tax haven? Funnily enough, not one story saw the light of day. Why?
Was it because patriotic Pat was flavor of the month and was drawing the sympathy vote from all you flag-waving zealots because he said he was injured? Probably.
Scud says his knee isn't all it should be and pulls out of the Davis Cup. Any sympathy here? Not on your nellie. All of a sudden he's an unpatriotic sook and a wimp.
Give the kid a break. He's young and wants to play for a few more years and he has an obligation to look after himself. If he says he's injured, accept it. Oh, and cast your minds back to Nice, when Scud did his bit to belt the French and help bring the Davis Cup back to Australia. The memories of some critics are shorter than Lleyton Hewitt, but that's another story.