We are a nation of sport obsessives, so why have our kids stopped playing sport?

June 19, 2026 — 2:53pm

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

We’ll all set the alarm for 5am and huddle the family onto the couch in their pyjamas. We’ll get up even earlier to gather at early opener bars and pubs with big screens or live sites. We’ll wear garish yellow, and if we carry on with this winning Albo might even declare bosses are “bums” if they begrudge a bleary-eyed worker a day off.

We’ll gather in our millions to watch the Socceroos. Days after, we filled the MCG to watch the State of Origin because its sport, and we love it. We’ll trudge in record numbers into grounds and lock onto TV screens to scream for our teams. We will swell numbers at the Australian Open beyond bursting point.

Next month the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, brought to you by the Victorian Government, will start, and we will go mad again for Aussie gold. Because that’s what we do, it’s sport and it defines us.

Celebrating in thousands in Fed Square, collecting in lurid gold in the stands, boasting of being the sports capital feeds a self-congratulatory misguided idea that, from cradle to grave, we are a nation of sport obsessives. And we are, up to a point. But we are not who we think we are.

We are sport watchers not doers. The fact we punch above our weight in sports on the world stage and go to sport in numbers that fill the MCG creates a self-image at odds with reality.

Most Australian kids now struggle with sport. We are the most decorated per-capita swimming country in the world, but a quarter of our adults can’t swim and nearly half of primary school........

© Brisbane Times