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I wonder what the great, track-suited one, former Prime Minister John Howard, would have made of the Australian athletes' uniforms at Friday night's Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing. Green and gold, those tricky sartorial staples, were replaced by blue and silver. Was that:
a) UnAustralian.
b) Moving with the times (according to the designer, 'the new colour combination better represented modern Australia and represented the youthful spirit of our Australian team.')
Or c) Categorical proof that fashion and sport do not mix.

But I digress. At this high holy time, when so many Australians happily become members of a nationwide, sofa-based cheer squad, I'm going to set out what may seem, to outsiders at least, like a perversely counter-intuitive argument.

Here it is: that sport divides this country as much, if not more, than it unites it. It demarcates this vast and sports-loving land along geographical, social and even ethnic lines.

Let's start with rugby union. I often find myself re-telling the story of the businessman arriving in Melbourne who turned on his hotel television hoping to catch the Bledisloe Cup, the showdown between the Wallabies and the All Blacks. Instead of marvelling at the haka, he found himself watching 'Doe, ray, me,' with Julie Andrews as the pack leader, and a front row made up entirely of smiling young Austrians resplendent in leather lederhosen.

Earlier this month, thrillingly, I had a similar experience. Instead of showing the rugby from Auckland, Channel Seven in Melbourne broadcast Cool Runnings. We were treated to the hapless Jamaican bobsleigh team rather than the much-improved Wallabies, because rugby union is not seen as a ratings winner in Victoria.

Generally, rugby union is an elite sport, for which private schools provide the main nurseries of talent and where most of the top clubs are to found in the more well-heeled parts of town, like Manly, the Eastern Suburbs and Randwick. Topping the local table in Sydney right now is Sydney University, the country's oldest and arguably poshest university.

Rugby league, by contrast, is the sport of the New South Wales and Queensland proletariat - a largely blue-collar game whose fan-base is mainly blue-collar. Again, it can hardly be considered a national sport. Over 80% of its participants come from New South Wales and Queensland.

Or take Australian Rules Football, which last week celebrated its 150th anniversary. Tellingly, it was first known as Melbourne Rules, then became Victorian Rules and finally Australian Rules when it spread to the other colonies. Now, it has become the country's most-watched sport, and is busily planning to set up new teams in Sydney and Queensland. But for all its rampant expansionism, ten of its 16 professional teams are still to be found in Victoria.

Soccer is another case in point. Australia did not even have a national team until 1922, and even now it is widely viewed as a sport populated mainly by the country's European immigrants. Reflecting its multi-cultural base and make-up, the Socceroos continue to field a polyglot mix of players, with surnames like Petrovic, Sprianovic, Zadhovich, Troisi, Djite, Vargas, Sarkies and Valeria.

Admittedly, the lines are being blurred. Melbourne Storm is currently the holder of the rugby league premiership - although its average attendance remains at 11,711, which is pitiful in sports-mad Melbourne. Similarly, in both 2005 and 2005 the Aussie Rules grand final was contested between two expansion clubs, the Sydney Swans and the Perth-based West Coast Eagles. And if you illustrate graphically how the fan-bases of various winter sports intersected and overlapped, it would look a Venn diagram.

There is also, of course, a paradox - a rich one at that - because sport has long been viewed a springboard for Australian nationalism, whether it be the country's nation-binding joy at Donald Bradman sticking it to the Poms, or Australians doing disproportionately well at the Olympics.

It's also interesting that the country's swim team is a source of such fierce national pride - which perhaps augments John Pilger's oft-quoted remark about the beach being Australia's 'true democracy'. Perhaps the pool - or at least water - is, as well.
Cricket, the great summer game, is another exception.

Australian success at the Olympics will no doubt produce the usual bout of face-paint nationalism, and why not? One of the many things I love about this country is the affection reserved for the national sports teams representing it at the Olympics - whether it's the Olyroos, the Hockeyroos or the Greco-Roman-roos.

But don't be fooled by the make-up, for its camouflages a quite different reality: that Australia is also divided by its infectious love and appreciation of sport.

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