h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... had a solid weekend of plucky underachievement:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/shared/fds/hi/statistics/cricket/scorecards/2008/11/15320/html/scorecard.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/7727059.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/english/7728562.stm

Is there a World Cup on? Good grief, you'd think someone would've mentioned it.

Still, you have a very odd definition of 'plucky'.

There's a World Cup on. England won one match (struggled against the minnows of PNG) and lumbered undeservedly into a semi-final, where the Kiwis kicked their useless sorry backsides. The final between Australia and New Zealand is in Brisbane on Saturday.

Didn't have such a good Olympics, though, didn't ya?

If I honestly thought you were remotely proud of your tenuous association with that utterly repugnant Mr Ponting, I'd make the effort to be rude, you pathetic expat fish-specimen you.

Dobbing is as Australian as XXXXing Kylie Minogue and that's yikes-able. But I am of sterner stuff, i.e., that there's some corner of a foreign sheep paddock that is for ever pom.

In which context, 'XXXXing' is adjective or gerund?
I never do understand what you're on about. I even misread the 'pom' as 'porn'. That would have made much more sense.

That green and pleasant land of hope and glory that has played, won and lost, but in it's day has championed and won most.

Oh, did you mean this Rugby World Cup? As you know, I don't follow the sport:

http://www.sportfocus.com/newspub/story.cfm?ID=31164

OK Trout. You're a more or less decent sort of a fish, up to a point anyway.

I think we should all give you a chance to grovel in abject contrition before we all rip you to shreds, right?

Let's hear it, then. Don't be shy. If you're looking for a hint as to the kind of thing required, it should probably be on the lines of an admission that your opinions on sport slide glistening and stinking straight out of a kangaroo's bottom.

Pin

Like Maslow, I have a hierarchy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/english/7740602.stm

... most certainly does not fit my pyramid.

I think we need to point something out, before you shed enough brain cells to go completely native and lose all powers of intelligent communication.

It was you that started this discussion. So now, when your supposedly invinvible team gets stuffed, it's you that has to take it.

You see, when it comes to sport, the English have modest expectations and modest achievements. And when it comes to sport, the Australians think they're gods, so days like yesrerday are a cause for celebration across the rest of the whole damn planet.

Our day, then. Not yours. You can argue, and live with the certain knowledge that however witty you think you're being, everyone else is laughing at you. You can skulk off and hope the shame goes away. You could even exercise your residual though fast-receding birthright and admit that your adopted country were absolutely faecal on the day, and moreover will inevitably be so on occasional future days to come.

Interesting place Australia. I'm glad that most of my contacts are Victorian, where they're a tad more dignifed and play their own sports instead of brutalising and abominating other peoples'. Nonetheless, the enigma of Oz still applies, that a country too small, weak and renote to get away with antagonising the rest of the world still insists on projecting a collective image of the aggresive drunk at an otherwise civilised party.

Now take your medicine like a grown-up, shut up about this and go back to being mildly objectionable on firmer ground.

I am fully aware of the breadth and depth of England's modest achievements having for many years observed them earnestly across a panoply of sporting endeavour whilst posted to the most various of mercatorial pink-parts with only the faintest whiff of success to be cheered.

Your obsession with Australian failure meanwhile is just salt and vinegar for the poke of chips that you plainly carry around on your narrow blubbery phocid shoulders.

That said, is there something the matter with your keyboard, Dudley?

Snork my gonads.

No, you're right of course, and your scrupulously rational, brilliantly articulate and above all meticulously typed argument has convinced me that everything I've ever said is utterly wrong.

I rescind all of it, but I'd rather not thingy your wotsits if you don't mind.

btw, can you help with this crossword clue? Thanks.
Insinuation of campness coming from Brisbane? (12)

QUEENSLANDER

Glad that that is settled.
Don't go too far however we don't want to have water creatures fonding each other in public.