This is not the time to be greeting an Aussie with "G'day, sport" unless you want a broken nose.

Alas, there are now many more bad days than g'days for Australian sport. Last weekend's Test Match debacle, leaving them 2-0 down to England in cricket's Ashes series was indicative of the malaise that has struck down a nation, causing it to lose both pride and the plot.

Over a dozen years Austalia have gradually slid out of the sports super power league.

Once right on top they are now well and truly Down Under.

At the turn of the century, Australian sport was the envy of every nation throughout the world, particularly to us in Britain.

The Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 were an overwhelming triumph, with the host nation coming fourth in the medal table: a remarkable achievement for an island with a population of just 22 million people.

Just 13 years ago the Olympic Games was not the only sporting arena in which the Australians were excelling. Their national teams were World Cup holders in rugby union and rugby league; their cricket team had won the World Cup and also held the Ashes, while Pat Rafter had held, albeit briefly, the world number one tennis ranking. Australian sporting greats were superstars the world over.

Cathy Freeman was their Jess Ennis, the dominant face of the Sydney Games. Ian Thorpe was the greatest swimmer the world had seen. Shane Warne was the best bowler of all time and the Australian Institute of Sport was the envy of the sporting sporting world.

Move on to 2012 and Australia suffered their worst recent Olympic performance, finishing tenth in the medal table with just seven golds, less than half the 16 they collected in Sydney, and just two places above Britain's competitive contingent from Yorkshire.

It is over a decade since Australia had a men's winner at Wimbledon, (Lleyton Hewitt), a domain they once dominated; 23 years since a woman (Evonne Goolagong Cawley). Greg Norman was the last Aussie to win The Open golf championship, in 1993.

Gone too are the days when Australian ruled the pool. An angry media dubbed 2012 a "disaster" for swimming after just one gold medal, in the women's freestyle relay, their first Games without an individual swimming gold since Montreal 1976.

Cycling, track and rowing were equally disappointing.

"We are on a bit of a downer at the moment," admits their greatest-ever swimmer Ian Thorpe. "We set ourselves lofty heights but just being an Australian won't win you a medal any more."

The Thorpedo, five times an Olympic gold medallist, adds: "We've probably always assumed that our programmes are actually better than they really are. People have given us too much credit for programmes which they think exist but really don't.

"For instance, I doubt we are doing a good enough job in the identification of young athletes. And in Australia we have become too accustomed to being too successful. We've been too complacent and we have layers of bureacracy in sport which detract from where some of the performances should go. We have get back to basics."

Ominously he warns:" There are lessons to be learned from what has happened in Australia to Team GB in the future."

Perhaps the most important one is not to cut funding. After Sydney 2000 Australia took the opposite course to Britain, where we have invested heavily in sport.

In Australia, the cuts have led to Australia's best coaches going abroad, not least to the UK. The brain drain syndrome.

Moreover, earlier this year a Crime Commission report found that doping and match-fixing were present in a variety of sports within Australia, while also uncovering links between sports administrators and organised crime.

According to the World Cup-winning England rugby coach and British Olympic Association sports director Sir Clive Woodward Australian sport is also disfigured by indiscipline.

In an illuminating article London's Daily Mail he writes: "It has been an extraordinary few weeks for Australian sport and one that brings into sharp focus the alarming decline of a great sporting nation.

"There have been embarrassing episodes of indiscipline - from David Warner throwing a punch at Joe Root to Digby Ioane failing to inform the Wallabies he was due in court on an assault charge.

"We have seen rugby sides in Australia celebrating 60-point defeats because they gave the Lions a 'good fight', displaying the same Corinthian spirit for which they used to mock the British.

"Then came the astonishing decision to sack cricket coach Mickey Arthur and replace him with Darren Lehmann a fortnight before the Ashes.

"All these problems stem from the same issue - coaching. Australia has lost its affinity with the most crucial ingredient for success.

"This is a nation blessed with wonderful athletes but they are being let down by an army of administrators who have no understanding of the coaching process, and some of the coaches seem more concerned with keeping their jobs than winning. "

Woodward says that while he lived for a time in Australia in the eighties he travelled frequently to the Institute of Sport in Canberra, a facility built with the sole purpose of "achieving supremacy in sport", and realised Australia was so far ahead.

"Sporting success was high on the political agenda. Back home in 1989, I realised we in Britain were just as passionate about sport, but we had not put in place a process of excellence. We have since changed for the better and surpassed the Aussies in many respects. This, I fear, is because Australia has forgotten the value of coaching.

"To win in sport you need world-class athletes and world-class coaches. The support structure is missing.

"Australia had a dreadful Olympics last summer. The reaction was to cut funding for athletics and swimming by 3.8 per cent and 5.8 per cent respectively. They redesigned programmes with an emphasis on 'team building' and addressing 'psychological issues' for athletes.

"So many experts tell me, 'Concentrate on measuring performance and winning will take care of itself'. That is a brilliant excuse for coming second, which was never the Australian way. It is about winning, plain and simple.

"I was surprised by the attitude in Australia after the first Lions Test. Australia had just been beaten and nobody was upset because it had been a good game. That's not the Australian mentality I remember.

"But perhaps the most telling problem is that Australian sport has lost the art of handling mavericks.

"Great teams are made of great individuals. Mavericks are nothing new in Australian sport - think Shane Warne and David Campese - but now if you do not fit into the system you are exiled and labelled a trouble-maker."

After 2012 the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) President John Coates blamed the failure of his country's athletes on a shortage of Government funding and a lack of compulsory sport in schools.

The Australian government allocated nearly £220 million ($338 million/€255 million) to sports programmes in its 2010 budget, but the £35 million ($54 million/€40 million) earmarked for Olympics-focused high performance sports was only half what the AOC had lobbied for.

Britain appears, for now at least, to be avoiding this pitfall. Funding for elite sport won't be not be cut over the next four years, guaranteeing £500 million ($846 million/€638 million) for Olympic and Paralympic sport ahead of Rio 2016.

However Ian Thorpe is right in saying there a sombre warning for Britain post 2012. Australia's is a predicament to which we should pay close attention if we do not want to find ourselves in a similar position in a decade's time.

Sport was Australia's advert to the rest of the world, riding high on the back of the Sydney Games in 2000, almost as glorious for them as London's was for Team GB. But look at them now.

Olympic also-rans, savaged by the British and Irish Lions and now struggling on an embarrassingly sticky wicket in the best-of-five Test series.

If England retain the Ashes, which Australia desperately need to restore their battered sporting pride, it will be their fourth victory in five series. Woodward reckons Australian cricket has virtually given up on the idea of winning them.

Of course it is easy to kick a nation when it id down but I happen to love Australia, and the Aussies.

So I'd be more than happy to see a return to the days when there was an abundance of high-spirited sporting wizards of Oz. World sport needs them.

I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but "C'mon Aussies, c'mon!" Starting with those Ashes, let's see you make a fight of it.

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