George Street in Sydney runs through the heart of the city, snaking through the historic Rocks area on the harbour foreshore in the north, down through the financial district, past the shopping streets bustling with tourists, into Chinatown and Central Station in the CBD's south. Twenty years ago, this busy boulevard experienced, not one, but two days of celebration as the street was filled with 100,000 Australians celebrating victory of a sporting nation at an all-time high.
The ticker tape fell to honour two World Champion teams. In June, at the home of cricket, Lord's, Darren Lehmann hit the winning runs as one of the great Australian teams completed a remarkable World Cup win, a first in 12 years and the start of an era of dominance. Fast forward almost five months and head 150 miles west, and the Wallabies reclaimed the rugby World Cup crown, crushing France in Cardiff.
Steve Waugh and John Eales -- leaders, inspirations and great Australians -- sat in the back of open-topped sports cars, cruising through Sydney, taking in the adulation. The crowds, four or five deep in places, saluted their heroes, basking in a seemingly never ending procession of sporting success.
But nothing in sport is forever. Fast forward 20 years and as we embark on a period where World Cups across a number of sports will be won and lost, Australian sport in 2019 is much changed, as the traditional powerhouses battle with relevance, changing demographics and crisis of governance.
As this busiest of World Cup years hits us, there'll be a whole generation of Australians more interested in how Ben Simmons or Sam Kerr perform, than David Warner or Michael Hooper. This is a sign, not just of organisational dysfunction and shifting priorities, but of a generation pivoting to different sports and different heroes.
For a country of relatively limited population and a huge number of sports that divide the talent pool, the late 1990s was a period of remarkable dominance. Millions of dollars of investment in sport, in facilities and in coaching, over a 25-year period, were reaping the rewards. That same year of the cricket and rugby triumphs, Australia won the Davis Cup, ending a 13-year drought after an inspired display in Nice from Mark Philippoussis. Earlier in the year, Pat Rafter hit the world No. 1 spot, following John Newcombe two decades earlier.
The national netball side became World Champion with a last-second Sharelle McMahon goal in New Zealand and the Opals basketball team claimed a bronze medal in the 1998 World Championship, in the process introducing a 17-year-old called Lauren Jackson to the world. They'd get to know her fairly well during the next decade.
Even the domestic football codes came along for the ride, with six figure crowds at the NRL Grand Final, a memorable State of Origin, a record-breaking AFL season, and dynasties established. A heady cocktail of success and memories, of triumphs and tears and sepia-tinged tales that sound grander and more fanciful with each passing year, and with a home Olympics around the corner that would further establish Australia's sporting credentials. But the sporting landscape, and even the psyche of the nation's fans themselves, shifted. Change has come and the old order has been shaken.
Another stunning World Cup triumph, this time at a packed MCG, was just four short years ago. But for Australian cricket, it may as well be a lifetime. Cricket has long been considered the national sport, an untouchable behemoth, generating headlines, ratings, revenue and records. A sport once seen as bulletproof, but one that has in the past two years experienced a well-documented fall from grace, not just for a national team engulfed in a cheating scandal, but for an organisation stymied by dysfunction, and an 'arrogant' and 'controlling' culture.
The Longstaff Review, triggered by the ball-tampering saga during the South Africa Test in March 2018, was released in October 2018 and laid bare the crisis of culture at Cricket Australia, making 42 recommendations for a root change to get the sport back on track.
But the public didn't need a review to shine a light on the troubles of the game. Since the heyday of multiple World Cups and invincible Test teams, cricket in Australia has weathered multiple storms, from dwindling interest in Test and ODI games, cricket the challenge of incorporating the burgeoning T20 format, with the previously successful Big Bash League now facing its own issues, a perceived arrogance of the national team, all at a time where inconsistent performances have seen a national side in decline.
For former Test bowler Stuart MacGill, the crisis in the game has been a long time coming.
"One of the issues I've had with cricket for 10-15 years now is the mantra that cricket is Australia's favourite summer sport, and they used to ram it down everybody's throat," he tells ESPN. "I don't believe the public like being told what their favourite anything is. People being told that cricket is the No. 1 sport and using measurement tools to support that is flawed.
"Cricket has been punished in the last 18 months because of that. The players have almost been inducted into this cult of self belief and self confidence, and the public doesn't like it. So when one thing happens, we just jump all over them, because that's what Australians do."
MacGill, who took 208 Test wickets in a 10-year career, believes the buck stops firmly with the governing body Cricket Australia, and its style of leadership.
"Cricket is a product that has been defined (by Cricket Australia) to the last degree. Everything about (modern) cricket is designed. It's a cookie cutter that has been rolled out across every state. Cricket is not about a blueprint. Obviously there is a pathway to success and there is a way to train, but people do still respect the flair of a sportsman who thrills a crowd." MacGill says. "Structure to the exclusion of athleticism or flair - would we get a Damien Martyn or a Mark Waugh or a Bill O'Reilly or a Shane Warne - would Shane Warne have played if he started now?
"There is a huge disconnect and a paucity of genuine leadership. When the team is winning, the team and Cricket Australia try to convince you that it's the same as when Bradman was playing. But that's just not true. Things are different.
"Don Bradman ran the cricket team. Mark Taylor ran the cricket team. Steve Waugh ran the cricket team. It changed with Ricky Ponting. From then it was Cricket Australia running the team."
With participation numbers being the in-vogue way of defining a sport's success, MacGill is critical of the top down approach and the game's grassroots strategy in Australia.
"Those junior cricket programs make serious money. I remember my son was in it a few years ago, and it was at Mosman (Sydney's north shore) and it was packed. All the mums and dads who grew up in Mosman and had grown up with cricket had brought their kids and I remember thinking (about the program) 'Why are you here?' They already had us. They should've been somewhere else (in western Sydney). You already have these grassroots nailed and people who know what they're doing. Don't waste your time here. It was so disappointing to me. There was such a lack of passion there.
"You think about women's football and basketball 10 years ago. It's the opposite, the total opposite. It's mums and dads taking kids to play a sport that is active and dynamic and is all about the grassroots, and surprise, surprise it's those sports that are finding themselves in with a chance of winning World Cups. That is not a surprise to me. I think it's embarrassing."
Back on the field, the much vaunted returns of Steve Smith and David Warner to the Australian side generated headlines and eased Australia to an opening win over Afghanistan, but there's a fatigue with the redemption narrative in sport. Four years on from that green and gold home triumph, the nation's team - and the sport - find themselves in a strange place. They are stuck in a netherworld between eras. MacGill's hope is that the game's administrators can see what's really important for the future.
"The best thing about Australian cricket for me, is people walking from the centre of Adelaide down to the ground. Mums and dads, kids dragging their parents along," he says. "The game here has to realise, that is where the future, is not in a boardroom or in a PowerPoint presentation."
Meanwhile, rugby union has fallen further and landed harder.
The triumph in Cardiff was part of a true golden era for the sport in Australia. Between 1998 and 2004, the Wallabies were the country's favourite team. Five successive Bledisloe Cup triumphs, successive World Cup finals and the most successful hosting of any World Cup in 2003, had the sport at an all-time high. Super Rugby was at the peak of its power, the cashed up union poached the very best players from rugby league, and crowds filled the stands. The windfall from 2003 alone should have set the sport up for the next 30 years.
But the sport failed to capitalise on the momentum it had. By doubling down on its traditional strongholds at development level, whilst simultaneously throwing money at ill-fated expansion into non-traditional markets and a poor return from its crossover rugby league stars, rugby tried to have a bet each way. Instead it ended up losing both.
Add in the fact Super Rugby, and many Tests, were kept behind the TV paywall, the game itself experiencing growing pains with rule changes, middling national team performances overshadowed by the all-conquering All Blacks, and continual Super Rugby competition tweaks, and only the most optimistic of rugby die-hards looked positively to the future.
As finances tightened, the player drain to the wealthier European and Japanese clubs took hold. With the top end thinning out, and the base drying up, the squeeze was on in the middle. Rugby Australia started to take action and began investing in growth areas like Western Sydney, but is it too little, too late? In 2018, the Australian Sports Commission listed rugby union in 18th place for organised sport played by children outside of school hours. The 57,429 participants dwarfed by football's 674,000. A huge concern.
In 2016, Rugby Australia announced the Australian Rugby Strategic Plan for 2016-2020, with a vision "to inspire all Australians to enjoy our great global game". The pillars of the plan were:
1. Make rugby a game for all - our community
2. Ignite Australia's passion for the game - our fans
3. Build sustainable success in the professional game - our elite teams
4. Create excellence in how the game is run - our administration.
With only a year to go, the goals of the plan appear unobtainable. And on the playing side, Wallaby greats are in despair at the rapid decline of the elite game. Speaking late last year, former Wallaby hooker Brendan Cannon took aim at the state of the sport saying, "On the professional side, there's a number of systems that need to be reflected upon.
"In the space of three or four years, we've gone from being second in the World Cup to [sixth] in the world and each year our performances as a group and our individual skills aren't getting any better."
A performance review in December saw national team coach Michael Cheika survive -- just -- in his role, but on the eve of a World Cup in the Asia-Pacific region and with the chance to reignite the interest and passion that was so evident two decades ago, we have the Wallabies and Rugby Australia mired in the Israel Folau saga. The result? A Wallabies team, no matter what your point of view on the issue, without its star player and one true superstar.
When we hit game time in Sapporo and Tokyo, the tubthumping will begin of course. But if, or when, the Wallabies bow out, all except the true believers in the sport will shrug and carry on with their lives.
But as the traditionally powerful sports weaken, others have a chance to grow and 2019 will see a rising tide of teams and athletes, previously playing on the fringes of the mainstream, get the chance to step out of the shadows. At the forefront will be the women of Australian sport. The Diamonds netball team is the most likely to repeat 20 years on, as they continue to display excellence year in, year out. They will be heavily favoured in the UK in July, despite England's recent record which saw them shock Australia at last year's Commonwealth Games.
In tennis, Ash Barty is now Australia's undisputed No. 1 player, male or female. She broke through at Masters level earlier this year and will head to Wimbledon and the US Open as a top 10 player. The cricket team, untainted by a miserable year of scandals, has its own World Cup challenge on home soil in 2020, as T20 rolls into town. They will be the odds-on favourite. But it will be in the first World Cup to be decided that the biggest single impact on the Australian sporting landscape could be felt.
Twenty years ago the women's national football team, the Matildas, failed to get out of their group at the FIFA World Cup in the USA. In a tournament that would provide one of the sport's iconic moments with Brandi Chastain's celebration following the hosts shoot-out triumph, Australia suffered comprehensive defeats at the hands of Sweden and China, and their departure barely raised an eyebrow on an Australian public looking elsewhere.
A few months later, struggling for funding, largely ignored by the public and desperate to make an impact at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the squad stripped for a raunchy calendar to raise funds to put back into their football. The situation was that bad.
Looking back, national team stalwart Joey Peters can barely believe how much things have changed.
"Only one or two of our players at the time had stints playing overseas," she told ESPN. "Now most players are becoming club players first, more than national team players which is obviously taking after the (path of the) men's (team)."
"We spent a huge chunk of time in Canberra together when the AIS scholarships were introduced (in 1998) but I'm not sure it was a good thing for all. Now it's becoming more about quality prep time more than quantity prep time.
"The U.S. team in that tournament in 1999 would go into camp six months before and play about 10 games leading into the tournament, they've always been the leaders of our game."
It hasn't been an easy ride, with the squad having to strike three years ago to ensure they received a new pay deal, a deal that still leaves them light years behind their male counterparts. But the setbacks, the challenges, the trials and tribulations have seemed to galvanise a group that has been together for a number of years, and appear closer than ever.
Peters can see the impact of the growth of the sport and the team on the game today.
"You see someone like (Matildas defender) Ellie Carpenter and she is a good marker of how things have changed. Young girls are now devoting their lives to the sport. Her trophies and marking of her own world map mean so much," she says. "I feel like the value of women's sport has risen. I feel more respect now of my Matildas career than when I was a player!"
Peters, and her 1999 alumni Amy Duggan (nee Taylor) and Alicia Ferguson will experience the 2019 edition of the World Cup from TV studios and broadcast facilities around the globe, further testament to how the landscape has dramatically shifted.
Despite a tumultuous build-up that saw coach Alen Stajcic fired, the Matildas enter the World Cup as the sixth seeded nation. There are a whole generation of girls in Australia now playing the game and being inspired by the deeds of the Matildas.
They are a legitimate chance to reach the final in Lyon in July, and in Sam Kerr, have a genuine superstar among their ranks. Kerr's journey to the top of the game has been steady -- she debuted in the 2011 World Cup as a teenager on the rise -- but the way she has come to mainstream prominence in the last few years is testament, not just to her immense talent, but to the way women's sport has progressed.
On the very same Sydney street that the heroes of 99 were lauded, you can now walk into sporting goods stores, past the Wallabies jerseys and the garish cricket outfits, and pick up your own #20 KERR shirt, in women's and men's cuts. The FFA online store ran out of the men's version within hours of going on sale. They also had to extend the number of names for personalisation to 20. Come July, they may need to order a whole lot more. It's all a far cry from baring all to make ends meet.
And if the Matildas finally climb the mountain, Peters knows the potential impact: "For Australia, we would need to be ready for girls grass roots participation to double, it's already the biggest sport for girls in this country.
"Are we ready to embrace women's football being bigger than men's in this country?"
In Piraeus, the port city on the south western fringe of Athens, it's late on a hot, sticky night in August, 1998. A few hours earlier, Australia's men's basketball team, the Boomers, had seen their chance of progressing to the final round of the World Championship extinguished at the hands of a USA team, denied of NBA talent and assembled from college kids and journeymen just three weeks before the tournament.
With Luc Longley injured, Australia had relied primarily on its two stars, Andrew Gaze heading toward the end of his career, and Shane Heal, in his prime and between two NBA stints, as well as a new young buck Chris Anstey, drafted by the Mavericks the year before. But it wasn't enough. After 5th place in 1994, and a valiant 4th in the Atlanta Olympics, this was a big step backwards for the team.
On the bench as assistant coach in Athens, one Brett Brown. Speaking to ESPN earlier this year Brown recalled the character of the team "They fought, man," he said, breaking into a grin. "They fought. Holy s---, did they fight."
But fight was not enough: 9th place in Athens. Two years later the regrouped side headed to a home Olympics with the MOB attitude - Medal or Bust. It was bust: 4th place and a generation's best chance of medal success slipped away.
The landscape some 20 years later for the Boomers could not be more different. The team head to China for the World Cup in September with an NBA-packed roster featuring perhaps the finest line-up of male basketball talent in the country's history. With Brown's protégé Ben Simmons making himself available for the green and gold for the first time in five years, they will head into the tournament as one of the favourites, in a true global sport that has been revitalised in Australia after decades in the doldrums.
Early 90's Australian basketball was wild. The local NBL was must-watch prime time TV, as the Sydney Kings and Melbourne Tigers became as well known as the LA Lakers and Chicago Bulls. The arenas around the country were full to bursting with Jordan and Magic jerseys, and it was cool to like the hoops.
Parents loved their kids playing the sport, and the kids loved the chance to "Be Like Mike". Basketball compared favourably with the rough and tumble of local football codes, played in less than salubrious, rundown, freezing venues. But as the AFL in particular, cleaned up its act, upgraded grounds, and ploughed millions into junior programs, and Jordan moved on from the NBA to see his position as a global icon usurped by a host of glamourous European football stars, the local game lost its lustre, drifting alarmingly, all the way to the point of insolvency. Basketball in Australia was dead.
Almost.
The revitalisation of the sport has not been overnight, and is down to a number of factors, with a younger demographic discovering the new wave of NBA stars through social media, YouTube clips, House of Highlights and video games. Add to that a boom in Aussie players, and the massive cash injection into the NBL and you have a sport on the rise.
And at the grassroots level, basketball is booming again, second in team sports only to football in Sport Australia participation numbers, moving ahead of AFL, Netball and Cricket as basketball rides the wave of popularity.
NBA Champion Luc Longley, a national team stalwart more than two decades ago, can see how much the game has changed.
"There's more talent, more infrastructure and the interest more mature," he told ESPN. "We were a bit of a novelty in the 80s and 90s, with the U.S. razzle dazzle getting people excited. Now, the fanbase is second generation and more educated about the game. We have our own basketball culture now, and the roots are a bit deeper."
So to China for the World Cup, and instead of only recognising the names on the opposition singlets, it will be the Boomers that vast swathes of the country will now know. It's a team that resembles modern day Australia, with the players representing different races, cultures, ethnicities all performing under the Australian flag. In a friendly timezone, the World Cup will be evening news fodder, games will be live, and the pre-tournament challenge against Team USA will have full houses at the cavernous Marvel Stadium. Over 100,000 people in total. The hottest ticket in town.
Businessman and NBL owner Larry Kestelman is the architect of the games in Melbourne and the benefactor who has turbo-charged the local growth, and he knows the potential impact of the next few months.
"For Australian basketball in general this is the biggest thing that could have happened. It feels like we have skipped a few steps and gone straight to the top."
The top is where we started, with the cornerstones of traditional Australian sport. And the top is where we'll finish, maybe with those same sports, but certainly with a new generation of athlete, of fan and of sports culture. At the heart of the Australian nation is its diversity, the immigrant nation, and this year the world will see that sporting diversity it in all its glory.