Amanda Smith: Today, we're exactly twelve months from the closing day of the Sydney Olympics. So in a year's time, will we be feeling like it was all worth it?

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Amanda Smith: Now, anyone who lives in, or has visited Sydney recently, will be only too aware of the amount of construction and road-works going on there in preparation for you-know-what, and the inconveniences all this is presenting. But how will people be feeling at about this time next year when it's all over? A warm inner glow, or an almighty hangover?

Today in The Sports Factor we're going back to Atlanta, the previous host city of the summer Games, to get a sense of what it was like there. It's three years now since Atlanta's big moment in the sun, but it's easy to find locals in the Olympic Centennial Park who still feel enthusiastic about it all.

SOUND OF CHILDREN PLAYING

Woman: There was such a feeling of oneness when we were here; it wasn't like people from the north and people from the south, and then people from Europe and people from other places, it was like everybody was here for one reason, and there was just this neat camaraderie that happened, and people weren't afraid to speak to each other, and they weren't afraid to look at each other.

Woman: The whole world was right here, and that was just quite amazing to see right here in the south, you know?

Man: This is a great day. If you just look at the Atlanta area, all the new buildings there they built just because of the Olympics. Some of the colleges had Olympic venues and sports venues, stadiums and arenas that they built just for the Olympics, and now that the Olympics have gone, those schools can use those for student housing and different things like that. So it's a great impact builder on the city at large.

Man: The traffic here is miserable, and the funny thing about that was that there were all these worries that during the Olympics itself that the traffic would be bad, but everybody was so good at riding public transportation during the Olympics that traffic on the highways was actually less, it was much easier to get around on the highways during the Olympics because everyone was taking mass transit. Unfortunately they gave up that habit once the Olympics were over, and now the traffic is worse than it ever was.

Woman: The only downside that I saw was after the Olympics, how we got the Olympics and that kind of thing, the tarnishing of the Olympic spirit per se, and I think we need to get back to what was the Olympics about in the first place? And it should be the focus of the athletes and their competition.

Amanda Smith: Well what remains as the long-term legacy for Atlanta of hosting the Games? And what should we expect for Sydney? Michael Holmes is an Australian who's been working as a news presenter for CNN in Atlanta for several years. He thinks that while there've certainly been some tangible benefits for the city, staging the world's biggest sporting event can create unrealistic expectations. Michael Holmes spoke with Jason Dasey in Atlanta.

Jason Dasey: Michael, you've had the chance to see Atlanta before, during and after the Olympics, and now Sydney is preparing for the same cycle. Would you say that Atlanta has changed since the Olympics, or because of the Olympics?

Michael Holmes: It's a difficult question. I think that yes, it's changed, downtown particularly has changed. I was living in Perth just before and after the America's Cup and I guess it's a fair comparison. Fremantle was not a place you'd like to go after dark for many, many years, but the Americas Cup brought Perth a coat of paint and tarted it up a bit and the placed changed forever, and it's now a beautiful place to go. And in many ways, downtown Atlanta was the same, although parts of downtown Atlanta are still places you wouldn't go after dark! It cleaned up and put a new face on a large part of downtown, particularly around where we work. At CNN, downtown near the Olympic Park area was really just a building site for a long time, and now it's beautiful, and it's lovely.

Jason Dasey: We're sitting here in your backyard in suburban Atlanta. In many ways it could be somewhere in Sydney, a very leafy suburb. There are similarities between Atlanta and Sydney, roughly the same size; Atlanta's almost 4-million, very green, leafy, a warm climate. Did Atlanta expect to change? Was it as big a thing as it thought the Olympics, for Atlanta?

Michael Holmes: I've been lucky to be in three towns now that have had Olympic Games either very close to when I was there, or in Atlanta's case, while I was here. And I invariably have found that expectations have far outstripped reality, particularly when people are talking about long-term benefits and the like. Atlanta's long-term benefit is a nicer portion of downtown. I think people expect too much from the Olympics. Yes, it puts the name of the town on the map, but who in the world hadn't heard of Sydney anyway? It's a great two-week advertisement; people who think that housing prices are going to boom and they're going to make a fortune renting out their houses, and there's going to be all these wonderful infrastructure things, I think they'll be a bit disappointed. Sydney's going to have a couple of nice sporting facilities, probably a couple of nice new roads. but six months after the event, things will go back to normal, as they did here. And life here is exactly the same as it was before the Games, with a couple of nice additions to the city. I think people feared a lot of things here that didn't happen; people here feared the traffic, and I went to several Olympic events, many of them, and I never had a traffic problem. People feared crime, an explosion of crime, and with the tragic exception of the Olympic Park bombing, there was no crime. I think it was a positive thing for the city. But if you're expecting long-term boom benefits ... no!

Amanda Smith: Atlanta-based news presenter, Michael Holmes.

The man who was in charge of the Atlanta Games was Billy Payne. In fact, he's still working on them. He's recently had to file a report to the United States Congress for their inquiry into irregularities in the bidding processes for both the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games and the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games. Not that that phases a bloke with the ebullience of Billy Payne. And as he told Jason Dasey he now looks at where the Sydney organisers are up to in their preparations, and all the issues and details they're dealing with, and thinks back to being in that same position himself a year out from his Games.

Billy Payne: Well I do indeed. I must say that I find it a bit humorous, because I remember it this time preceding our Games, people in my position who had organised previous Games told me about certain problems and difficulties that must be overcome and certain time increments. And it's amazing how predictable it is, and I think every organising committee deals with the same set of issues and difficulties and time and hard work allows you to overcome virtually all of those.

Inevitably however, when you do something as big as the Olympic Games, I think in our case the largest peacetime event in history, there are certain folks and constituencies who in hindsight are always able to say that 'Had I been in charge, we would have done it differently.'

Jason Dasey: Is there a way of measuring the success of an Olympics, of comparing different Olympics saying this one was successful for this reason. I mean when you look back on the Atlanta Games and when you look forward to the Sydney 2000 Games, how do you measure success?

Billy Payne: Well again I would say the resulting sense of pride and achievement in the population that was required to make the sacrifices to incur the burden and to put the Games together. By that I mean here and in Sydney as well, those very people who themselves have perhaps been critical of the amount of Federal funding required to organise the Games, the amount of debt they believe the people will be left with after the Games, enormous expectations of making a fast buck out of the Games, those very people who at some point along the way perhaps may have been critical, if at the end of the Games those people feel a sense of achievement, feel a sense their country has glorified itself to the rest of the world and that they themselves played an important role, if that feeling exists after the Games, really no other measurement matters at all.

Jason Dasey: Would you have any advice for the people of Sydney and for the Sydney organisers, what they should be doing now, about a year out from the games, and what they should be doing during the Games?

Billy Payne: Well I had an approach to the preparation for the entire ten years that was very simple. I had articulated a goal that we would have the best Games ever, because of some of the problems, some people don't agree with that. Of course we do you know, and all of us who were part of it. Nevertheless the advice is very simple, and that is you wake up every day, no matter how many days you have left, work as long and hard as you can, work to the point of total exhaustion, do it for what you believe is in the best interests of your community and its reputation, and its future, and then you go home, and then you come back to it next day and do it all over again, with that kind of work discipline and regimen, that effort ultimately, and that effort alone, will cause the success that everybody wants at the conclusion of the Games.

Jason Dasey: Now I know you've been advised by your lawyers not to talk about this process that's going on with the report to the United States Congress, but I understand that you feel that your committee acted appropriately.

Billy Payne: Well we submitted a report I think, there's a world-wide movement now to determine what reforms are justified, are necessary, in the Olympic bidding process among cities from countries that have so many different cultures, it is a good process, it is a healthy process, we think however that our report speaks for itself, and we'll be delighted to have the opportunity at our governmental hearing to explain both what we did to win the Games, and to give our opinions about what we think is in the best interest of the bidding process in future years.

Jason Dasey: It was in the mid-'80s when you came up with the idea, this crazy idea of putting on the Olympics in Atlanta, and yet even now, three years after the Games, you're still working on it. I guess it's challenging still to have to deal with various legal issues. Was it all worth it?

Billy Payne: Absolutely. It was the most incredible ten years, now 13 years, of my life. And you know, I think dealing with the difficulty, dealing with the scrutiny that the Olympic movement is now under worldwide everywhere, is simply part of the process. I mean you don't agree to become a part of the Olympic family and dedicate most of your life on the condition that you're only required to deal with the good things. The Olympic movement, I believe, probably more strongly today than at any time in my life, is the single, greatest movement in this world, that brings people together, who otherwise, every day of their life, choose to fight, to make war, to argue over economic issues, the Olympic movement stands alone in its ability to unit people. That's a phenomenon that the people of Australia will see, they will be proud of their contribution in creating that cohesiveness, and I think the one thing you have to watch out for, and I know we did; we had to work hard at it, there's a sense in the preparation of any Olympic Games to have as your fundamental premise, nationalism. And by that I mean in our case everything must be American, in your case everything must be Australian, in the case of the Nagano Games in Japan, everything must be Japanese. And I think you have to be careful there. While there is definitely a need to show the best side of your country, so too do I believe is there a requirement that you acknowledge your openness, that you are part of a larger world movement in the Olympic movement. And it's kind of hard to get that perfect balance, and I know Sydney has struggled with that as we did.

Amanda Smith: Billy Payne the man in charge of putting on the last Summer Games, speaking there with Jason Dasey in Atlanta.

Staying with the Olympics, next year Australia is going to compete in the handball for the very first time at an Olympic Games. Australia's never qualified for this event before, but as the host country, we get automatic entrée. Problem is though, that handball is a little-known and little-played sport in Australia. So over the past couple of years, there's been a mad scramble to get an Australian Men's and Women's team up to scratch to compete. Though according to Shelley Ormes, from the National Women's Team, Olympic handball is nothing like that game we used to play at school with a tennis ball.

SOUND OF A HANDBALL GAME

Shelley Ormes: No, not at all, that's the misconception that a lot of people have. In fact it's much more exciting than that. It's likened to water polo on land. It has skills of soccer, basketball, water polo action, lots of sports thrown in there.

Amanda Smith: Well it has a goal like a soccer goal; you have a goalkeeper. But is it low-scoring like say soccer or high scoring like basketball?

Shelley Ormes: It's actually in between. A normal score would be in the 30s, 40s, around about there. So it's definitely a high scoring goal, and I think that would be something that a lot of people would enjoy, a high scoring goal like that.

Amanda Smith: And what are the main goals, what kind of ball do you use? Give me a bit of a picture of this sport.

Shelley Ormes: It's a small soccer-like ball, a woman's ball can usually fit in your hand. The object of the game is to try and create gaps in the defence and try and shoot and score into the goal. There's a six-metre semicircle, and but only the goalkeeper is allowed in. And the defence stands around that circle and tries and defends their goal. The attacking team is therefore trying to get through that defence and shoot and score a goal. If you shoot and miss, you're back in defence, and the opposing team is then in attack.

Amanda Smith: And it's played indoors, on a court like a basketball court. In fact actually it's bigger than a basketball court by the look of it.

Shelley Ormes: Yes, it's actually 40-metres by 20-metres, and actually that's one of the problems that Australia faces, is that there's not enough courts that are actually full size. So we end up having to play on a short court.

Amanda Smith: Now I've heard that handball is supposed to be one of the fastest team-sports in the world, is that true?

Shelley Ormes: Yes, that's right. It's actually second fastest behind ice hockey, so it's a very exciting sport.

Amanda Smith: Is it a contact sport, is there any biffo in handball?

Shelley Ormes: There isn't what I'd call biffo, it gets pretty close to that. It's definitely a contact sport, it's not as contact as say something like Rugby League, but definitely more contact than netball. And you are allowed to 'contact' the player and try and stop them from going through. So yes, definitely a contact sport.

Amanda Smith: When and why did you start playing handball?

Shelley Ormes: I started playing about ten years ago, before there was any thought of the Olympics, and I just started playing it; a friend of mine had moved up to Brisbane from Sydney and she got me into it. We put a school team in, and we went from there. And I just found that I really loved the team sport. It was fast, it's agile, I really enjoyed all the physical aspects of it.

And then four years ago they said that it would be in the Olympics, so that was an added bonus.

Amanda Smith: And what backgrounds do the other women in this national team come from, have they switched to handball from other sports, or have women from countries where handball is so hugely popular, been recruited into this team?

Shelley Ormes: They haven't been recruited as such, but quite a few of the girls in the team do have a European background and they did play handball in Europe. The Australian girls in the team, they've come from basketball, netball, those sorts of sports. So we all have a team sport background I guess you could say, but yes, certainly the European girls in the team are the ones that can give us a lot of experience with their knowledge and that, so we're certainly learning from them.

Amanda Smith: Handball was introduced into the Olympic Games as a men's event in 1936, at the Berlin Games. And as Shelley Ormes mentioned, it's the European countries who are traditionally strong in this sport. Travis Hardman, who's on the Australian Men's Handball Team, says that most Australians have no idea of how incredibly popular this sport is in other parts of the world.

SOUND OF HANDBALL GAME

Travis Hardman: It's a huge sport, I mean in Europe you either grow up with a soccer ball or a handball. The people we're playing against are all full-time professionals that train twice a day, every day, and have huge spectator sport throughout most countries it's played in.

Amanda Smith: And it's the European countries who have the strongest teams in world handball?

Travis Hardman: I guess you'd have to say yes, the European teams generally are the strongest, but the Asian continents field quite a strong contingency, Africa and South America also field very strong sides.

Amanda Smith: When and why did you start playing handball, Travis?

Travis Hardman: I actually started playing it in my schooldays. I'm a Melbourne boy myself, and played at Camberwell Grammar just as a house sport. And after that one of the sports masters encouraged me to keep playing it, so I took it up to actually keep fit while I played Aussie Rules.

Amanda Smith: Yes, were you were also a footballer playing Aussie Rules with the Victorian Amateur Football Association. Why did you swap football for handball?

Travis Hardman: Well it was a progressive stage. I originally, as I said, started playing it to keep fit for football, and after doing that for three years, it slowly got to the stage where handball was taking over my football commitments, and after playing in the nationals last year, I had to make the decision, and obviously handball won out.

Amanda Smith: Now I remember there was some talk a few years ago when it was decided that Australia would compete in the handball at the 2000 Games, of recruiting AFL and Rugby League footballers. Did that happen, have any of them made the national team?

Travis Hardman: Yes there was that push. A few of the athletes came down to try out, the likes of Anthony Condon, Richard Osborne, -

Amanda Smith: These are ex-AFL players.

Travis Hardman: Ex-AFL players, Hawthorne and Collingwood respectively. Mattie Francis from Collingwood is still playing apparently. But it was a very hard transition. I myself found it hard to make the transition from football to handball, more in the mentality, not the physical side of things because all those footballers obviously have the right physical attributes for the sport. But it was more the mental side of things, trying to adjust your style of play to the way that it's needed for handball.

Amanda Smith: Well the team's had some practice at international competition this year; you played at the World Championships in Egypt in July, and then a few weeks ago you had the Olympics test event in Sydney. How are you feeling about the Australian team's progress at this point of time, can you cut it with the countries where handball is so strong?

Travis Hardman: We're still going to battle, but from what we showed in Egypt to the progression that we've made to the test events, we can really see ourselves improving and you can see us becoming a lot more competitive out on the field. As I said earlier, it's still going to be hard to compete with those European nations because they are full-time professionals, because they do train twice a day, every day, whereas we have to fit our training schedules around full-time work commitments, and it makes it difficult to compete on that sort of level with them.

Amanda Smith: Tell me what it's like as a spectator sport, for example at those World Championships in Egypt in July this year.

Travis Hardman: It really is a sport that I could see the Australian public catching on to. It's a high scoring game, roughly between 25 and 30 goals a game, for each side. It's athletic, there's quite a lot of body contact involved in it, and in Egypt the crowd was just huge, every game was a sell-out crowd. The main stadium in Egypt, in Cairo, holds roughly 30,000 people, and when you're getting that sort of crowd full and they all bring their drums in and their banners, it's an incredible experience we were playing under.

Amanda Smith: What do you hope the team will be able to achieve in the big comp at Homebush next year? Where are you setting your sights?

Travis Hardman: Generally we're really going out there to be competitive, to be a headache to every side we play. We're in a very similar situation to what America was in the Atlanta Games, where they had never played in the Olympics before and they actually ended up coming tenth out of twelve teams, which was a great result for them. We're hoping to do something similar to that. We're starting to get close to a number of countries, and hopefully come Olympic time, we'll be able to beat them.

LOUD SHOUTS ON THE HANDBALL COURT

Amanda Smith: And we'll all be watching with interest. Travis Hardman, from the Australian Men's Handball Team.

Now with the AFL and Rugby League Grand Finals played last weekend, you might be thinking that's it for football in Australia for another year. Well, it's not quite true. This month, some of the stars of the AFL will play as a national team against the visiting Irish Gaelic Football Team. And the game that they'll be playing is something called 'International Rules', an amalgam of Gaelic football and Australian football.

The former AFL champions Dermot Brereton and Jim Stynes are coaching the Australian team. Jim Stynes straddles the two codes perfectly, since he grew up in Ireland playing Gaelic football, and was recruited from there to learn and play Australian football. Jim took to the new game so well that he ended up winning the Brownlow Medal in 1991. But what's involved in playing this 'International Rules'? Jim Stynes.

Jim Stynes: Well the easiest way to explain it is, it's Aussie Rules with a round ball. There's a crossbar in the goals, so it's a bit like having soccer goals, and really the rest of the rules are pretty much the same. It's played on the same dimensions, a little bit bigger than a Rugby pitch, and yes, the ball flows very, very quick, it's a bit like basketball that moves up and down. There's 15 on each team, and yes, you take marks, you bounce it, you handball it, and you score goals and overs as they call them in this game. I suppose they give you a point for trying when you miss.

Amanda Smith: Well this is the second year of this series. Last year Australia played Ireland in Dublin. Australia won the first test and lost the second. But what's the idea behind creating a game that's part way between Australian Rules football and Gaelic football, and playing this series?

Jim Stynes: Well I think the major part is that players who would not normally get an opportunity to represent their country, do now. You know, Ireland picks an all-Ireland team, but it doesn't do anything, it doesn't play, it's just an honour, and Australia has an All Australian team but it never seems to do anything, it's just the honour. And I think because the games are fairly closely linked, particularly Aussie Rules having its origins in Ireland, and part of, I think it's just a great opportunity for them just to express their talents, t get out there and play with players who are of equal standard, so they're playing together with the best in the competition, and wearing their national colours, which is just a terrific honour for both teams, and all players involved.

Amanda Smith: Well this hybrid football code is also known as Compromise Rules. Is it a true and fair compromise between Australian and Gaelic football, or does it favour one code over the other?

Jim Stynes: Some would say it favours the Irish, because it's a round ball. But one way or the other, you've got to pick a ball, you can't pick in between an oval and a round, you'd end up with a square! It's impossible, you have to go one way or the other, and the Irish to play with an oval ball would be far more difficult than for the Aussies to play with a round ball. And that's why they've come with that compromise. And I think in some degree, I think Aussie Rules originally started with a round ball, some say. So you know, I think it's probably a little bit weighed in the Irish favour, simply because of the ball, but everything else is fairly much evened up.

Amanda Smith: Well as someone who grew up playing one code, Gaelic football, and switched to the other, Australian football, I guess you're in a very good position to coach the Australians on how to play the Irish. What are the main adjustments that Australian footballers have to make to play this international rules?

Jim Stynes: As I said before, the ball, just getting used to kicking it. You know, there's so many different ways of dropping a round ball onto your foot. Aussie Rules, it's you know, you kick a drop punt and if you're really stuck you just drop it on your boot just to get out of a pack. There's never a drop kick, there's very few torpedoes now. Whereas in Gaelic football because of the round ball, you can kick it around your body, you can kick it low, end over end, it's just different ways of spinning the ball, soccer do it obviously a lot more, curling it around into the nets. But in actually kicking that round ball accurately over 30 metres and beyond, is quite difficult, particularly for the Aussie Rules players because they're used to just kicking it straight, and that's where really the skill comes in, and that's where we've really been trying to practice that, get used to it. And for the players to get comfortable with the best style that suits them. So I'd say that's probably the real area that we have to work on.

Amanda Smith: And what are the advantages over the Irish that the Australian footballers have, coming in to this hybrid game?

Jim Stynes: I suppose we're professional, they're amateur. They would probably see it as a greater honour, simply because they're an amateur game and they're getting a chance now to play against a professional. It's like us going to play the Americans, they're coming to play the Australians, the big country, they're stars, they're paid, you know, they live a lavish lifestyle, they're full-time, Whereas these guys have full-time jobs, they travel a lot to get to training, they give up, they make a lot of sacrifices. So for them to get an opportunity to travel half-way around the world and represent their country is a huge honour for them. And probably an aspect that we cannot underestimate.

Amanda Smith: Well are AFL players then keen to get a guernsey in these matches? What sort of status do they give to this series?

Jim Stynes: Well if you judge it on last year, they rank it like most players afterwards said that it's besides winning a grand final, and for a lot of players who played, they hadn't won a grand final, so it was their biggest honour. It was the biggest moment. Like playing in the game against the Irish last year, the First Test, where we won by a point, most of them had never experienced anything like that. They said, 'Well if that's what winning a grand final is, I can't wait to win one.'

Amanda Smith: Well Jim from time to time the idea of Rugby Union and Rugby League reuniting back into one code is raised, especially since Rugby Union went professional. Can you imagine the possibility of Australian and Gaelic football merging?

Jim Stynes: No, I don't think so. I think both games are brilliant, and they're great spectator sports, and you know, why dilute them? Why change them, when you can have the best of both worlds.'

Amanda Smith: Jim Stynes, assistant coach of the Australian 'International Rules' team, and who's brother Brian Stynes will be playing for the Irish side. The First Test is being played next Friday in Melbourne at the MCG, and the second is in Adelaide the Friday after that, October 15th at Football Park.

And that's The Sports Factor for another week. Michael Shirrefs is the program Producer, and I'm Amanda Smith. I'll be back with you again next Friday, hope you'll join me.

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The Sports Factor can be heard on Radio National, 8.30am Fridays (Repeated Friday evenings at 8.30pm).