KEY POINTS:
What is it that makes those Aussies so bloody good at sport?"
It's a question that tends to crop up from time to time _ usually after the Kangaroos have dealt the Kiwis a 50-point pasting, or when the Black Caps suffer a heavy test defeat at the
hands of the Australians, or when the Silver Ferns go a year without beating their Australian foes.
Even the most one-eyed of New Zealand fans has to admit Australia is a pretty talented sporting nation.
There's a perception that Kiwi athletes are mentally weak compared with their Australian counterparts.
Right or wrong, there can be no arguing over the fact that Australians are a hard-nosed, dogged bunch, and seem to rise to the occasion when it comes to tense sporting encounters.
Silver Ferns coach Ruth Aitken perhaps sums it up best.
"They're just so tenacious and have that real fighting spirit _ you know they're never going to give up."
So do Australian sportspeople have some kind of toughness gene that we Kiwis are missing?
Certainly not, according to NZ Breakers coach Andrej Lemanis, who grew up and played all his basketball in Australia.
Lemanis believes the mental toughness Australian athletes seem to possess is born out of their advantage in numbers.
With Australia's population around five times that of New Zealand, young kids coming through the ranks experience greater competition all the way along.
Lemanis said that with his own basketball career he was exposed to cut-throat competition from a very early age.
"In Australia there's that many kids playing and there's that many competitions it was a battle to make your A team and then if you make your A team it was a battle to make your representative team and then if you made that it was a battle to make your state team. And then within all those battles you still have the battle to make the starting five and the battle to get court-time."
By comparison, young Kiwis who show talent for the game early on get a relatively free ride. "In the Kiwi junior leagues the kids that are the best get it pretty easy _ they're really not pushed at a young age.
"There's not that week-in, week-out competition so therefore it's hard for them to develop that edge that's required to compete at the highest level."
Kiwis coach and Melbourne Storm assistant Stephen Kearney agrees kids in Australia grow up in a very competitive environment because there are so many more of them.
And of course greater numbers means greater depth.
"Without a doubt it has a lot to do with the population. In many sports you could pick three Australian teams and all three would be very competitive sides and it'd be the third-string Australian side," said Kearney.
Australia's advantage in numbers is not restricted to just population.
When it comes to the amount of resources poured in to sport, the grass also appears greener on the other side of the Ditch.
The Australian Government invests tens of millions of dollars every year in the Australian Institute of Sport _ an elite sports-training facility in Canberra.
The AIS has 35 programmes in 26 sports and boasts world-class coaches, facilities and support services.
Lemanis believes the development pathways and support systems in place in Australian sports give those athletes a supreme advantage.
"You could go out and practise 1000 shots a day, but if the coaches aren't there to help those athletes develop then you're not going to get the progress that you're looking for in those early development stages, which is going to affect you later on," he said.
But despair not, all the coaches agree there are certain attributes Kiwi athletes possess that give them an edge over their Australian counterparts _ some of them physical, some mental.
The natural athleticism of those athletes with Polynesian heritage has been harnessed by many sporting codes.
Kearney believes players with Polynesian heritage have certain physical attributes that make them ready made for both rugby league and rugby union.
"If someone is 105-110kg and has good leg speed, a good carry of the football, when you get the attack-defence balance right you've got a good package."
Lemanis believes New Zealand's small population and isolation from the rest of the world can be a huge motivating factor when it comes to performing on an international stage.
It's the old notion of wanting to show up your big brother.
"They have real pride in their country and you get a little bit of that `us against the world' mentality which gives you an edge in that environment."
