Australia's passion for sport and winning can at times border on intimidation. Johnny Watterson looks for some of the reasons behind it

Lleyton Hewitt beats his chest and screams at the top of his voice "Come f**king on". The Australian tennis player ships a tournament fine for an audible profanity but wins a gruelling slog over four hours in 100 degrees; Hewitt claims another match in which he was dead and buried.

In the Melbourne front office of Cricket Australia, the woman answering the phones is getting fed up. It's late in 2003 and punters are ringing in because of what they heard and saw on television. Glenn McGrath and his Australian cricket team are at it again, this time against the West Indies. There had been ugly outbursts between McGrath and the visitors' captain, Ramnaresh Sarwan, and as reported at the time "baseless insults about wives and captain's infidelity, homosexuality and oral sex were hurled".

Some called it sledging. The Australian team defiantly described it as its competitive edge and laughed it off. Australia is proud of its history and its culture, its landscape and its place in the world. But Australians are also proud of their caustic humour, their ability to dog it out when required and what they call the "mongrel" in them.

"We call a tall man Shorty, a red-headed bloke Bluey, a big fella's called Tiny and you can call your best mate a proper mongrel bastard," wrote an Australian journalist recently.

Australia has always differed from its European and American sporting counterparts, which is in part due to their history and isolation as well as their international inexperience.

Aussie players often use the word "mongrel" to describe their attitude during games. It sums up the way they live and breathe sport, the way they are competitive on the field and never give up trying, even like Hewitt, when they have dug themselves into a deep hole.

"I think cultural character is always shown in sport," says Australian Michael Cheika, who is ethically middle-eastern, Australian raised and coaches Leinster. "You don't know it as a player but you can see it in France, the middle-east, Ireland and Australia. You can see a lot of cultural upbringing in players. If you look at Australia it has tried to get the attention of the world for a long time. Australia found a medium through sport where they can get noticed. If you look at our resources of land and climate we are lucky; lucky to be able to express ourselves through sport."

There are also social explanations of Australia's sporting passion, with Australian writer Richard Cashman describing it as reflecting "the immaturity of a young country . . . the Australian distrust of the intellectual, or the desperate search for identity and recognition".

The image of a suntanned, resourceful and strong unreconstructed bloke emerging from the bush was applied to sporting figures.

"The Australians look to sport in the same way as the Irish look to literature and music. When I was in Ireland there were two Olympic-sized pools in the country. Within five kilometres from my home in Sydney, there are six," says former Leinster and Scotland rugby coach, Matt Williams.

"It is very important for the nation, from the Prime Minister down, that Australia wins. The sense of a heroic failure is not understood and with just a few exceptions, heroic failure is not recorded here. People who fail are forgotten. It is harsh but it is the way it is."

In the last cricket World Cup Australia faced South Africa. Australia was struggling at 4 for 40. Steve Waugh was batting. He hit a loose shot, an easy catch. It was badly fumbled and dropped.

"He didn't say bad luck or anything like that," says Williams. "Waugh said 'hey mate what's it like to drop a World Cup?' He claimed the psychological agenda. The Aussie culture is to intimidate you. You have to stand up to it."

Given Ireland's record of populating the many boats that dropped anchor in Australia in the 19th century, a similarity between certain aspects of character has not gone unnoticed. The culture of the Irish in Australia was for people to stand up for themselves or else be knocked down. Now the national team reflects that character and just how much will be known tomorrow evening. Last week Irish captain Brian O'Driscoll stood up and said Ireland are going to beat South Africa. "That's a massive change," says Williams.

Tadhg kennelly, who has played Australian Rules football with the Sydney Swans for eight years, has survived and thrived in an environment not known for its kindly treatment of players. Kennelly participated in the International Rules match two weeks ago that dissolved into violence before the Australians ran away with the series, unaware that anything out of the ordinary had taken place. But maybe they were aware.

"I think they tried to pull a quick one," says Kennelly. "I've been playing there over eight years and it's never happened me (off-the-ball punches) once. They went over the top. They thought 'we'll intimidate the Irish because they're better footballers than us.' They said 'let's intimidate them'. It was over the top because they wanted to win. That's all it was, they just wanted to win.

"They have a real work ethic. They are prepared to work hard and are very, very focused at it. If they are doing something they are going to do it properly. There are no half measures."

In the old days and perhaps still, Australia was a male-dominated country. The fact it was a colony meant two things, convicts and soldiers and those who lived in the margins of society in other countries. In that environment sport both flourished and assumed an aggressive, frontier gene that remains vigorous and in place. The climate has also made a loyal ally.

"I think the difference is culture more than attitude," says former Australian flanker Owen Finegan. "When I started I played rugby league. In spring it was athletics. In summer I played cricket or basketball or swimming. Season by season I changed sport. At High School I played rugby but also swam and did diving. I think Australia has more of a sporting culture because of the climate and weather."

In that Cheika is in agreement. "Look at the resources, the land and the climate. We are lucky. I have a real appreciation now from being here that the kids in Australia can be out most of the time whereas here they just can't do that. Because it's too wet and cold."

Last summer Australia's stand-in captain Justin Langer was concerned that his side, the most competitive in the world, were distracted by the pressure of retaining the Ashes. Speaking after a drawn two-day game, which the tourists dominated from the outset, Langer said Australia had used the previous week to address attitude-related issues. When asked what the team's goal was he said: "It might sound silly, but a bit of togetherness. You might have noticed in our warm-ups . . . there was a really good attitude within the team. If we get our attitude right and the energy up and the intensity right, it doesn't matter who we play against, we're a very hard team to beat.

"I would suggest (the intensity) hasn't been at the cut-throat edge we're used to playing at. We've played periods of very good cricket, but in Test match cricket - particularly when you're playing a good team like England - you can't afford to just be playing it in periods."

Great winners or bad losers. Whatever, Hewitt has that "cut-throat" edge too. "You have to rip my chest open and pull my heart out on the court if you want to beat me," he once said. To Aussies that's a beautiful noise and beautiful words. And anything less than that, they wouldn't, in their own vernacular, "give a rat's bum" about you.