It remains the most astute line on Australian sport in the past 20 years.
Surveying the debacle of Super League, even while AFL was continuing its scorched-earth march around Australia, John Singleton said in 1998, "While rugby league was going after Berlin and Beijing, the AFL was going after Sydney and Brisbane …"
Very true, John, and although you didn't lower yourself to mention the Rah-rahs, at least now rugby union can claim Melbourne!
For the news that broke yesterday, that Melbourne really will have a franchise in the expanded Super 15 competition in 2011- after they beat off first other contenders from Australia, including western Sydney, and also the South African contender, the Southern Kings - couldn't be better.
For starters, we all know Melbourne to be the sports capital of Australia, and it is bleeding obvious that rugby union needs to have an elite presence there if it is to boast a genuinely national footprint and … And what? But how can I be saying that rugby union needs to have a franchise there while sneering unpleasantly, just a few weeks ago, that despite their on-field success, the Melbourne Storm have been a financial disaster and should move to the Central Coast?
I thought you'd never ask!
Put simply, Melbourne might as well have been Berlin or Beijing for rugby league - territory so far beyond their natural ken, that it was unlikely they were ever going to be able to successfully transplant their game there.
But Melbourne is not like that with rugby union.
It doesn't need a "transplant" because union has been thriving there for 100 years and more. All it needs is fertiliser and care and it can naturally flourish.
Lest we forget, one of Australia's greatest war heroes, Weary Dunlop, learnt his rugby in the Melbourne competition in the 1930s and so loved the game that when he died in 1993 he was buried in his Wallabies jersey.
Another WWII hero, Stan Bisset, of Kokoda fame, also played for the Wallabies as a Victorian representative in the 1930s. Countless generations of rugby union people have been produced since in the Victorian capital - including Wallabies World Cup-winning prop Ewen McKenzie - and in recent times the union ranks have been swelled to bursting with South African, British and Kiwi expatriates.
All of this gives the new Super franchise a superb base upon which they can build, a base that the Melbourne Storm never had - and never will have.
This is news that will strengthen rugby union in Australia and hasten rugby league's final retreat from Beijing, Berlin and Melbourne, and send them back to where they belong and will be appreciated - beautiful Gosford, on the Central Coast.
pfitzsimons@smh.com.au