My favourite athlete finally attaches herself to a winning team

The most beloved sporting figure in Australia?

Some will say Ash Barty and others Mick Fanning while Pat Rafter is probably still right up there even all these years on, as is Evonne Goolagong.

But friends, I actually think if we did a vote across all demographics, from Penrith to Perth and from Darwin to the Derwent via Betoota and Booligal, there is one figure who would win hands down and she is a netballer.

I refer, of course, to Sharon Strzelecki, who first warmed the nation's heart in that documentary series on Australian suburban life, Kath & Kim.

I love Sharon, you love Sharon, we nearly all love Sharon!

I particularly cherish the scenes where, as so often happens, she must ring around on a Wednesday afternoon to try to get a team together for this evening's game, after some of them have started to drop out for various reasons.

Magda Szubanski in character as Sharon Strzelecki.Credit: Simon Schluter

"Just wondering if you can play tonight ... ? I see ... OK ... Yes, got it, you'd sooner give birth to a chair."

Despite such misfortunes, and the fact her team never wins the championship, the nation came to love her for her endlessly happy soul, the fact that there is something in her that is emblematic of our best selves – perpetually bouncing back, from the slings and arrows of outrageous calls from the umpires, her teammates and of course Kim.

So ... given how loved she is, the near-universal respect in which she is held, who better than Sharon to front a campaign by the Victorian Government to get the people obeying the health protocols because they want to, not because they have to?

Roll tape, Sharon!

And there she is, in a lonely gym, as the camera rolls.

"I am so over this lockdown," she says, from behind her mask, "... but you know what? It's not the lockdown that's the enemy, it's the virus. The sooner we obey the rules, the sooner this will all be over and we can get back to the stuff that really matters. Nettie ..."

It is a light-hearted ad with a serious point: for all the whingeing and carry-on about the measurements the government is asking the populous to take, the equation is very bloody simple. The more seriously people take it and change their behaviour accordingly, the quicker the virus can be suppressed and we can get back to normal.

All good?

All straightforward?

Ah, no, there is a problem.

Up the back, the one-time celebrity chef Pete Evans – now infamous as an anti-vaxxer nutter – had a big problem.

For he was one of many, saying that Sharon and more particularly her alter ego Magda Szubanski, were duping people into believing in what they call, wait for it, the "plandemic", because this pandemic was planned – geddit, geddit? – and so it is the plandemic.

Evans posted a photo of our Sharon, and insisted that "The most offensive and disgraceful ads I have ever seen in television are circulating in Victoria currently, using a few well known celebrities. It is so sad to see this type of brainwashing occurring to children and families in that state and have had enough of the lies. Enough is enough."

You get the drift.

According to Evans – who has no medical background at all, let alone one studying epidemiology – all the health authorities are wrong, and there is no need for alarm. He says a greater danger than the virus itself – which is now killing over a thousand a day in the US – is Sharon saying no more than that it is a good thing for people to obey the rules worked out by the health authorities, as it will help keep us all safe.

Evans suggested to his 1.5 million followers on Facebook that a better health message from Sharon would be focused on "spreading love, being free, eating anti-inflammatory healthy food, hugging each other, playing, singing and getting outdoors."

(Cue the World Health Organisation: "NOW WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THAT?")

At this point Evans' hordes of nutters piled on with vicious slurs calling her a "mentally-ill cow", a "morbidly obese ranga", the pig in the film that Szubanski starred in, Babe. These proved to be merely their opening remarks, as they went on to call her everything, as she would recount, "from a puppet of the communist party to a Nazi responsible for the murders of the people. Being accused of being a supporter of lockdown and thereby causing murders is pretty confronting."

Was our Sharon going to take that?

She was not, striking back on twitter: "#fatshaming me & assertion that fat people have no place in discussion about public health not only insults me but also all the fat nurses, doctors, ambos etc who give so much," she wrote. "Frankly I am sick to f---ing death of skinny people (yes Pete Evans and your followers) assuming they are morally and spiritually superior."

Precisely.

My point?

It is as simple as this. Sharon/Magda is right, and Evans and his nutter supporters are so abysmally wrong and nasty that they disgrace themselves. The virus is serious, and serious people are working around the clock to get on top of it. This advertising campaign is a welcome part of that, and more power to it.

Bravo, Magda. Bless you, Sharon.

And rest assured, when we line up all those we love most from the east to the west, your ankles will be wet with Bondi froth, while Pete Evans' toes will be burning in the Pilbara.

Twitter: @Peter_Fitz