Australian sporting icon Bruce McAvaney just couldn’t resist.
The 69-year-old randomly dropped a reference to former Aussie sprinter Matt Shirvington’s “tight shorts” during Seven’s coverage of the Commonwealth Games.
The colorful caller was speaking before the men’s 200m semi-finals at Alexander Stadium in Birmingham after Shirvington had crossed to the commentary team from a Channel 7 studio.
“Let’s go back to Bruce,” Shirvington said.
“It’s the men’s 200m and I’m jealous. There’s a nice little tailwind for them.”
McAvaney responded: “You would like to put the shorts back on, wouldn’t you.
“And they were tight.”
The call got a brief giggle out of Channel 7 athletics commentator Tamsyn Manou.
The comment may or may not be related to McAvaney’s revelation on Friday that he has been getting less than three hours sleep a night in Birmingham.
McAvaney is commenting in the UK for the event where he is covering his fifth Commonwealth Games. The most popular sports caller in the country has also covered 11 Olympics.
More than 15 years after he hung up his track spikes, Shirvington still boasts the most famous lunch box in Australian sport — as immortalized by the commentary of comedian Billy Birmingham in The Twelfth Man.
Shirvington’s thunder is still a small part of Aussie sprint sensation Rohan Browning’s story. The 24-year-old, who finished sixth in the final of the 100m at the Commonwealth Games on Thursday morning, has previously laughed about not wanting to be compared to the Channel 7 presenter.
When Browning made history last year by becoming the first Australian to qualify for the men’s 100m event at an Olympics in 17 years, he was stitched up in a photo post on the World Athletics website which featured an unflattering close-up of his crotch.
Browning responded to the photo with a light-hearted tweet: “Can someone from World Athletics update my profile cover shot please? Don’t want to draw Shirvo comparisons”.
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