Bernard Tomic - Australia's highest ranked wanker loses at Wimbledon

[Ken Gargett]

Speaking of brats Di, remember Aker!

be fair. aker might have been an idiot but brat is harsh. or is there something i have forgotten?

[Coolio]

be fair. aker might have been an idiot but brat is harsh. or is there something i have forgotten?

Yeah 'brat' was a big call but I was just trying to get a rise from Di. Aker was definitely an idiot.

Fevola would also have won that award a couple of times. In fact he would have batted 100 as I think he only played for them for two years.

[Ken Gargett]

Yeah 'brat' was a big call but I was just trying to get a rise from Di. Aker was definitely an idiot.

Fevola would also have won that award a couple of times. In fact he would have batted 100 as I think he only played for them for two years.

fev was in a class of his own when it came to idiots!

[stigmata]

Ok so the Aussie of the year goes to Bermuda to not pay tax and has had Aussie tax payer funding.. And is captain of the Australian Davis cup team that few people care about!

Next topic please.. Lol

[Fuzz]

You sure do have an axe to grind. Rafter moved back to Australia back in 2004.

[Ken Gargett]

Ok so the Aussie of the year goes to Bermuda to not pay tax and has had Aussie tax payer funding.. And is captain of the Australian Davis cup team that few people care about!

Next topic please.. Lol

give it a rest.

you have made it blatantly obvious that you do not have a clue about any of this.

quite why you are so bitter about something that doesn't seem to concern you is beyond me but that is your problem.

[stigmata]

Come in Ken

The guy sets himself up off shore to skip paying good taxes but received Australian tax payer funding.

Top bloke!

Great Australian..

Yeah I'm with you.. I idolise Pat! Great Australian!

Yeah and I shouldnt have a point of viewb different to yours on Aussie Pat!

Are you serious?

Personally I don't care what tomic or rafter think our say.

but the hypocrisy is over the top. Lol

So I'll draw attention to it... What's the big deal for you?

[stigmata]

I'm not bitter Ken.. It's the hypocrisy that's glaring, almost blinding.

[Coolio]

Ok so the Aussie of the year goes to Bermuda to not pay tax and has had Aussie tax payer funding.. And is captain of the Australian Davis cup team that few people care about!

Next topic please.. Lol

He's not alone there. How many others have also lived offshore when when playing international sport? Adam Scott, Greg Norman, Lleyton Hewitt, Mark Webber .. the list goes on. Bernard Tomic.

Anyway he's now back living in Australia, and he's no longer captain of the Davis Cup team. Wally Masur is the Davis Cup captain and coach.

Rafter now works for Tennis Australia in a performance role, and I imagine has a couple of negatively geared investment properties to help reduce his tax bill.

ps. to move to a next topic you go back to the Water Hole and select a new thread.

[Ken Gargett]

Come in Ken

The guy sets himself up off shore to skip paying good taxes but received Australian tax payer funding.

Top bloke!

Great Australian..

Yeah I'm with you.. I idolise Pat! Great Australian!

Yeah and I shouldnt have a point of viewb different to yours on Aussie Pat!

Are you serious?

Personally I don't care what tomic or rafter think our say.

but the hypocrisy is over the top. Lol

So I'll draw attention to it... What's the big deal for you?

you need to learn some facts before you continue to embarrass yourself with seemingly endless ignorance.

wow. not bitter? go back and read your own posts.

hypocrisy? the only hypocrisy is in the rubbish you've been sprouting. you clearly have a bias against rafter and/or for tomic. that is fine but don't then unfairly denigrate a bloke with your concocted rubbish and lies or is it simply that you have no idea.

where exactly did i say i idolised rafter? i certainly admire his achievements on and off the court. but it suits you to make up whatever nonsense you can.

rafter "received tax payer funding". you keep alleging that. if you had any idea about this you would know how silly you look. YOU ARE COMPLETELY WRONG. rafter was NEVER part of tennis australia's program but don't let that stop you making up utter nonsense.

he and his brother and mates took themselves to europe, played every tournament they could at their own expense, slept in tents and backyards when people allowed them to do it. pooled their money to get by. he had no funding.

you owe the bloke an apology.

he spent a few years offshore and does what he can to minimise his tax. all legal. and sensible. tell me you pay more than you have to.

but then this is a bloke who has given millions to charities. can you say that? can tomic? when he won the US open in 97 and 98 he gave more than half his winnings to a children's charity and he did it anonymously (he was outed by other parties). he has continued to give millions as well as a great deal of his time. he continues to support, and to work for, numerous charities, for kids, for the environment and so on.

he is now giving back to the game by working for the very authority that did not fund him when he was trying to make it and he is doing it for far less than he could pick up if he chose to spend his time in other pursuits.

if there is such a thing as a great australian, he comes pretty close.

then again, your mate tomic ******* about paying for his own tennis balls. you think he is not minimising his tax, while taking money from tennis australia. his money went on a ferrari, not a kid's charity.

you are perfectly entitled to think what you like about tomic and rafter. but have the decency not to denigrate a bloke who has contributed far more to our society on many levels than almost any other australian for some considerable time.

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Rafter hopes to broaden the pool of youngsters aspiring to reach the top. Broad-based programs such as HotShots and Super10 will continue to ensure tennis is played by schoolkids. But as he fine-tunes his plans in coming months, Rafter wants development dollars spread more evenly to players as they reach the critical stage of their development in the mid-teens to early 20s.

It is something Paul Annacone, a former elite player and renowned coach of players including Roger Federer and Pete Sampras, believes in. Annacone, who is working with Rafter as a consultant, said younger players could become too reliant on receiving funding and support.

“There is not a sole way to do things but there are lots of characteristics that lead to excellence,” Annacone said.

“Let’s be honest. We are not curing cancer here. But this is about excellence, finding ways to afford young players opportunity, not entitlement, and that is a big difference, especially within a federation.

“I saw it in England, I saw it in the US and I have seen it here. Kids start to feel like it is not Tennis Australia, it is The Bank of Australia, and that is something you want to get rid of. You want to make sure that there is an opportunity for kids to play, to get better, to use the resources, but not to keep receiving blank cheques.”

While the vision statement is public, exactly how Rafter will implement it is not yet certain.

Funding for athletes who spend only part of their time working within Tennis Australia is under investigation along with investment in sending younger players to Spain.

Working how best to ensure education remains a priority for emerging players is also important to Rafter.

“It will mould kids, give them a better perspective on life and in turn, I think that will create a better culture and civility between all the coaches, all the groups, all the players,” Rafter said.

“It’ll help the kids not burn out. If I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t take the job. Kids are kids. We don’t want to put too much emphasis or focus on a select few.

“I think that will then not create so much pressure on those kids, so much focus, until they get older, when they are getting to their last couple of years of school, to when they have finished school, and then we can see who has come out of it.”

With Rafter stepping down as Davis Cup captain, a succession plan of sorts has been implemented, with Wally Masur to take the reigns on an interim basis.

Lleyton Hewitt will assume the captaincy following his retirement following next year’s Australian Open.

Not all have welcomed the process, with Pat Cash and Paul McNamee pondering whether there should have been an application process in said of what the former Wimbledon champion called a “secret handshake”.

Rafter was born in Mount Isa, Queensland, and is third-youngest in a family of nine children. He began playing tennis at the age of five with his father and three older brothers.

In April 2004, Rafter married his girlfriend Lara Feltham (with whom he had a son, Joshua) at a resort in Fiji. Their daughter, India, was born in May 2005.

Rafter donated half of the prize money from his 1997 and 1998 US Open wins to the Starlight Children's Foundation; he attempted to do so anonymously in 1997 but was unsuccessful. He has created his own charity organisation that raises funds for children's causes each year. Rafter also supports animal rights and the work of animal liberation groups such as makeitpossible.com.

He has occasionally played reserve grade Australian rules in the Sydney AFL for the North Shore Bombers.

Since his retirement, Rafter has gone on to become an underwear model for Bonds, a brand ambassador for the Mantra Group of hotels and a successful businessman.

In October 2010 he was announced as Australia's Davis Cup captain.^[12] Rafter stood down as Australia's Davis Cup captain on 29 January 2015.^[13] He was succeeded by Wally Masur.