Diarist's diatribe proves a classic of selfish stupidity

Healey's depiction of Harrison as 'a plod' and 'a plank' and 'an ape' said much more about the Lions utility back than his intended victim

There is now only one proper fate for Austin Healey, who sneered so gratuitously at Justin Harrison, the ultimately fired-up Aussie hero, as the last hyperbolic gasp was squeezed out of the Lions. Healey should be taken to a padded cell where Clive James, perhaps wearing a ski-mask, could work him over with a series of demonic one-liners.

A grim fate, no doubt, but then the unrepentant Healey did say yesterday that while Australia has opals and uranium it is still searching for the irony mine. Maybe that pursuit will be intensified, at least by the nation's world-conquering sportsmen of almost any kind of discipline you care to mention, the moment there is a ghost of a problem in splattering a jumped-up, terminally smart-arsed Pom.

Meanwhile, as the Australians, having narrowly missed the prize at Wimbledon, resume their persecution of English cricket at Lord's on Thursday, it would be nice to think that the Lions, and particularly the English contingent led by Healey and that other driven diarist, Matt Dawson, will pause to consider the old truth that actions speak a lot louder than words, and particularly when the words are so patently self-serving.

Certainly there were reasons enough to be perturbed by the Lions' campaign from more or less the word go. Emotions were pitched high, almost maniacally so. Particularly nauseating, at least in this quarter, was the tide of mock outrage which greeted the pummelling of Ronan O'Gara by Duncan McRae. It was an unedifying incident, heaven knows, but it did occur between two backs, unlike the one between McRae and the Lions' mountainous and much hagiographed captain, Martin Johnson.

As one correspondent rather quaintly put it at the height of the O'Gara controversy, McRae, while playing for Saracens against Leicester, had collided with the knee of the Lions captain – also the fist. He was out of the game for a month, could sleep only with the help of pain-killers, and Johnson not only failed to apologise, unlike McRae, but indeed appealed against his sentence, which, remarkably enough, ended just in time for him to resume, without missing a single match, his captaincy of England. Plainly, Johnson played superbly for the Lions, and was indeed an inspiring captain in a desperately hard-fought series, but when the cudgels were first produced Down Under he did not exactly occupy the moral high ground.

A tone was set, however, and soon enough it became hopelessly larded with triumphalism after that first Test victory in Brisbane. It was something of a confirmation of a national trait. We gorge ourselves on any success that comes our way, and then we lash out with recriminations when the wages of hubris have to be paid. Now, of course, the story is that we play too much rugby, which was not quite the parrot cry not so long ago when the South Africans came here in pursuit of a record run of international victories while glassy-eyed from competitive fatigue.

Dawson's public attack in a newspaper column on the Lions management at a pivotal point in the tour is now being reclassified not as an egregious breakdown of basic professionalism and an infantryman's stoicism, but as a fearless assessment of deep-seated problems. Such is the way of our little, half-cocked sports world. However it is dressed up now, Dawson's action gave aid and comfort to the enemy, and the fact that in hindsight it benefits hugely by comparison with the fatuous musings of Healey is rather beside the point.

Healey's depiction of Harrison as "a plod" and "a plank" and "an ape" said much more about him than his intended victim. He is apparently writing a book, possibly with crayons. Yesterday he told the world: "I'm sitting in the bunker, not daring to go out at the moment. I'm the Ned Kelly of the Hour, Public Enemy No 1, just get me home." Plainly, he thinks it a joke. In a forlorn way, perhaps it is. Rob Howley, a brilliant scrum-half, comes home with injury, Healey with a kind of celebrity.

There is no doubt that the Lions partly died by their own hands. But only partly. Ultimately, the Aussies burrowed further down into their resources – which are relatively limited when you consider the player populations from which both teams were selected – and came up with the resolution that confirmed their status as world champions. Their approach to sport, the thoroughness of it, the passion they display at the core of it, puts them in a league of their own for consistent performance. Surely nothing in the vast workings of Austin Healey's irony field is likely to dislodge that sobering reality.