Can the bitter old hacks who compile Mediocre Bytes apologise up front for their total lack of patriotism for this country they used to love until John Howard came along?

And the reason for the apology? To a bitter and twisted old man and women, we guffawed out loud when we read the Sun-Herald’s back page the other day, the one that declared that local hope Alex de Minaur was poised to go deep into the second week of the Australian Open.

Look, we’ve warned you all before that we can be a little picky! picky! in this column – and we certainly are being picky here but we are not actually pointing to any silly little mistake by fourth estaters. We are picking away at ourselves for a change.

We were all fully aware what poised meant – and we have no problem with de Minaur being “composed, dignified, and self-assured”.

“Fearless. Know-it-all. Sanguine. Sure of oneself. Undoubtful.”

You’d expect no other mindset from a young guy approaching a match against a bloke seeking a record 10th Aussie Open.

And we have no beef with the Sun-Herald sub who used “poised” for a local lad keen to do well deep into the second week.

Although to be fair, one of our number did feel that “poised” inferred a positive end result.

Our beef with our collective selves was because those spontaneous guffaws were based on our belief that de Minaur had no chance against Novax Djokovic. And for that we are truly sorry.

Did we want de Minaur to win? Blood oath! Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

Did we expect him to be dismantled as brutally and as cynically as he was by a bloke pretending to have a dodgy hammie but with a burning ambition to make up for last year’s humiliating exit. Oh, dear. Yes, we did. Sorry!

If it means anything, we just want you all to know that we went out and hired a few utes for yesterday’s Australia Day, hung the Aussie flag from aerials and window tops and hooned around one of our local beaches with “Save our Flag” and “Keep January 26!” stickers on the back tray!

And every now and then we’d stick our heads out and say something like “why don’t youse go back to your own country, why doncha!” to some poor bastard who might have just been a little sunburnt.

Harsh words perhaps but ones designed to clearly show we didn’t learn much in the three years we spent in grade 9, our last year of schooling.

And our final promise to you all: we’ll be rooting for de Minaur unconditionally the next time he’s up on a Grand Slam court, the Union Jack on our national flag clearly visible as it’s proudly draped around our shoulders, to the last bitter and twisted old washed up ex-sub hack, all totally and patriotically shouting support and totally convinced he’s going to go ALL THE WAY!

Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!