Interviews with Australians have revealed a paradox. While the interest in and consumption of popular history is booming laypeople’s interest in official and formal national narratives is limited, or totally absent. Most people consider formal national narratives as “prescribed and disconnected from their everyday lives” (Clark 2016, p. 2.). In this article, I present a narrative of sporting heroes and events that exemplifies how the national reluctance might be overcome, if one takes the use of history within the sphere of popular culture as the principal didactical outset for history education.