The Home Game

Australia beat Uruguay 1-0 and then 4-2 in the penalty shoot-out to advance to the World Cup. It will be Australia's first appearance at he World Cup since the magic year Progressive Rockers released their best albums - 1974. :)

I Hate Soccer
I don't know why I do. I don't hate it with a passion, just sort of don't want to embrace it because it would be like embracing a sweaty Latin American nutcase like Diego Maradona himself. They shoot players over results in this game in Columbia for a start. people have hooligan riots in Europe. Crazy people from Asia, Africa, North and South America, Europe, Oceania and Pacific Islands play this game. Even humourless Kazakhstanis play this game. It's a lot of people with fucked up mores to embrace.

Yes I understand the game does have greats and I have sneakily watched enough World Cups to have seen Diego Maradona and his hand of God as well as Ronaldo and Ronaldinho and the Brazillians in 2002. I guess there's always been a soccer-mad guy near me to help me watch it. I still can't explain my reluctance to actually follow this fine game.

It's really unnatural to a guy who likes hitting balls. you know, I played Tennis and Baseball and watched a lot of Cricket. hitting a moving ball effectively with an implement IS sport to me. :) Kicking a ball around is kind of counter-intuitive.
I also got traumatised in a Japanese primary school that was soccer mad. I hated the kids who liked it and played it. So childhood trauma is carried through. I've never felt like forgiving those kids, so I've hated their stupid sport ever since.

Then there's all that diving and holding their faces in expressions of pain. To a viewer who is used to watching things like spear tackles and rucks in other codes of football, they look like wimps. Not that I've ever been on the receiving end of any of those plays. I have taken pitches to the body and elbow and they frickin' hurt so it's not like I'm scared of pain on a sports ground. I'd sooner watch any code of football but Football itself if it came down to the choice of wire, and yet there it is.

Nonetheless Football is the genuine article 'world game'. The World Cup really means something. I'm led to believe there are more nations in FIFA than there are in the International Olympics Committee. There's no other sport like it when it comes to a global appeal. It makes most of the sports we come across as about as big as a tugboat next to a tanker.

- Aussie Rules is so parochial, the only international game it gets is in a mixed rule stoush with the Irish and recently we've been dominating their club level players with our professional athletes. It's really cruel and hardly sport.

- Rugby League is pretty much as parochial as Aussie Rules except it does have some kind of international competition stocked mostly by players from Australia. Their version of a World Cup is laughable.

- Rugby Union is probably the most legitimate of the three other footie codes to have World Cup. At least, the top 8 Nations are competitive with each other, but the next 16 are hardly worth spit.

- Cricket. The World Cup is essentially a showcase for the hardcore Test playing nations to stomp on such amateur minnows such as Kenya. There's a future in it, but it's decades away.

- Tennis. the Davis Cup is a very proud international competition where the best players often absent themselves because the pay's not good enough. The four nations where it actually means something to are UK, Australia, France and Sweden. The USA could win it, but nobody would care.

- Track and Field. The high point for track and filed will always be the Olympics. While I like the idea of the Olympics, in the last 5 or so Olympics I only ended up watching International baseball with any serious interest. Call me a philistine, but no matter how good they are, people chucking shot puts and javelins or jogging 43kms hasn't got half the appeal of Daisuke Matsuzaka squaring off against Jose Contreras in Sydney 2000.

- Now that I've mentioned it, Baseball, just for a comparison, I want to point out that the MLB is starting its own World Baseball Classic next year as a showcase of international talent. The top 8 nations will be pretty good compared to the International Cup which has featured a mixed bag of amateurs and professionals. but we don't know how seriously this is going to be contested so the proof will be in the pudding; but even then we're talking 12 nations maximum. It will be a more level playing field than th Cricket World Cup.

So by a quick process of elimination you can see that the World Cup, with its 32 nations selected from over 200 after an arduous qualifying rounds, really is THE world game. it really is something for the Australians to get through over two-time champions Uruguay where the only sport is Football.
And when I write that, it's still really, really begrudgingly. :)
I'd still rather watch...

Having Said All That... I Admit I'm A Fair Weather Fan


I was asked to read a book 'The Away Game' in the year preceding the last World Cup. The idea was I was going to direct a documentary about Australian soccer players who went overseas to make it by hook or crook. It was a heck of a good read, that overcame my above-mentioned resistance to the game. And while the documentary project fell apart as Australia failed to qualify the last time around, I remembered the names: John Aloisi, Mark Schwarzer, Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka Tony Vidmar.






Indeed I watched closely how they won the Oceania group and got knocked out by Uruguay in Montevideo 3-0, the last time around. This was the grudge match replay for Australia to end them all. If Australia can't beat the 5th best South American team, it's never going to be able to go to the World Cup; and even if it snuck through by other means it wouldn't necessarily mean the Socceroos 'made the grade'. So going through the 5th best South American team, no matter how crazy a prerequisite it seemed was important to the game's credibility in Australia. The last time we got beat by the Uruguayans, a Latin American friend of mine quipped "you guys had NO chance. They were two-time champions Uruguay."

I guess on one level, the level of tradition and accomplishment within the 32-team World Cup contest format, a team like the Socceroos must be something like AAA Columbus Clippers and Uruguay must be (at least) like The Philadelphia Phillies. Or we're Canada at the Commonwealth Games taking on one of the Test playing nations in Cricket.

To see them last night then, putting on such a spirited performance and winning, was a truly emotional experience.
It was the first time in 4 years that I sat down to actually watch these guys from wo to go, do their thing, together. I don't know why I've missed this so far; maybe the disappointment from last time was just too much and I shut them out of my mind. Having seen how they played last night, I'll tell you one thing, I now understand why people get passionate about this sport. It's a damn good game when it's played right. :)

A Special Note About Harry Kewell

I don't know how good he is on the whole, mostly because I'm not a soccer fan, nor do I understand the stats they keep. In fact I don't know if they are good stats or bad, or how he ranks amongst his playing peers in England. Well, Kewell was coming back from surgery and was not match fit, but the moment he came into the game, the complexion of the game altered. Three minutes later Bresciano scored that vital goal. So I figure he must be pretty darned good beyond all the fancy footwork he displayed.

URUGUAY'S coach, Jorge Fossati, said the night before the match that Australia did not have that one special player who could stop his team from qualifying for the World Cup.

Well, Jorge, it's a great delight to say you were incorrect. In fact, the Socceroos had more than enough special players. There were plenty of Australian heroes, but it was Harry Kewell who was mainly responsible for the momentum created during the second half which kept the Socceroos going into extra time, penalties and — finally — into the 2006 World Cup.

It was a five-star performance from the attacking man on the left, to go with a quality effort at the other end from sweeper Lucas Neill.

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Kewell began driving Uruguay's right-side players mad from the time he came on in the 32nd minute, and while it was actually a muffed shot by him that rolled into Bresciano's path for the shot that made it 1-0, at least he had attracted defenders away.

It wasn't a case of Kewell growing in confidence. He began with enormous confidence and stayed at that level. He used all his savvy, too, and if there wasn't really anything on he intelligently attracted fouls and won Australia free kicks.

But it was when Kewell ran the ball down the left-hand side that he gave Uruguay repeated headaches. He crossed dangerously into the box in the 53rd, 57th and 60th minutes, but each time Uruguay managed to survive. Then he won a corner in the 64th to keep the pressure up.

A long-range shot with his non-preferred right foot in the 76th minute went well wide, but he was prepared to try again if it fell to his right and in the 81st minute another right-foot shot by him forced a desperate save from Uruguayan goalkeeper Fabian Carini.

Kewell's 86th-minute attempt to win a free kick had him justifiably booked for diving, but it was an understandable risk because he had broken away on the ball near halfway and defenders were closing in on him, while he didn't have any reachable support.

At least he stopped the play. Had one of the Uruguayans stolen the ball, they were in position to mount a counter-attack down the middle.

Kewell was also prepared to track back in defence, stopping dangerous Uruguayan moves just before half-time and again in the 52nd minute. Confrontations didn't bother him, either.

Fittingly, it was Kewell who got Australia off to the right start in the penalty shootout, striking the ball confidently and giving the goalkeeper no chance.

He gave his all right until the end. It was the big game and the big-game player.

Over the years the guy has received some pretty scathing attacks from Australian journalists about his commitment to play for Australia. Well, the guy I saw last night looked totally dedicated and willfull. I saw a guy who played right out at the edge of his ability, wanting to make things happen. I don't know where all that negative press came from, but Australia were really fortunate to have a player like Harry Kewell running around fro them last night, and he made all the difference.

That's Ostraya For You
30,000-40,000 turn up to protest against Industrial Relations Law changes in Sydney.
80,000 turn up to watch a game of sport.
If you don't believe we're getting the 'bread-and-circuses' treatment from our overlords, you'd better believe it, my fellow Romans. :)