Thank you for your jokes and jibes and pretty strong anti-English sentiment in my direction (not from everyone, but some of you)
Personally I don't expect anything from England. I thought we'd lose in the quarter finals on penalties, so obviously this was a disappointment, but am not suprised by what eventually did happen.
The fact is we aren't good enough and won't be unless the whole structure of football in England is changed.We have a league which is run more for the entertainment of fans around the world than for the good of football in it's own country. The majority of players and coaches are imported and a tiny fraction is spent on youth development. Even then, many of the youth players are from overseas as well. We also play too many games because of the self vested financial interest of the clubs.
Basically, the English Premier League is killing the national team. Many people here in Australia (and around the world no doubt) who revel in the defeat of England contribute to this by supporting teams in the EPL from afar. Your Fox TV subscriptions and money to buy replica shirts feed the whole money making exercise and you care for your club and your club alone.
The same can be said of glory seeking football fans in England as well. They are so absorbed in their own teams fortunes and welcome these big name foreign imports, be they players or coaches, with little thought for the long term impact on England. Then when the World Cup comes around the press inflates it all with a load of over the top and quite frankly ridiculous hype about how we're going to win it. Sadly many people believe it, despite the facts in front of them.
So, am I pleased that my home country has the most hyped and popular football league in the world (note I didn't say the best)? No.
Quite frankly I'd rather you all supported German, Spanish, Italian or any other clubs and the English Premier League could go along nurturing young English talent away from the glare of publicity.But as long as the FA gives more importance to maintaining the EPL's reputation worldwide over what's best for the England team then we will never win a tournament again.
I know that thought makes you lot happy. I won't return the favour and wish ill on the Australian team though because I genuinely wish them well and want they and the game in this country to thrive.
But as far as England-bashing from hypocrites who support English club sides is concerned? Go f*** yourselves!
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Banter
Banter, what would football be without it eh?
As the World Cup approaches the level of it is intensifying on the forums and in person. As an Englishman living in Australia I'm of course copping a fair bit. As an Englishman living anywhere in the world would do, I of course am giving my fair share back.
However I think it's only right to point out that despite my jibes and mickey taking I do genuinely want Australia to do well in South Africa. It's been heartening to see how football (or soccer if you prefer) is coming to the forefront of peoples awareness in this country on the back of the Socceroos going to the World Cup. I wasn't here in 2006 but have heard enough to know that the levels of excitement will only increase tenfold if the team does well. For the good of the game in general and the A-League in particular I think it would be great if they at least got out of the group.
Where there is every chance they could face England. Which is where any goodwill towards the Socceroos from me will stop!
As the World Cup approaches the level of it is intensifying on the forums and in person. As an Englishman living in Australia I'm of course copping a fair bit. As an Englishman living anywhere in the world would do, I of course am giving my fair share back.
However I think it's only right to point out that despite my jibes and mickey taking I do genuinely want Australia to do well in South Africa. It's been heartening to see how football (or soccer if you prefer) is coming to the forefront of peoples awareness in this country on the back of the Socceroos going to the World Cup. I wasn't here in 2006 but have heard enough to know that the levels of excitement will only increase tenfold if the team does well. For the good of the game in general and the A-League in particular I think it would be great if they at least got out of the group.
Where there is every chance they could face England. Which is where any goodwill towards the Socceroos from me will stop!
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Nothing much doing lately...
There have been a few months between posts I know. Mainly because of this huge long off-season in the A-League, made even longer by Brisbane having no involvement in the finals this year. So, what to do from February to August with no games to go to?
Well of course as an ex-pat I have my team from ‘back home’ to follow. However seeing as that team is Southend United in League One (League Two from next season) who seem permanently on the brink of bankruptcy then that hasn’t been a barrel of laughs. Relegation just topped off an awful season, however I still have a club to support – at the moment at least, it was looking unlikely at one point. Supporting a lower league team in Australia though means either unreliable internet commentary on the official site or following via unofficial message boards and chat rooms. I’ve always been a ‘turn up through thick and thin’ kind of supporter and if I were still living there I’d have been at the games remaining loyal to the boys. However in the early hours of Sunday morning sitting at a PC doesn’t quite have the same attraction. So instead I found myself logging on as soon as I woke up on Sunday morning to read about the inevitable defeat that took place overnight.
Otherwise it’s been watching on Foxtel as the Premiership season came to a climax in England. All well and good, often the early game was at a reasonable enough time that I could stay up and watch the overpaid superstars run around on the other side of the world. I even had a few nights out at the pub watching the really big matches. Whilst drinking into the early hours is always good fun the football was really just a distraction in the background. I know the football in the EPL is top quality, I know the players are among the best in the world. However I just can’t get that excited about it when it’s not my team playing.
So, a pretty barren few months for football related excitement really. Depression around the one club that was playing that I do care about, and indifference towards the rest of them. So, excuse me if I haven’t been too inspired to contribute to this blog as a result – consider this an apology.
However, just a fortnight to go till the World Cup kicks off…I reckon inspiration will return pretty soon as a result.
Well of course as an ex-pat I have my team from ‘back home’ to follow. However seeing as that team is Southend United in League One (League Two from next season) who seem permanently on the brink of bankruptcy then that hasn’t been a barrel of laughs. Relegation just topped off an awful season, however I still have a club to support – at the moment at least, it was looking unlikely at one point. Supporting a lower league team in Australia though means either unreliable internet commentary on the official site or following via unofficial message boards and chat rooms. I’ve always been a ‘turn up through thick and thin’ kind of supporter and if I were still living there I’d have been at the games remaining loyal to the boys. However in the early hours of Sunday morning sitting at a PC doesn’t quite have the same attraction. So instead I found myself logging on as soon as I woke up on Sunday morning to read about the inevitable defeat that took place overnight.
Otherwise it’s been watching on Foxtel as the Premiership season came to a climax in England. All well and good, often the early game was at a reasonable enough time that I could stay up and watch the overpaid superstars run around on the other side of the world. I even had a few nights out at the pub watching the really big matches. Whilst drinking into the early hours is always good fun the football was really just a distraction in the background. I know the football in the EPL is top quality, I know the players are among the best in the world. However I just can’t get that excited about it when it’s not my team playing.
So, a pretty barren few months for football related excitement really. Depression around the one club that was playing that I do care about, and indifference towards the rest of them. So, excuse me if I haven’t been too inspired to contribute to this blog as a result – consider this an apology.
However, just a fortnight to go till the World Cup kicks off…I reckon inspiration will return pretty soon as a result.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
We're in the money...perhaps....
There has been some speculation recently about a mysterious Dubai Sheik buying Brisbane Roar and re-launching the club (or should that be franchise?).
Now, as someone who rarely buys a lottery ticket but still daydreams sometimes about what I'd do with the money if I won I thought I'd come up with a blueprint about what I'd want to see happen if this turned out to be true. Pure fantasyland, it almost certainly won't hapen of course, but here goes anyway -
Name - I don't have that much of an issue with Roar but enough people do and there's enough negative history attached that it would have to go. It's replacement? Something traditionally football related. That doesn't mean UK football like United or City necessarily, although I wouldn't rule it out - maybe something like Sporting Brisbane or AFC Brisbane. I know we're not a town but a city but I'd love Brisbane Town FC...just think it has a great sound to it.
Colours - Once again as with the name. I don't mind orange and you can have a decent kit in orange but it has too much baggage so would have to go if we were starting again. Before Gold Coast United came into being I'd have loved to have played in traditional Brisbane colours of blue and yellow but they've stolen that thunder now. I wouldn't mind maroon, yes it's the state sporting colours but we are the state capital so it could work.
Stadium - I suppose if he's a billionaire businessman he could eventually build us our own stadium of 25-30k capacity. However if we got the club right, had money behind it, had success then I'd love to be going to a full or nearly full Suncorp Stadium every other week. With finances behind us, re-invented as a new club then I'd say stick with Suncorp initially.
Badge - Personal preference myself but rather than some ad/marketing firm coming up with a corporate logo I'd love something that used the Brisbane coat of arms. A real traditional look, representing the city.
Coach - I think it would be harsh on Ange not to be able to see the job through but he was employed to a role in a certain set of circumstances. If those circumstances changed then we'd arguably need a different type of coach. We'd want to attract players of a certain calibre so would need someone who's a 'name' in world football terms - to be honest someone like Patrick Kluivert would be ideal.
Players - Restricted by salary cap of course but I'd go for Socceroos looking to return to Australia (Perth managed it last year with the restrictions). Marquee would have to be someone with the WOW factor and a striker or attacking player. That's the sort of player that will get people in the ground. No names off the top of my head but hey, if NQ Fury can sign Robbie Fowler without having a pot to piss in then if we had plenty of cash we could beat that surely?
Club principles - To be fair Brisbane Roar have started this but I'd love to see our A-League team really be the top of the pyramid for our whole sport in the area. Invest money in the local leagues, have our coaches out and working with junior clubs every week and weekend. Employ them specifically to be on the club payroll in club colours at local clubs giving something real and substantial to grassroots football. Then the best local talent can be spotted early and signed up to a European style academy with real intense training and development at a first class training base with excellent medical facilities and modern methods (with money that's something we can match the top European clubs at).
Now, as someone who rarely buys a lottery ticket but still daydreams sometimes about what I'd do with the money if I won I thought I'd come up with a blueprint about what I'd want to see happen if this turned out to be true. Pure fantasyland, it almost certainly won't hapen of course, but here goes anyway -
Name - I don't have that much of an issue with Roar but enough people do and there's enough negative history attached that it would have to go. It's replacement? Something traditionally football related. That doesn't mean UK football like United or City necessarily, although I wouldn't rule it out - maybe something like Sporting Brisbane or AFC Brisbane. I know we're not a town but a city but I'd love Brisbane Town FC...just think it has a great sound to it.
Colours - Once again as with the name. I don't mind orange and you can have a decent kit in orange but it has too much baggage so would have to go if we were starting again. Before Gold Coast United came into being I'd have loved to have played in traditional Brisbane colours of blue and yellow but they've stolen that thunder now. I wouldn't mind maroon, yes it's the state sporting colours but we are the state capital so it could work.
Stadium - I suppose if he's a billionaire businessman he could eventually build us our own stadium of 25-30k capacity. However if we got the club right, had money behind it, had success then I'd love to be going to a full or nearly full Suncorp Stadium every other week. With finances behind us, re-invented as a new club then I'd say stick with Suncorp initially.
Badge - Personal preference myself but rather than some ad/marketing firm coming up with a corporate logo I'd love something that used the Brisbane coat of arms. A real traditional look, representing the city.
Coach - I think it would be harsh on Ange not to be able to see the job through but he was employed to a role in a certain set of circumstances. If those circumstances changed then we'd arguably need a different type of coach. We'd want to attract players of a certain calibre so would need someone who's a 'name' in world football terms - to be honest someone like Patrick Kluivert would be ideal.
Players - Restricted by salary cap of course but I'd go for Socceroos looking to return to Australia (Perth managed it last year with the restrictions). Marquee would have to be someone with the WOW factor and a striker or attacking player. That's the sort of player that will get people in the ground. No names off the top of my head but hey, if NQ Fury can sign Robbie Fowler without having a pot to piss in then if we had plenty of cash we could beat that surely?
Club principles - To be fair Brisbane Roar have started this but I'd love to see our A-League team really be the top of the pyramid for our whole sport in the area. Invest money in the local leagues, have our coaches out and working with junior clubs every week and weekend. Employ them specifically to be on the club payroll in club colours at local clubs giving something real and substantial to grassroots football. Then the best local talent can be spotted early and signed up to a European style academy with real intense training and development at a first class training base with excellent medical facilities and modern methods (with money that's something we can match the top European clubs at).
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Diddlywinks is coming home
A recent blog on the Courier Mail (a Brisbane based newspaper) website by one of their columnists summed up for me the difference between being a football fan in Australia compared to England.
In it the columnist, Barry Dick, wrote about looking forward to the Footy season (by which he means Rugby League & Union as well as Aussie Rules) as he was getting bored of the summer sports. Bored of tennis, bored of cricket and bored - thanks to the summer season in the A-League - of football. Except he didn't call it Football, he didn't even call it Soccer...he called it Diddlywinks. He did this, apparently, because he was bored of the debate that was stirred up everytime he used the word Soccer instead of Football.
Now of course, every blogger wants hits and comments so he knew full well what reaction he'd get and it soon followed. It was the reaction which summed up the difference with our game over here.
I should first state that personally the word Soccer doesn't offend or annoy me at all. I'm well aware that my sport is well down the pecking order here in Australia and depending who you talk to and where you are Football means different things to different people. So when I'm talking to people outside of my Football social circle I use Soccer when talking about the game, it's just easier. Lot's of Football people here though really get highly strung over the S Word, I've found that generally they are the native Australians and they really don't like it....especially when it's used in what they perceive to be the Rugby or Aussie Rules biased press.
It sets keyboards alight with message board posts and emails which will usually involve the phrase "The World Game". The insinuation usually being that's it's called Football all over the world, that the other 'codes' in Australia don't have the global support of Football and it's going to take over Australia too. The reaction to Barry Dick's blog was no exception - it ran to pages and pages. Now, they are of course right about one thing...Football is the one truly global game (as Barry was quick to acknowledge in one of his replies). As to whether it's on it's way to dominate the sporting landscape here in Australia, well that's more open to debate.
Sure the game is growing over here. When I first came to Australia on holiday in 2001 there was little or no mention of the sport in the press. I tried to buy a shirt of the then local Brisbane team, the Strikers, in a major sports shop in the city and was literally laughed at. Now the racks are full of kits, from the A-League, Premiership and other major teams from around the world. The papers all carry at least a page every day and the results from home and abroad are given in the sports bulletins. If you have satellite TV you can watch more live games here than you can in the UK. However League and AFL in particular are so ingrained in the sporting culture that I just can't see Football overtaking that. Rugby Union is potentially there to be overtaken, but not the other 'codes'.
It's that which is what makes Football so different over here. On the whole kids don't grow up with a round ball at their feet but with an oval one in their hands. Being a League fan if you live in New South Wales or Queensland or an AFL fan in Victoria or South Australia is like being a Football fan in most of the rest of the world...most people just ARE. They are kitted out in the colours of their father's team at birth, giving their first ball before they can walk and are immersed in the culture.
So to be a Football fan here is in most cases a conscious decision, a choice to be different from the masses for whatever reason that may be. Like most groups of people who dare to be different- be that in lifestyle choices, dress style, music taste or anything the Football fans defend their choice vigorously. To be fair in the past they've had to, Football was so far out of the mainstream that it was almost considered un-Australian to be a fan. That seems a strange thing to say in a World Cup year when most of the country will be up in the early hours to watch the Socceroos play in South Africa but it's true. The remnants of that still remain, and the fact that the major media group in Australia basically owns Rugby League the accusations of vested interest are often made against the papers.
The funny thing is that same media group, the Murdoch owned News International, are also the biggest funders of the Premier League in England through Sky Sports and it's flagship newspaper The Sun prints almost exclusively Football stories most of the time in it's sports pages. Perhaps the fans of Rugby League in the UK feel the same way as Football fans in Australia....that would certainly have more than a slight trace of irony.
In it the columnist, Barry Dick, wrote about looking forward to the Footy season (by which he means Rugby League & Union as well as Aussie Rules) as he was getting bored of the summer sports. Bored of tennis, bored of cricket and bored - thanks to the summer season in the A-League - of football. Except he didn't call it Football, he didn't even call it Soccer...he called it Diddlywinks. He did this, apparently, because he was bored of the debate that was stirred up everytime he used the word Soccer instead of Football.
Now of course, every blogger wants hits and comments so he knew full well what reaction he'd get and it soon followed. It was the reaction which summed up the difference with our game over here.
I should first state that personally the word Soccer doesn't offend or annoy me at all. I'm well aware that my sport is well down the pecking order here in Australia and depending who you talk to and where you are Football means different things to different people. So when I'm talking to people outside of my Football social circle I use Soccer when talking about the game, it's just easier. Lot's of Football people here though really get highly strung over the S Word, I've found that generally they are the native Australians and they really don't like it....especially when it's used in what they perceive to be the Rugby or Aussie Rules biased press.
It sets keyboards alight with message board posts and emails which will usually involve the phrase "The World Game". The insinuation usually being that's it's called Football all over the world, that the other 'codes' in Australia don't have the global support of Football and it's going to take over Australia too. The reaction to Barry Dick's blog was no exception - it ran to pages and pages. Now, they are of course right about one thing...Football is the one truly global game (as Barry was quick to acknowledge in one of his replies). As to whether it's on it's way to dominate the sporting landscape here in Australia, well that's more open to debate.
Sure the game is growing over here. When I first came to Australia on holiday in 2001 there was little or no mention of the sport in the press. I tried to buy a shirt of the then local Brisbane team, the Strikers, in a major sports shop in the city and was literally laughed at. Now the racks are full of kits, from the A-League, Premiership and other major teams from around the world. The papers all carry at least a page every day and the results from home and abroad are given in the sports bulletins. If you have satellite TV you can watch more live games here than you can in the UK. However League and AFL in particular are so ingrained in the sporting culture that I just can't see Football overtaking that. Rugby Union is potentially there to be overtaken, but not the other 'codes'.
It's that which is what makes Football so different over here. On the whole kids don't grow up with a round ball at their feet but with an oval one in their hands. Being a League fan if you live in New South Wales or Queensland or an AFL fan in Victoria or South Australia is like being a Football fan in most of the rest of the world...most people just ARE. They are kitted out in the colours of their father's team at birth, giving their first ball before they can walk and are immersed in the culture.
So to be a Football fan here is in most cases a conscious decision, a choice to be different from the masses for whatever reason that may be. Like most groups of people who dare to be different- be that in lifestyle choices, dress style, music taste or anything the Football fans defend their choice vigorously. To be fair in the past they've had to, Football was so far out of the mainstream that it was almost considered un-Australian to be a fan. That seems a strange thing to say in a World Cup year when most of the country will be up in the early hours to watch the Socceroos play in South Africa but it's true. The remnants of that still remain, and the fact that the major media group in Australia basically owns Rugby League the accusations of vested interest are often made against the papers.
The funny thing is that same media group, the Murdoch owned News International, are also the biggest funders of the Premier League in England through Sky Sports and it's flagship newspaper The Sun prints almost exclusively Football stories most of the time in it's sports pages. Perhaps the fans of Rugby League in the UK feel the same way as Football fans in Australia....that would certainly have more than a slight trace of irony.
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