Letter From the Lucky Country
Created | Updated Aug 23, 2007
Ah September: bliss. And for any football fanatic parenting in this topsy-turvy nation it brings with it paradoxes in spades.
Next Saturday (25 August 2007) is the end of the season for our budding Socceroos, signalling freedom from the parental rigours of compulsory transportation, management, officialdom and support, at least for four weekends until cricket gets underway in October anyway. My allotted team, Glasshouse Under 9s, will celebrate break out by participating in a parade at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium where Queensland Roar will kick off the A-League's third season since inception against last season's runners-up Adelaide United. To give some idea of the quality of football on offer in the A-League, Perth Glory are excited by the signings of Danny Tiatto and Hayden Foxe. Perhaps a tad more realistic is the excitement surrounding diminutive midfielder Juninho, formerly of Middlesbrough.
Back to next Saturday then it is notable that while the kids are given complementary tickets by the Queensland Football Association, each of the proud and willing parents are left responsible for their own ticketing arrangements. Clever. And that the junior season ends the day the senior season starts is another shrewd marketing ploy from architects of the A-League, Football Federation Australia (FFA). By playing a summer schedule instead of a winter schedule, they don't compete for fans with the other entrenched 'football' codes, League, Union and Aussie Rules. Moreover, the governing body recognises that its most likely and fervent support will come from those committed to keeping the junior game alive. And they can't attend a senior match when they are ferrying kids about. Indeed the FFA has been uncharacteristically imaginative for a nation that can boast only the Hills Hoist among its significant inventions.
In fact, the Australian population seems content to bask in an undeserved reputation of egalitarianism yet at its core it is inately covertly conservative, changing government only five times since the end of World War II. Especially poignant, no-one will admit to voting for the incumbent PrimeMinister, John Howard, a liberal, yet he's held on to power now for more than ten years. The opposition Labour party have by iteration founded their leadership challenge for the upcoming plebiscite around a clone, Kevin Rudd, aka Howard-lite, whose policies are so closely aligned to Howard's that they are indistinguishable.
As Jeremy Clarkson would be keen to remind us all, anyone with any flair, skill or imagination departs: Harry Kewell, Clive James and Germaine Greer spring immediately to mind. Steve Ovett who lives up the road in Maroochydore is the only 'famous' person to have ever gone the other way although running around a cinder track is hardly a test of creativity.
Thus it is that I prepare to immerse myself up to the hilt in a season of A-League football with some caution. Half the joy of watching English football is the tabloid soap opera that accompanies it and the fans' reactions from the terraces. When England's finest wags are asking pasty-faced pastry-eater Mark Viduka 'who ate all the pies?', the nearest equivalent we can expect here is 'C'mon the Pies', which Collingwood supporters have been yelling at their own beloved Magpies since Federation. And as for scandal the best I can hope for is a finger up the bottom from John Hopoate while Wayne Carey gives my wife a good seeing-to. Unsophisticated, see?
Thanks to technology 1 at least, I can listen to 'Niall Quinn's Disco Pants'...
Niall Quinn's disco pants are the best
They go up from his a--e to his chest
They are better than Adam and the Ants
Niall Quinn's disco pants.
... because as sure as bears defecate amid dense vegetation, I won't be hearing anything like it at Suncorp when Saturday comes.
Montague Trout