Book Review - Trevor Thompson's Playing For Australia

ABC journalist Trevor Thompson had previously written One Fantastic Goal, one of a slew of books that were commissioned (or were reprinted) during the time the Socceroos had made the 2006 World Cup. And I must admit, I wasn't a huge fan of that book.

Apart from its general tone, which was (naturally) celebratory of what had been achieved in a very such short space of time under the Lowy regime, I also felt like the book was rushed out to the market by an opportunistic publisher looking to cash-in on the Socceroos' moment in the sun, and that the book was therefore released in a manner which did not to the author justice, feeling a bit underdone, with many parts of that book repeating themselves.

I am glad to say that I enjoyed Thompson’s Playing for Australia: The First Socceroos, Asia and World Football far more and I'm glad to recommend it to readers, albeit with a couple of necessary caveats.

Playing for Australia came out late last year via Bonita Mersiedes’ Fairplay Publishing. Its main focus is the early days of the Australian national team, long before they were the Socceroos, and long before they were entering international competition - with a couple of exceptions, we’re largely talking about the inter-war years from 1922 through to the early 1940s.

What we get from Thompson about this era (and the years immediately preceding them) is informative and lively, and just as importantly, highly accessible. At its best, Thompson is able combine the narrative with interesting anecdotes. Playing for Australia's greatest strengths lie in the little details that Thompson regales us with, such as the “Ego yah!” chant. Here, Thompson notes the attempt by Australia's soccer players to establish their own version of the All Blacks haka, during a tour of the Dutch East Indies in the 1928.

Ego yah, ego yah! The Emu, The Wallaby, The Kangaroo, The Wombat; Who are, who are, who are we? We are the boys from the Southern Sea, Bonza Cobber, Dinki Di, Best of luck to you and I, We'll not fail her, young Australia, Ego Yah... Boska!

(although Thompson is not quite correct about the chant being created by the players for this tour; variants of the "ego yah" chant existed prior to the 1928 tour).

The book covers the various touring teams which visited Australia, including by Chinese, Indian, Czechoslovakian, New Zealand, Jewish, and English sides. These tours were both a boon and a burden to Australian soccer. When the touring teams were of good calibre, they provided excellent entertainment - but if they were too good, they made Australian soccer look second-rate. Just as often, the visiting teams were not what they were advertised as, with the promoters - often private financiers - who funded the tours marketing the tourists as being national teams when they were more likely to clubs sides. Australian crowds, too, were a fickle lot, at least when it came to value for money. They wanted to see visiting teams partly on novelty grounds (such as the Chinese touring sides), but attendance for novelty's sake is something that quickly wears thin.

The Australian teams (whether local, state, or national) cobbled together to represent the country against these touring teams, or to venture across to New Zealand or South-East Asia were scarcely able to avoid controversy in their own right. National teams and their selection policies were fraught by questions of amateurism of professionalism, national team vs state club loyalties, New South Wales dominance, and the “necessity” of playing Victorian and South Australian players in the national team in their home states, even though those states were weaker. Along with splits in the national bodies which created a weak base from which to evangelise the game, and the failure to maintain meaningful interstate competition, Thompson's overview is a useful way of seeing how soccer's lack of a dominant administrative centre has a long history.

But politics aside, there is also the matter of Australia’s slavering devotion to England's Football Association, as Australian soccer throws its lot in with a body (the FA) which cares little for soccer's fortune's in the Antipodes. The longstanding and persistent lack of moral, financial and logistical support offered by England towards Australian soccer, and at times even hypocrisy of British sporting authorities should have rung alarm bells for Australian soccer years before the penny dropped. Yet the Australian soccer authorities, even as they became ever more aware of this lack of support, nevertheless remained devoted to the FA, even as Australia remained a subsidiary member of the FA on the same level as the Elementary Schools Association.

The book also detours into chapters about contemporary Indian, Indonesian Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, and Kiwi football. Some of these nations obviously had interactions with Australian soccer, either via tours to Australia or by Australia, but the main point of Thompson’s summaries of those neighbours of ours is to show how differently they approached international competition – not friendlies – and in some cases the differences in their relationships with their own colonial masters (East Indies/Dutch) or as colonial masters themselves (the Japanese in Korea and Manchuria). A point that the book seeks to make is that Kiwi soccer was especially poor by the 1930s – and that as a consequence of this, an inward looking Australia lacked meaningful competition among its own Empire brethren.

While I enjoyed the book, it does still suffer from some of the issues that Thompson’s previous book did, as well as some other issues. The book jumps around very quickly at times, and it can be difficult to follow the central argument and/or narrative. That’s because the book is at times underwritten, in that some chapters feel they're one anecdote or point of interest following another in a heady rush. That may be the case here because it’s a bit under-edited, an issue which can be put down to what is still in many ways a production of a fledgling small publisher finding its way.

Of more concern is the complete lack of footnotes as well as a bibliography or reference list. I understand that on one level the book isn't meant to be an academic treatise, but clearly there’s been a fair bit of research undertaken by Thompson to write the book, and I think it would've been valuable for people to see the sources that he’s relied upon, especially where it presents information that may new to researchers. Overall however, I really enjoyed the book, and recommend it to anyone looking for a history lesson on the early days of the Australian national men’s team, and the era and conditions under which they played.

A higher plane of existence - Australia 2 Thailand 1

When it comes down to it, people are fickle, short-sighted and prone to employing only the parts of their brains that produce willfully emotional and irrational responses to things. Yesterday, when trying to get on a train at platform 3 at Richmond Station after the game, I was concerned that the train would be packed because everyone seemed to be shoving themselves into increasingly confined spaces. Me though, being someone who doesn't only use public transport to get to and from sporting venues with limited car parking, wandered down an extra carriage length and found plenty of space. Good for me, you say sarcastically; good for everyone, I say with notably good cheer.

Afterwards, having had my chocolate milk and with still much time to go until my train to Sunshine, I started reading a book with some really out there academic theory. Not being good with theory at the best of times, concepts like non-postmodern and claustropolitanism kind of make me roll my eyes. But the latter term kind of makes sense, if one thinks about it, or at least pretends to - rather than the abstract whimsical promise of cosmopolitanism opening up one's horizons, leading one to become (or at least begin considering oneself) the literal 'citizen of the world', one instead finds oneself trapped on a big blue spinning ball, constricted by social media, the immediacy of world events, and the pressure to consume everything all at once alongside everyone else.

Steve Redhead seems to suggest that this crushing load of information and proximity to everyone all the time sets the scene for people quite understandably asking, politely or otherwise, if they could please be let off this giant blue marble, because this ride just isn't fun any more. Being at a soccer game, at least one with sufficient levels of interest (so not the NPL) may have some parallels, especially if you're in a situation in which the 26,300 odd other people in the stadium are attempting to enforce the worst kind of claustrophobic group think on each other, and the team.

Luckily for me, I have ascended beyond a portion of this mortal footballing plane. That is to say, I have achieved a higher level of soccer being. That is not to say I have moved beyond all soccer feeling, but so far as international football goes, it seems to me that I now sit above the whole mass of irrational human feeling on this specific matter. After many years of emotional subservience to the Socceroos, I am at peace. There was of course that phase, which most of the Australian soccer public still exists in, where all is angst about results and about style, the perpetual status of feeling joyous or doomed with nothing in between - except for that tedious Pim Verbeek period where we were winning so much that everyone got bored and then angry, because that limited but successful version of competence was not emotionally satisfying or legitimate.

There was that other phase for me, too, where I still wanted the Socceroos to win, but them doing so meant that the current regime's fiscal and cultural legitimacy would only ever be enhanced. It was problematic only on a really selfish level, but problematic nevertheless. But I never reached that point where I wanted the Socceroos to lose, as some South fans have, out of spite for the last decade or so and everything that entails. Discomfort with any and all attitudes around the matter is par for the course, but I've gradually lost touch with the angst attached to it. Doing the Heavy Sleeper for Shoot Farken helped, in part because that tournament is so great, but also getting to every Asian Cup game held in Melbourne, a tournament which was just a lot of fun to watch, a fact which had nothing to do with Australia winning. 

Then there is the fact that soon enough the World Cup itself will be not worth giving a damn for. Next year those without the simoleons or the nerve to pay for Optus' service miss out on most of the tournament anyway, thank you very much Sellouts, Bloody Sellouts. After the hooligan bloodbath that will be Russia 2018 we head to Qatar, and after that to a 48 team tournament. So my attendance at Socceroos matches now is based on what I think is a fairly solid premise; avoid meaningless friendlies, and hope for an entertaining match in those games which count for something, and which provide a pleasant break from state league drudgery.

I'd bought tickets for myself and four others, but out of respect for them I won't talk about their specific reactions to the game. What I will say is that the value was excellent. Of course the Bubbledome is a terrific venue (with the niggling irritant that I wish the pitch had been lowered compared to the seating), but $18 for a concession ticket in the cheap seats to an international fixture is tremendous value (only $27 for an adult), and puts the fact that South and other NPL clubs were charging $20 for adults and in our case $15 for children twelve and up into an even worse light. Even though the weather was wet at times, we still had what I would consider good seats, behind the goals at the Swan Street end, about five rows back, and far enough away from the most active part of the home end that their half-arsed chanting and attempts at atmosphere. Much more irritating were those in our area who wanted to stand up not just at crucial moments of the game, but also at utterly non-crucial moments.

Includes instructions for how to conduct
 yourself in the event that you meet the Pope.

Now I get the desire to stand, because at most games that I attend, standing is the norm for me too. But the fact is that we weren't in a standing area, and notwithstanding the problems with ticket sales to the Australian active support area, the area we were seated in should've been treated as a seated area. As etiquette writer John Bridges noted is his rather silly book How to be a Gentleman:

At sporting events, a gentleman feels free to stand up and shout during exciting moments. Otherwise, he keeps his seat. He does not begrudge the other team its victory. If his own team is the victor, he does not taunt the opposition.

When one person stands, then the people behind them have to stand, and so forth. That's all well and good for genuinely exciting moments, but once that passage of play is over, it's time to sit down again, not wait until the ball is up at the other end of the field. Apart from anything, it's discourteous towards those who are elderly, have bad knees, or who otherwise find it difficult to stand for long periods of time let alone repeatedly stand up and sit down. That's the lack of modern manners for you though.

A famous now former Australian soccer journalist has said to me of this time in our soccer nation's life that there is too much complacency, and that it would probably do Australia some good to miss out on a World Cup. I don't have strong opinions on this issue, but I can certainly see his point. Repeated qualifications have made a lot of people complacent, perhaps even indignant that might Australia should have to force its way through rather than cruise through. There were elements of the crowd who reverted to more primitive forms of behaviour, taking the crass form of a soccer junior parent. I can tolerate to a degree people being upset with some of the referee's decisions, even if that dissension is mostly the result of a cultural point of difference. The referee was on the more finicky side of things, but he kept things consistent, and really after the first few calls it was up to the Socceroos to adjust, which they mostly didn't, barging in not maliciously but nevertheless clumsily.

Worse were the increasingly incessant shouts of 'shoot!' and even the primitive Aussie rules demand to 'kick it!'. These 'instructions' had not only the feel of a desperate nation willing its team on to victory, but also the sense of an illiterate soccer public which thought they were pointing out the obvious even though in truth they were showing their ignorance. After all, the Socceroos were shooting. They shot a lot, 39 or 45 shots according to various versions of the stats. Granted, many of those shots were of a poor quality, or after one touch too many, but there were so many shots I lost count very early on. Now maybe the Socceroos don't really have the cattle to shoot well, or at the most opportune moment, but when you get so many shots the quality will vary. And the Thai goalkeeper made several great saves, the Thai defence threw their bodies on the line, and of course the woodwork intervened at least three times, including once when everyone on our side of the ground thought the ball had surely gone in.

People can talk up Thailand's performance all they like, and they did put in a solid shift effort wise, but they were barely in the game. Less than 30% possession, and looking dangerous only on the counter as you'd expect a team like that to be, and even then not really that often or that much. The result could so easily have been 7 or 8-1, and then what would people be saying? I'd be more forgiving of the crowd if I thought they'd just been overwhelmed by the tension and sense of occasion, and the need to put several goals past Thailand to make the Saudis work hard for their win. But instead I thought the crowd was just ignorant. There were moments where they were asking for shots where to my mind there was no shot on, where had a shot been taken, the Thai defenders would've easily stuck a foot out.

Equally there were other moments where the crowd got excited by shots coming in where to my mind there was little chance - maybe I should go so far as to say it was obvious there was no chance - that a goal would be registered. I was joking with Gains during the game that because we watch a lot of NPL, the reason I wasn't getting excited is because that league seems to provide a sort of heightened sense of when a shot is going in.

Being a tactical naïf at the best of times, plus not having the best view of things on that front from our low vantage point, I won't be so bold to make aspersions on Ange's selections or formation. Plenty of others doing that online, and good luck to everyone. If I had to pick anything out of last night that struck me as odd, it was the clear instruction to Mat Ryan to play the ball from the six yard box to a player not much further afield than that, rather than going long. While there's nothing wrong with expecting a goalkeeper at this level to be competent with his passing, it was all a bit Nunawading if I'm being frank. Less tenable as a criticism is that Ange is changing the way the team plays. This is at odds with the two previous coaches, and even with the reasoning for hiring Ange in the first place. Whether valid or not, Postecoglou's job application was explicit in its desire to change the way the Australian men's national team played football.

As for the discussions about managing legacies, both his own and that of Australian soccer more broadly, I might leave that to a time when I'll revisit the entirety of Ange's book. Suffice to say that all of a sudden, what everyone else that cared much more about these things than I seemed to like and admire about Ange's tenure in the job has become one of the things they despise. Familiarity breeds contempt I suppose. Without getting into a turgid metaphysical argument about whether the Socceroos as they are now and especially compared to some previous incarnations 'deserve' to be in a World Cup, all they have to do is qualify via the path set out for them. OK, it hasn't gone quite to plan this time around, but if they can't beat Syria and the fourth placed CONCACAF team, then there can be no argument. 

Some other things worth commenting on... the Cricketers Arms is still a dump. I ended up there because one thing led to another in terms of meeting up with people. There were power failures there throughout the afternoon, which included all parts of the business except somehow the terrible music being played over the speakers. It's a venue that's never going to win any prizes for its gourmet offerings, especially from what comes out of the kitchen out the back, but charging $8.50 for a frozen pizza seems like highway robbery, though I suppose if you're stupid enough to pay for one that's your problem. Watching staff separating frozen pizzas from each other like they were sheets of paper.... yeah, nah.

The venue was also visited by Channel 7 news reporters looking to interview Socceroo fans. Sadly, some Socceroo fans decided that it was appropriate to talk to them. How times change. I also got to meet one of the key local subbuteo folks who's organising the subbuteo Asian Cup to be played at South Melbourne's social club in late January 2018. All in all, a pretty entertaining and educational day and night. 

October 2016 digest

Two weeks after the season was finished I was glad it was over. Now I'm bored. Anyway, here's some stuff that happened during October.

Congratulations to...
Matthew Foschini for winning the Theo Marmaras Medal for our best and fairest this season. Best and fairest? Maybe just best. Or maybe the guy the who TOLD IT LIKE IT IS AND/OR WAS in post-game interviews more than anyone else. I don't know what the criteria is. But that's small fry news because, drumroll...

Social club news
Well, actually, yes, there is actually some news on this!

First there was this photo from October 13th by board member Tony Margaritis' (who is also working on the redevelopment in his guise as someone who does electrical work, which I suppose is more useful than getting in someone to write a poem or provide an undergrad level cultural studies critique) Twitter feed, showing something maybe happening, albeit two guys just standing around looking busy doesn't automatically mean they are busy being busy. I have a whole bunch of photos of Steve from Broady from when he was on work placement for school at the club when we cleaning out the social club, and I can tell you now still shots of people holding boxes aren't evidence of any work actually being done, especially if they don't include photos of people playing foosball.

Funny story about that foosball table actually, which I can't remember if I've told here before, but ti's the off season and we've got to pad out the time until the new season starts. In cleaning out the absolute junk heap that was the back part of the multimedia room, Steve and I found an old 'assemble it yourself' foosball table. In between actually doing work, we found that there enough pieces available so that we managed to put it together, and I killed Steve in every single game we played - that's what happens when you outlaw spinning and play properly. Anyways the table eventually ended up in the senior change rooms, which may or may not have contributed to the alleged party atmosphere in the change rooms under Gus Tsolakis, and the eventual decline of the on field performance and off field discipline.

Anyway, the talk that there was something to be released from the club on the social club matter got the cynical juices flowing. But then a few days later there was the photo below posted on the club's Facebook page, accompanied by a very low-key media release which included pretty much only the following statement. That's right, I said low-key. No more grandiose verbosities for this matter, just for the time being.

South Melbourne FC would like to confirm that construction has begun on our exclusive areas at Lakeside Stadium.

As part of the extensive development, we will be completing our new offices, social club, restaurant / bar, shop and futsal court.

We anticipate completion by early 2017.

My understanding is that rather than start with the offices first as was originally envisaged, the whole thing will just be done in one big go. There is also of course the matter of the club borrowing money to supplement the government grant allocated for this process.

No one's really talking about what role, if any, dank will play in the design, which is a concern. But early 2017! Who can't help but excited about that? For Twitter folk, Tony's Twitter account might be the best place to get spontaneous updates. That means you'll get little tidbits like the hoped for completion date

@MTFCSubbuteo @smfc mid to late January.

— Tony Margaritis (@sthmel) October 31, 2016

and stuff about the museum

@wests_glory @smfcmike @smfc Thanks Graeme, the museum will be special, helped along with an interactive high tech feel thanks to @BenQ_AU

— Tony Margaritis (@sthmel) October 31, 2016

It's all very exciting.

AGM date news
Not yet.

Arrivals and departures
While player movements around the rest of the league have been taking place at a brisk pace, there has been little news on the South front. Three departures are the main bit of news -  confirmation that midfielder Iqi Jawadi has officially departed the club, as well as the departures of Amadu Koroma and Chris Irwin. All three departures are sad, in their own way: Jawadi had given good service in midfield, and even added a goalscoring string to his bow, but injury and apparent disaffection took their toll; Koroma filled in for a struggling Tim Mala on several occasions, and added an attacking option, but injury it seems saw him left out of consideration towards the end of the season.  Irwin, whether you thought he was worth the punt of signing in the first place or not, never got much chance, his 'as late as possible substitutions' becoming maddeningly predictable.

As per last time, the following players are known to be contracted for next season.

• Stephen Hatzikostas (signed until end of 2017)
• Brad Norton (signed until end of 2017)
• Matthew Millar (signed until end of 2017)
• Milos Lujic (signed until end of 2018)

Players who have left the club.

• Chris Irwin to Kingston City.
• Iqi Jawadi, to Oakleigh Cannons.
• Amadu Koroma, to Altona Magic

South Melbourne offered WNPL licence for 2017

South Melbourne has been offered the single expansion licence on offer for the 2017 season of the WNPL. While there were apparently two other applicants, one of which was from a regional consortium, it was expected that South would win the bid, and that's what has happened.

That that expectation has been fulfilled has not been met with acclaim by most people involved with Victorian women's soccer; nor has the reaction of some South fans online, who know very little about the state of women's soccer in Victoria, done much to endear them to those who have doubts about this decision.

Apart from the natural self-interest of the existing licensees, there are also valid questions about whether there is enough depth of talent to go around at this time; as an extension of that question, whether it would have been better therefore to place a team in another regional area; and even some more conspiracy laden accusations that South was granted the licence because FFV president Kimon Taliadoros' daughter plays for South Melbourne.

I can't speak for the depth of talent matter, suffice to say that one shouldn't just brush aside the concerns on that front. On the other hand, much as I like to question South Melbourne's genuine commitment to women's football, if the club does indeed take this seriously - and judging by more recent actions and even their licence application, they do - then South Melbourne will be able to offer facilities to women's football in this state that few other clubs or franchises can or are willing to do.

Having said that, it will be interesting to see how the relationship will then work between South Melbourne with a women's team, and the still nominally independent/it's sometimes hard to tell what's going on there South Melbourne Womens FC. Will there be enforced name changes? How will the two different boards - and unless special exemptions have been made for SMFC, there will still need to be different committees - function? Many interesting questions, but I think on the whole this is a positive development.

Puma Pride!

For the first time since about the year 2000, Puma will be the club's merchandise and kit supplier. That means the end of the deal with BLK, which was touted last year as a boon for the club both financially (massive savings compared to our Adidas deal) and aesthetically (in our being able to design our own playing strips as opposed to getting off the shelf stuff). That the three year deal with BLK lasted just one season probably comes down to the disastrous delivery times produced by BLK - any savings the club may have made, and any benefits from being able to customise our kits meant nothing if couldn't even get anything to sell to fans or even to kit up our players.

Some weren't fond of the BLK merch anyway - I wasn't too amazed with the home or away strips - but I did like the hooped socks (which you can buy online anyway, being just regular footy socks), and the modernised heritage strip they provided for our FFA Cup appearance in 2015 was rather excellent I thought.

On the face of it people are happy to be back with Puma. There's nostalgic reasons for that of course - they were out kit supplier in the club's on field peak. Compared to BLK, it's also a name brand and a soccer brand. Here's hoping that customisable kits are part of the arrangement, and that a trip to Brazil doesn't undo everything like it allegedly did last time we were together.

Verified!
In recent times Twitter has relaxed the criteria for which accounts it chooses to award its 'blue tick of verification'. And thus the long battle for South Melbourne FC to have that blue tick next to its name is over.

We are finally @verified. You will now see a blue tick next to our name!

— South Melbourne FC (@smfc) October 3, 2016

Not a major thing in the scheme of things, but it does make the account look a smidgen more professional and therefore reliable in the minds of those who take things like blue ticks and verification seriously - I'm thinking potential sponsors and everyone who will subliminally hold South Melbourne FC twitter in higher esteem because of this badge.

Offseason digressions - Vicbowl XXXII
Here are the reasons I went to Lakeside during a Sunday evening some time in mid-October to watch the Victorian gridiron championship game.

• It was at Lakeside, and I was interested in how the field dimensions would work.
• I don't actually mind American football.
• I was bored.

The fact that it was free helped, but it wasn't a primary motivating factor.

The field dimensions were interesting. Plenty of space on the sidelines for both teams, thanks to the narrowness of the gridiron. The length of the field was more problematic, because the end zones took up almost all the length of the field. The goal posts were portable (and short) rugby posts rather than the fork goals of American football, but this is understandable given most of these teams probably use rugby goals during the regular season - not that they got much use, as you'll see. To that end, I was also interested in how the thing would be organised. For a small organisation probably not awash with funds, they did a pretty reasonable job. Both stands were open, and there was plenty of security on hand. Not that the crowd warranted the opening of both stands, but on a showpiece day, why not?

One really cool thing was the production of a simple eight page match programme.

Also have a simple 8 page match programme. #vicbowl pic.twitter.com/Wrg777Bddb

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) October 16, 2016

Nothing fancy. Full colour, team lists, the gist of the rules. Less impressive was the first game running over time by quite a bit from its scheduled end time, and thus the Division 1 game started close to an hour late, because there were some ceremonial and award duties to be attended to as well. But there was at least some comedy there, with the marching band on hand not getting the memo to hold off their entry until later.

Running over time by a long way. Marching band started interrupting division 2 and assorted other presentations, lol. #vicbowl pic.twitter.com/tPl1Q71LoS

— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) October 16, 2016 

Interestingly the costumed marching band didn't get much more air time than that during the evening.

The match arrangements for the game were pretty professional though. Live video screen, with replays. Commentary over the PA that somehow didn't feel intrusive. No match clock as far as I could tell, but there were play clocks at either end of the field. The referees were miked up, so we got the thrill of NFL referee style explanations.

The crowd was probably split 50/50 between the two sides, with the Footscray (and by association western suburbs based) Western Crusaders having a number of Maori and/or Pacific Islander players and thus also family members and/or friends and relatives in the crowd. The Monash Warriors had their own crew doing some sort of soccer style chanting at times, and there was a decent atmosphere all things considered. Not very much NFL gear in the crowd - if anything, people tended to prefer wearing their team colours.

As for the game itself.... look, here's my take on American football. 

• It's wonderful to watch when played by two high calibre, evenly matched teams.

I watch a reasonable amount of NFL on 7Mate, but I can't maintain an interest in really lopsided games, or games between mediocre teams.

• First you love the passing game, then the running game, then you love defence.

That's how I've rationalised my developing relationship with American football. Sure, big down field throws to wide receivers are exciting, but it can get boring pretty quickly, like too many sixes in cricket. And the running game is great, especially when a team gets its rhythm going. But defense! The battle of a great defense against a great offense, where the former has to second guess everything the offense is going to do, and not make any mistakes - which is why my brief exposure to college football was so disappointing. So many high scoring games because of inept defenses. But what to expect from a bunch of amateurs in the truest sense?

Well, I didn't expect quarterback theatrics or pinpoint rapier passes. And that was certainly true of this game. The rain didn't help, but even before it came down, the run game dominated. There were two or three nice long bombs from the Crusaders, but the Warriors scarcely bothered with such antics. If defense, too, is the pinnacle of the professional game, then both sides struggled to deal with the running game, which made the game resemble a stop-start of version of rugby league, perhaps resembling the game as it was a hundred years ago before the use of the forward pass was used with any regularity. One thing which was in sharp contrast to your professional gridiron experience was how quickly the game flew by. I guess with no two minute warnings, few injury breaks, no score reviews and no coach challenges, there's less reason for things to slow down. The game almost felt, dare I say it, brisk.

The game itself was close. The underdog Crusaders opened the scoring with a touchdown, but completely botched the snap for the extra point. The Warriors scored two touchdowns after that, converting one of two attempts at the two point conversion. Another Crusaders touchdown, this time with a failed two point conversion saw them trail 14-12 at halftime. The third quarter was tighter, thanks in part to some desperate goal line defensive stands from the Crusaders, but their ill discipline (chop blocks, especially) and poor decision making cost them in the end. I mean, on 4th and long on your own goal line, just punt it! Instead they went for it and conceded the safety. They got the ball back for one more go, but couldn't do anything with it, losing 16-12. All in all, an interesting and eye opening day, 

MCFC 100 Years doco - some thoughts
Moreland City, via production company 3 Nerds - the same people who did the Fields to Dream series for the FFA Cup last year - put out a film on the 100 years of their club. While that 100 year time frame is contestable if you think it about for more than a few seconds, it's more useful to focus on what the film actually talks about and how it goes about trying to tell Moreland City's story.

And that story is complicated by a number of factors. First is the fact that we are talking not just about one club, Moreland City, nor even about the three clubs that merged to form Moreland City, but also about the other digressions - the split from Brunswick that lead to the formation of Moreland; the war time merger between Moreland and Hakoah; the intermediary merger between Moreland and Park Rangers. There are so many dead ends and diversions in this story, some of which by necessity get covered in more detail than others - and as you'd expect, the more recent something is, the more detailed the story that can be told.

Thus the foundations of Coburg are sketchy at best; Moreland's split from Brunswick, and Brunswick's fate even more so; and the transition from what kind of clubs Moreland and Coburg in particular were before 1945 and after never get satisfactory answers. What we do get though in the post-war analyses is a look at the British migrant soccer experience from an angle not often covered or taken into consideration. While for better or worse, the British player and coaching influence on Australian soccer is reasonably self-evident, the kinds of clubs and people involved with more or less explicitly British (as opposed to Anglo or 'native' Australian) soccer clubs is hidden behind the focus on the exploits of Contintental Europeans.

And in a lot of ways, this angle is the film's greatest strength, even as it avoids being as upfront about that as it could have been. The interviewees are almost all British. Moreland and Coburg apparently had a clear Irish and British influence (visible now in its iconography of the rose, thistle, leek and clover); even Park Rangers, which began as a split of sorts from South Melbourne United/South Melbourne juniors, eventually came to have a strong Scottish/Celtic influence by the time Hugh Murney came along.

It's that sense of Britishness which ties the different strands and different histories together. Post-war, it's quite clear that many of the players for Moreland and Coburg aren't locals; they were Moreland and Coburg in name only, almost in the abstract, much as clubs like South Melbourne eventually came to represent almost nothing of South Melbourne the suburb once all the Greeks moved out of the local area. The same seems to be the case for Coburg and Moreland.

That Britishness is also a hindrance on the short term and long term successes of the various clubs involved in this story. In the short term, despite the pluck shown by Moreland into the late 1950s, the crowds and the cash just do not arrive as they do for other migrant clubs. That great, often unspoken question of why the British migrants - whose numbers exceeded those of every other ethnic group combined - didn't take up soccer as did their Continental equivalents doesn't get teased out more than just the merest hint. But even that small interrogation of the question makes it clear that the absence of broad British migrant interest in Australian soccer held Australian soccer back for decades; more broadly, because their absence made the game look more exotic than it should have done to mainstream Australia, and more narrowly, it prevented clubs like Moreland from becoming anything more than small time community clubs.

That interpretation, much as I think it needs to be made, downplays the importance of clubs like Moreland to their supporters and the communities that converged around them. The Moreland and Coburg rivalry gets a spell, as does the difficulty in coming to terms in merging in order to survive. The success the club gained from the merger - surviving and thriving where before there was seemingly terminal decline - while both opening up the club to the community and attempting to preserve what made the clubs tick is an example to many other clubs going through the same processes of renewal. In Moreland City, meaning has been created which incorporates both the old and the new.

[Naturally this is easier for clubs from ethnic groups which are already more closely culturally aligned to the mainstream. For the old 'wog' clubs, full of old men much further away from the mainstream, the ability to transfer control of their clubs to younger generations - many of which will be made up of junior parents with a more solipsist perspective, or with little concern for the history of the club they will soon take over; but that's another story]

The film is professionally produced, and comes up with clever solutions to certain problems, chief of which is the lack of archival footage and even artefacts, a common problem across the game in general. What Moreland does have compared to other clubs is high quality photos, and some old jerseys, which act as useful additions to the interviews and transition overlays. But there are also drawbacks. The film is clearly too long, with some of its digressions - especially the 1956 Olympics portion of the film - destroying the momentum of the film. Not that that material is unimportant, but it and the tribute to Frank Loughran could have been integrated into the film better.

There is clearly an attempt to squeeze as much as possible into this film, and thus what some people would consider as peripheral matters - pitch alignments, council relationships and aborted 1980s merger talks with Pascoe Vale and Sandringham - get into the discussion. That's OK with me, as I love that kind of information, but it doesn't necessarily make for the most chronologically or thematically coherent film. Nevertheless, there are moments in these matters which could have been tied more closely to the British migrant experience - I'm thinking specifically of a former migrant hostel building in Preston being transported to Campbell Reserve in the guise of club rooms.

But even if you have no interest in any of these historical and sociological questions, the film can still be enjoyed for what it does well - letting the subjects speak freely, and allowing them to get across what Moreland City means to them, and on that front succeeds handsomely. The filmmakers make the various interviewees come across as eloquent, dignified and relateable - the club has its own special qualities (in part because of its theoretical longevity), but it's also 'every club', fighting the same battles that Victorian soccer clubs have had to fight over decades.

I just wish there was more on Park Rangers to be honest, especially before they moved out to Kew.

Around the grounds
Stuck in a rut
Headed to the Socceroos-Japan fixture. Prior to this match your correspondent caught up with a child psychologist and a guy in a suit. That was OK. The game itself was an event spent with a party of four; then one bloke dropped out; another came in, then also dropped out; and then the spare ticket was taken up by of all things, a woman. How modern. The match itself was wearisome - an introverted Japan which after scoring the opening goal, preferred to sit back and wait to be gifted the ball back; and an Australian team that moved from side to side so much that it was like watching a game of Space Invaders, but with much less forward progress. The second half was better, although the penalty was a fortunate one - a player running towards the byline and away from goal on a tight angle probably doesn't need to be fouled. Plan A was eventually enacted, but that didn't work well either. A certain journo friend of mine is right - everyone's gotten too complacent. We just expect Australia to make it through to the World Cup now, and thus there is no tension, no sense of impending doom. Might it be better for Australian soccer to fail at some point to qualify, just to shake things up a bit?

Just remember that...
The ancient Greek oracle was probably high on fumes.

Ten Years Gone

For Joe Gorman and no one else, notwithstanding the public nature of this reluctant salvo.

While I was somewhere between Canberra and Holbrook on a Greyhound coach, Joe Gorman asked me via Twitter to write a story on this event. This was made difficult by a number of factors. My laptop battery threatening to run out of juice; the woman in front of me who wanted to push her seat back down into my crotch; and the fact that now, ten years apart, these two dates - 16/11/2005 and 16/11/2015 - are not momentous moments in time for me, but rather signposts from which to ponder everything that’s happened in between. Under the circumstances, that's probably the most 'bitter' thing anyone can say, which doesn't fit the desired mood of most of Australian soccer's recollection and experience of the event. That I think it's based on a cultivated, carefully thought out point of view and not some sort of reactionary bitterness will not make me feel better about writing about this in any way. It is what it is, which admittedly is not a very academic explanation.

The second leg of the 2005 World Cup qualifier I watched at home, with my dad, at what is now my old house, which itself has been demolished by its new owners. What struck me most about the game at the time, apart from the unaffected joy I felt, was just how lucky we were. I've not bothered to watch the game again, and doubt that I ever will (nor do I have any plans to watch the highly esteemed documentary on the game), but it seemed that every piece of luck that had deserted us over the previous 32 year stretch had been condensed into this game. Being short sighted even with three inch thick lenses, I sat up close to the TV, hoping that we’d win, glad that we did, with no misgivings. In that sense it feels like a lifetime ago, though for me at 32, it’s only one third of a lifetime.

On the way back home from Canberra, I re-read Patrick Mangan’s Offsider, partly for the sake of my stuttering doctoral thesis, but mostly to pass the time instead of staring out the window at the repetitive landscape. In that book, Mangan occasionally branches out from his childhood and adolescent support of Arsenal to talk about watching and covering the Socceroos and Australian soccer during the 1990s. For a book published post-2005, a relative boom period for Australian soccer books, it includes a strange omission – it fails to mention November 16, 2005 at all. Its narrative falls short, and so the book takes no political position on that or any matter for the way the sport would turn out. In its own way, leaving out that date sums up the problem better than most writings on the matter have done – that there was a before and an after. To that I’d add that there was a during, an 'in the moment' quality which we will likely never touch again.

I don't want to change people's experience of the occasion, and to be honest, I couldn't do it no matter how hard I tried - and goodness knows I've tried to get my spiteful (but also annotated) review of Tony Wilson's Australia United published in at least two different print journals. A little reluctantly then, I thumped out a couple of thousand words trying to figure out how I got to this place, especially when I'd started off somewhere very different - but apart from being self-vindicating and awfully precious, it was also nothing that hasn't been seen here before. It was just another version of the chief subtext of what I've been doing for nearly eight years. The position of chief unofficial cultural surveyor of the South Melbourne Hellas exodus years is possibly a fate worse than the exodus itself: every Sunday night or Monday morning during the season writing a report, competing with SMFCMike for the title of de facto voice for the Lost Cause. And while I have a personal aesthetic interest in artistic failure, especially as it relates to failed albums and novels, I'm not so attached to the concept of failure that I can't appreciate success, especially that which happens on the sporting field. But I digress.

Since its achievement, November 16 2005 hasn't just been celebrated for its own sake, but also taken up as justification for everything that has happened since. Of course that makes sense, but it’s a sense that relies a lot on a hard, remorseless kind of logic. Realistically, winning that game didn't guarantee anything that came after it, but it did make it easier for that future (which is now also inevitably part of our past), to happen. Having said that, it would be beyond appalling if I was to say that I would exchange a win on that day for a different sort of future, one that would also have no guaranteed positive outcomes for whatever barrow I'd have ended up pushing. If I did, I'd be no better than those who have retrospectively celebrated the Iran '97 failure because it hastened the end of the NSL and Soccer Australia. It should also be noted however that the quality of one's personal ethics can't and shouldn't really be measured on whether you refuse to stoop as low your opponents have done.

Ten years ago, November 16 felt almost uniformly glorious. Ten years on, it feels like a different event, something which my memory and experience has found to be tainted. The feeling I have then is that there are two November 16s. There is the one that was lived in that moment, and the one that was appropriated, or in far lesser cases, discarded, for political reasons. For most Australian soccer fans, especially those that were in the thick of it that night at Stadium Australia, nothing can sully the memory. In that sense, that night and the 2006 World Cup campaign are perhaps the last moments which remain untainted by Australian soccer’s sectarian tendencies.

As time has gone by, the notion for me that November 16 and the national team could be something that would remain untouched by the factional wrangling has proven to be untrue. This is not to say that either side is right, or that coming to this position was inevitable. Let it be each to his or her own on the matter. For those of you out there on whichever side of the fence you stand, who can still tap into the joy of that night, enjoy it. Aside from one or two stirrers looking for some fireworks - one of them rather unexpected - most of what I've seen on social media has been focused on the joy of the day, and little beyond that. Maybe the people I follow mostly happen to be reasonable folk, and thus I avoided the worst of the new dawn triumphalism; or perhaps I've just avoided the seedier parts of the internet; more likely most people have a bigger capacity to just let things go, at least as far as this event goes. More power to them.

Medium Density Nightmare (Australia 3 Kyrgyzstan 0)

Or, conversations with Canberran taxi drivers

Or, does Canberra deserve an A-League licence? No, of course they don't.

Or, three or so mostly wasted days in the nation's capital due to cutbacks to the National Library

The driver of the Greyhound coach leaving Melbourne for Canberra in Thursday morning runs through the list of essentials: what to do with your rubbish, where to go to the toilet, and not to use deodorants as it gets into the air conditioning. Seeing as there's only five blokes on the thing, spread out across the bus, that shouldn't be an issue.

Steve from Broady had asked if I wanted to join him on this trip - no budget airlines fly to Canberra, remember - and I said yes, thinking I could also double up by doing some research up there. Apart from a dodgy roadside cafe cheeseburger somewhere Albury, the bus ride up is uneventful, even as it stops to pick up no one on at least half a dozen occasions.

Our first cab driver of the trip, taking us from the Jolimont Centre towards our budget hotel in some suburban outpost, takes up the soccer theme. He himself was a player he says, for Olympic in Canberra and Canberra Deakin, as well as some Spanish mob I didn't quite get the name of. He also takes credit for introducing Tom Rogic to football, which is the kind of claim that’s impossible to verify under those circumstances.

If, as in my day job, I was marking someone’s paper at uni, I could go back and check the reference, or mark them down for not including it. In this case that’s impossible to do. He also asks us if we know about Johnny Warren, which is like asking a Christian do you know about Jesus. Even if I’m not one of those who has beatified Johnny, I can’t help but get offended at the question. Still, he gives us the good advice of making sure to get to the ground early before the traffic builds up.

Another Socceroo fan staying at the hotel (the Ibis Budget out in Watson - don't go there, just pay the extra bucks for something closer to town) ends up inadvertently stealing our cab to the ground, and while there are also a couple of guys from Wollongong waiting fort an Uber service, we get another taxi instead and make it to the ground well in time. That's more than can be said for many of those attending the game, who get caught up in traffic on the way to Bruce Canberra Stadium, apparently even leaving the shuttle buses early to get to the ground.

The match seems to play second fiddle to everything else. There is some sort of carnival atmosphere here. I suppose you take it for granted in Melbourne or Sydney that you’ll see the Socceroos play at least some sort of upper lower middle class team on a reasonably frequent basis. In the outposts, you take what you can get and make the most of it. The merchandise stand is making a killing, several local radio stations are in place, and there are two brass bands. Ordinarily that would be overkill, even one would be overkill, especially when they start playing AC/DC covers, but in a stadium with a bowl shape, that sense of Americana is not entirely misplaced.

Adjacent to the home end, we have a prime seat – that is near enough to the worst seats – to view the antics of the home end crew. A megalomaniac of sorts has a megaphone, and as the night goes on starts abandoning chants in favour of taunting the families of the western stand (who initially won't respond to his spit roast chant) as much he taunts the Krygyz players with comments about Russia and the USSR. Worse, there are even people wearing onesies, a fad which passed by my metropolis years ago.

One deadbeat in front of us offers to go buy some beers for his mates during the first half, but after going up three steps, realises that he doesn't have any money and comes back down to take some out of his partner's purse. Another group go off to buy beers before Australia has even scored, at the a moment where the ball is desperately pining around the Kyrgyz goal. That's something I've never quite understood, this inability to at least time your run to the beverages or have the patience to wait until the end of the relevant play at least.

Others watching the game both in the stadium and at home seem impressed with what the Australians are trying to do, even if they aren't quite up to doing it yet. Me, I think we're playing like donkey balls, but that's a matter of taste, no? In this case it's also a matter of perspective, because the view from right behind the goals in row R (in a part of the ground that for some reason skips rows O and Q) is kinda crappy. And who the hell built a stadium in a wet city without almost any roofing? It's a good thing the rain paused for the duration of the game. All things considered - the weather, the opponent, the weeknight fixture, the crowd number, at a touch under 20,000, was excellent.

Exiting the ground has the vibe of less muddy Waverley Park. Those on shuttle buses do OK; goodness knows how long it took to get out of the car park for those who drove there. The bus driver on the shuttle bus back to the city loses his cool when someone presses a button they shouldn't have, and then goes on to deny it. The bus lights are blue, which makes me wonder if Canberra has a night time bus riding junkie problem, but it turns out the real reason for the blue lights is for reducing glare for the driver at night.

The next day, trying to measure the impact of what had happened is almost pointless. My goal here in Canberra is to delve in the past. On the way to the National Library, the cab driver has the local commercial talk radio station on, and the presenter muses about whether Canberra could ever host an A-League team, before moving into an aimless discussion with the resident meteorologist about how much it had actually rained in various Canberra suburbs and the peripheral Yass.

I'm in Canberra to look at the archives of David Martin, and to confirm the existence of properly record materials to do with 1962 novel The Young Wife, which includes several soccer passages within his fictionalised Greek-Australian milieu. A magnifying glass helps sort out some of the handwritten details - I'll feature this as an artefact someday - but the thing I thought I had once perceived in this collection, an extended opening where Martin muses on the nature of sport in Australia turns out to be a mirage. That disappointment is compounded by the cutbacks to the library meaning the library not only does not open its special collections room on Sundays, but doesn't even make any deliveries on Saturdays at all. It's a terrible disadvantage for interstate scholars, both professional and amateur.

I turn up dutifully on the Saturday anyway, and having started on Martin's autobiography back at the hotel, I am able to at least get closer to what it was Martin was trying to do in this novel - and how, contrary to the praise he received for his work at the time of its publication, actually produced at best a fascinating failure of a novel. I also come closer to understanding his connection to soccer, but not close enough for my liking.

On the Sunday, the taxi driver taking me from my hotel to the National Portrait Gallery notes how he misses the EPL. Back in Cambodia, he could watch to his heart’s delight on dirt cheap subscription packages, and at reasonable times. Work now rules that out. How many Cambodians in Canberra? I ask. About 100 families he says, not like Springvale eh? He grins, and mentions his shock and delight at tne memory of hearing voices in his native tongue on the streets of Melbourne. It turns out the guy plays as well, socially at least in open parks with other taxi drivers and local uni students, but he rushed to play one day after getting off work, didn't bother stretching and did his back. Every time he comes back after a two week layoff, he ends up hurting it again, but he loves playing the game.

The National Portrait Gallery is worth a visit. It opens up with a room that's a sort of pantheon of mostly eminent scientists and the odd celebrity, before moving through history. Sketches of Indigenous peoples, explorers, and an endless series of black clad Australian petit bourgeoisie men, and their mostly pasty skinned wives. As time goes on, the works become more daring and more colourful, and their subjects more diverse, even if there's still way too many of the Fairfax family in there. Many of the subjects are either leaders of commerce and governance, or friends of the relevant artist. That makes sense - the former have both the desire and ability to afford their portraits being painted, while the latter are the persons the artist will most like to paint. I preferred the more adventurous and diverse subject matter - both the lefties out there, the huge Bob Brown portrait really has to be seen in the flesh, even though the subject himself is uncomfortable with the implied notions of sainthood bestowed upon him in the photo, as well as the disproportionate credit allotted to him.

The main gallery section finishes off with portraits of women. Unlike most of what has come before, many of these are photographs instead of paintings. I'm not sure of the reasons for this, and while I'm not generally not a fan of this kind of photographic work, the Lee Lin Chin portrait is stunning. Sports people get short shrift in the main selection. There are three fluoro images of famous cyclists (Cadel Evans, Robbie McEwan and Stuart O'Grady) and a stern Margaret Court. The seasonal gallery, which was in its last day, was called 'Bare' and was about various figures in different states of dress and undress. The Les Patterson on the toilet is a corker to see in the (too much) flesh, but other than that, it's not a particularly impressive collection. Sports persons get more time here, but too often its hackneyed, the photographers (most often its photographers) being unable to find the balance between the certainty and doubt, the athletic and the vulnerable. The only soccer man is a bare chested Harry Kewell, Liverpool era.

Some of the things I liked were Dave Graney's deliberately hilarious pose of dangerous sexuality; the frightening Robert Hughes; Les Murray attempting to sprawl, but coming across as timid in trying to do so; Arthur Boyd's portrait of his friend Carl Cooper on the edge of madness; and astronomer and physicist Penny Sackett, in a modernised renaissance pose, complete with screwdriver in hand. Someone in the gallery's guestbook grumbled about Rolf Harris' portrait of the Queen being removed, putting it down to political correctness. There were enough lords and ladies in there anyway, and a huge Queen Mary of Denmark.

The next day, my last cab driver in Canberra, in between grumblings about the apparent waste that is the planned light rail line and the pointlessness of the existence of an ACT government, asks me why I’m here. I tell him I came up with a friend to see the Socceroos, and he notes that he started watching it at home on SBS, not realising it was delayed, before his wife told him the final score – he’d forgotten that it’d also be on Foxtel. The circus, scaled down as it was for the provinces, came to town and left just as quickly. Anyone trying to weasel some sort of meaningful metrics out of that as a measure of what an A-League Canberra should probably find something else to do with their time.

Me interviewed on Behind the Game podcast

A week or two ago I did an interview with Brogan Renshaw, founder and host of a podcast called Behind the Game. I had no real idea what it was going to cover (and afterwards we both relaised we hadn't ta;lked about my research into soccer and literature), and after doing the interview I was afraid there were going to be too many pauses, but it actually turned out OK. The interview goes for almost 50 minutes, or if you really can't be bothered just read the gist of what we talked about below.

It's early days yet for this podcast, so there's perhaps a few too many Western Sydney Wanderers people attached (and I even recommended one to Brogan to interview) but the more recent interviews tend to drift away from that, and I think it'll be a series worth keeping an eye (or ear) on.

• Woe is me for being an outsider (no credibility as a soccer person).
• How I got into South.
• Feeling part of the community.
• Attempt to marginalise myself as much as possible (Eurosnobs, pay TV).
• A-League inclinations (or the lack thereof), and double standards in expectations.
• Bitterness (parlance, emotion and being outside the conversation).
• More marginalisation (backing myself in a corner).
• Brogan tries hard to find the right words.
• How the hell does a club like South get back to the top under the current regimes (political and cultural)?
• Fondest soccer memory.
• Least fondest memory (OK, maybe more than one, and the dangers of 'what ifs')
• Betraying my father, betraying Heidelberg, dodging a bullet.
• Why do I still go to South games? (regrets, you'll only go in for your mates)
• Old Soccer/New Football (throwaway line my arse).
• Who's paying for the current marginalisation of the old soccer?
• The healing process. (hint: it's bullshit)
• National Club Identity Policy (as if I wasn't going to talk about that)
• Blogging! (Why?)
• Success and pitfalls, style vs service.
• The damn audience.
• Friends and enemies.
• Information control and the Whole of Football meeting (you can also hear me opening and closing a bottle of water at some point here).
• The Greek national team (meh), the Socceroos (I don't want to be meh) and the Asian Cup.
• Eddie McGuire.
• What does the future hold for South?
• The end.

2015 Asian Cup adventure - Day 7 - A tournament well enjoyed

It's a pity that apparently some of our social betters in the government thought that we couldn't manage to host both the midpoint of a grand slam tennis tournament and an Asian Cup semi-final, but full credit to Newcastle and their state government; in this case, the well worn sporting cliche that 'they just wanted it more' appears to be true.

For those of us who attended every Melbourne based game of the Asian Cup that we could, we got more than our money's worth regardless of where we sat, and yet still left wanting more. The atmosphere in the stadium ranged from the parochial (Australia vs Kuwait), to glorious support for the relative underdog (Uzbekistan vs Saudi Arabia) to the raucous (Iran vs Bahrain). The games, with the odd mismatch noted (Jordan vs Palestine and large portions of Japan vs Jordan) were for the most part highly competitive affairs. The play was unusually free of the cynical diving and time wasting efforts we've come to associate with Asian soccer.

The different teams for the most part, even when they were clearly outgunned talent wise, still sought to try and score, which provided a huge amount of entertainment. Many of the games, while lacking a certain tactical cynicism and occasionally awful and foolhardy defending, at least provided plenty of heady attacking moments to savour. Some of the vision and movement off the ball by almost every team was glorious to watch, and Uzbekistan's perhaps most of all, as they went from dizzily uncoordinated defending to scintillating once touch football in the blink of an eye.

The last game at the Bubbledome for this tournament, the quarter final match between South Korea and Uzbekistan had so much of what made the previous six matches so special. A dominant and vocal number of the better known nation in the stands; enough people at opposite end, whether actual supporters of gleeful local hangers on, willing to add a counter voice; and plenty of neutrals just hoping for a great game. And what a game it was, despite the poor finishing from both sides.

While some people left at the end of the regulation 90 minutes in order to get to a television in time for the Australia game, most of the crowd stayed to watch the rest of the game: the inconsolable Uzbek defender who knew he should have just cleared the ball instead of being daring, and the goalkeeper who just couldn't keep the ball from crossing the line, both of which happened right in front of us; the way the South Korean player who streamed forwards and instead of going into the corner to kill off the game, set up the second goal; and palpable joy on the faces of the two Korean blokes sitting behind us, who were in tears with the result. And to think there are a small band of cynics out there trying to downplay the tournament's meaning, just because it's not the Euros.

We've made the semi-finals, so let's all have a parade
Of course going to extra time made getting home in time for the start of the Socceroos game impossible. Sure, I could have watched the game at a pub or something, but by the time I get home from the city, especially if that game also went into extra time... more annoying was when I got picked up at the station by my dad, I tried putting the radio on to the local ABC station in the hopes of at least an update of the scores, hopefully via a live radio broadcast of this important match, only to find that they were broadcasting Lleyton Hewitt's match instead. Right priorities as one particular member of the Twitterati likes to say; and aside from that, whoever thinks tennis on the radio is a good idea, has serious rocks in their head.

The second half was watched on free to air television, as nature intended, and even enjoyed because of Tim Cahill's heroics rather than anything his team mates managed to achieve, as well as the mostly mediocre Chinese opposition; though having to deal with Andy Harper's public orgasms is something I wondered how people dealt with on a week to week basis. One wit suggested alcohol; another a sort of learned selective hearing due to having children. Neither of those suggestions were much help to me. Anyway, the game won it was time to go the panel in between flicking between the two channels showing tennis, because I am such a huge tennis fan don't you know.

At one point during this panel, the reanimated corpse that is Gerard Whateley compared the Socceroos and/or Tim Cahill to now holding as much prominence and/or adoration with the Australian public, especially children as [Olympic hurdler] Sally Pearson and [Test cricketer] Steve Smith. Now Whateley obviously means this to be a compliment to Cahill and the Socceroos, but there's also a problem with this (perhaps offhand) analysis - and that's the fact that the Socceroos and Cahill have long been in the public consciousness as national icons, more recognisable than Pearson or Smith. Regardless of your thoughts on everything that's happened post-Crawford, the Socceroos' sporting stature has been secure since the Uruguay qualification match in 2005, and Cahill's on field reputation was secured soon afterwards.

What irks me about this issue is the need of certain people in the media feeling the urge to anoint the Socceroos as legitimately part of the elite (and therefore mainstream) Australian sporting pantheon. It speaks more to the fact on how far behind the times they are, and how out of touch with the actual sporting interests of the Australian public they are, than any serious consequences of their commentary. With particular emphasis on Whateley, I've always wondered how he gets it so wrong. I say this after years of watching him on Offsiders, where the end of each show is capped off by him doing the rounds of the horse racing news. And I'm thinking, if it wasn't for the twice yearly let's dress up and get pissed events, horse racing's interest lies only with the group of derros that hang out at the Borrack Square TAB (and their type across the country), and those who because they have smartphones can hide their derro-esque nature behind a mid-price label polo shirt, new pair of khakis and shoes that weren't better off being slung over the top of power lines in front of the house that has drugs in it - because everyone knows that's the like the Golden Arches of drugs.

Having said all that
It's been a tragedy that this tournament has not been on free to air, except for the very limited and delayed coverage. Here's a tournament that was predicted to be a lemon by impossibly conflict of interest affected media man, it's had a lot of goals and excitement, and had much better than expected crowds to most of its matches - crossing boundaries of old soccer, new football and even non-football people - and yet the interest generally has been low in the mainstream media. Outside the parochial Socceroos interest and the actually excellent writing of those in the print media - even from some of those writers I don't particularly have time for - there's been little traction. Now I can complain and cast conspiracies about the media being behind the times (see above), but there's an element of doubt that creeps in as well. Maybe they know something we don't? Maybe they have access to market data that shows that while soccer may have some worth as a niche product, that it's just not big enough to merit mainstream coverage, and that perhaps Paul Keating's dream of Australia seeing itself as being an Asian country is some time off yet. Or maybe it's the soccer people who are so ahead of the curve that it's going to take a long time for the straight and narrow world to catch up.

Saddest thing of all is that it wasn't on free to air for everyone to enjoy. That's the kind of game that wins new fans. #IRNvIRQ #AC2015
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) January 23, 2015

That Iran-Iraq game was so much fun to watch. It had everything that a great game should, and generated a lot of interest among people on the net, those who had pay TV, and those like me willing to break the law (a massive crime against the human rights of corporations who have paid lots of money to show the game) to watch the game on a live stream. But what of those who don't have pay television? What about the casual sports enthusiast, the one that may actually be won over by a game like that, notwithstanding my personal belief that it's better off seeing a sport at its most mediocre and then being intrigued with it, rather than getting the big pay off. I don't know. I guess I should be glad that I got to see it at all, and that I should be grateful to those members of the American military industrial complex that made such breaches of copyright possible.

2015 Asian Cup adventure - Day 3 - Kill the Buddha

Prologue
I woke up in a foul mood yesterday, which may go some way towards explaining the following post.

Going out for a patented Sideshow Bob 'vigorous constitutional' only made things worse
After finding myself actually enjoying last Sunday's Iran vs Bahrain match, and thus looking forward to the rest of the tournament (at least those parts that I could attend), I decided to look up just for the sake of it who'd be hosting the next tournament in 2019. It turns out that hasn't been decided yet, but one of the bidders happens to be Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia: a nation that does not allow unaccompanied women to do pretty much anything (and of course bans them from attending football matches); a nation that does not allow expressions of any faith other than Islam, and a nation that censors all of its media to the nth degree. And yet how much more advanced are we? Let's use this as an opportunity to blow something minor completely out of proportion. During Tuesday's win by the Socceroos - which I quit watching after we went 3-0 up, because the streams I tried watching the game on became unusable - Tom Juric scored the team's fourth goal, and proceeded to lift his shirt to reveal a message in Croatian/Split dialect/Shtokavian/Serbo-Croatian/Vukovian, which said 'Mama, Tata, Braco' (Mother/Mum, Father/Dad, Brother/Bro - as a believer in the importance of the reader as symbiotic participant in the writing process, I'm letting you take your pick on the formality of the message).

Apparently a minority (or a statistically significant number, depending on who you believe) of people on Facebook and Twitter had a whinge about this - specifically on the fact that the message was not in English - and thus discussion of this filled my Twitter timeline, leading to me making a dick of myself by singling out one person in isolation for semi-confected outrage when it was utterly unfair of me to do so. That person is merely an agent of the problem, not its cause and really, I would have been much wiser parlaying my hard won wisdom into the alternative discussion about ice cream, and how cool was it when you tried to reach for ice creams at the bottom of the fridge at your local milk bar, because they would definitely be the coldest and by definition the best.

The issue remains however, that those who support the National Club Identity Policy (here we go again, boooooooooorrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing) provide a sense of legitimacy to those people in Australian soccer (and by extension Australian society) who use that policy to further their assimilationist ends. Pointing out the fact that messages on shirts other than those things allowed to be put on playing jerseys (whatever that means under our current nightmarish regime) aren't allowed anyway (and liable to be punished by a yellow card and/or disqualification from Australian competitions) is beside the point; neither are offside goals allowed, yet the Socceroos' third goal clearly benefited from a cock up from the officials on that front, and it still counted. Unless you're the editor of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper, what has been seen cannot be unseen.

The creator of this images wishes to remain anonymous.
I guess I owe them a frap or beverage of their choosing.

Now while 'the few, the proud, the geeky' among us may have the power of furious and righteous indignity on our side, the great mass of the Australian soccer public could not give a fat rat's clacker. Our 'cause', such as it is, is doomed, due to the combination of both a jackbooted bureaucracy acting on behalf of Dear Leader (and a big 'hi' to all my North Korean readers, yes we do have our own 'Dear Leader' who will soon be replaced by his son) and vast consumerist indifference (and here's a question to consider - is apathy better or worse than indifference? Yes, it could very well be a trick question, but Buddhism needs new koans, so here I am offering something for them at least to mull over).

Ideologues are comparatively easy to deal with, if not in the actual reasoning part, then at least the part where you know where they stand. They put forward their beliefs, you put forward yours, and the age old dance of liberal vs conservative gets played out once more. With those whose main goal is a perverse search for a relaxed and comfortable middle ground, for whom the ends justify the means as long as they're not personally adversely affected, there's little you can do. This makes those comments that more or less state 'well, I think people have voted with their feet, and thus this regime must be doing something right' downright infuriating. I can't think of a way in which one would begin to approach this problem, one which is at the heart of Lowy's 'success'.

In a neat coincidence, one of the right wing people
I'm friends with on Facebook put this up on his timeline
yesterday. Being unashamed (proud?) of my physical
inferiority I find myself disagreeing with the notion
put forward in this picture, but as a vivid portrayal of
Mishima's ideology, it looks pretty sweet.

So now that it's clear that our movement is indeed doomed - and if you think it isn't that's great (really, that's not sarcasm), you won't get much value out of the rest of this section, so you can leave now, because this would otherwise be a waste of your time - what do 'I/we/me/us' do? Now Yukio Mishima may have been a right-wing crackpot alongside being a brilliant writer, but at least he believed in something, even if what he believed in was a fanciful version of the past while fully (probably?) understanding that the values he purportedly wanted Japan to re-adopt were never truly realised anyway, and never could be realised. But who among us would re-create Mishima's end - and I stress here for those familiar with Mishima's end, that this analogy is purely metaphorical, and not just because I don't have a kaishakunin - and at least be able to go out in a dignified (albeit in Mishima's and also Seneca's case, very messy), blaze of glory?

The famous Buddhist koan - at least within the East, not necessarily here in the West where we tend to obsess about the sounds of trees falling and one hand clapping - asks us that if we see the Buddha on the road, to kill him, and that goes for Nansen's kitten as well I presume. What then must we as 'bitters' destroy in order to get out of our cycle of romanticism, self-righteousness and self-pity, all while those whom have contributed to our relative destitution continue as they please? Can I even go to my local manoush joint any more, now that they're putting up posters for Salafist speakers? Do any of us have the stomach to transform this movement of five or six people on the internet to become something transcendent and therefore meaningful beyond our little circle? Can our beloved anger become useful, or is our fury, however justified by the circumstances, a hindrance? Is this sense of irrevocable apartness that I feel from the great mass of soccer's support in country a terminal condition? Am I destined to become another one of 'those people', the kind whose support of the national team - which I hitherto held if not as sacred, then at least as separate from the poisonous atmosphere of the current political situation - is reduced either to apathy or bilious hatred?

Saudi Arabia vs North Korea
Approaching the Bubbledome on Wednesday evening I was filled with intense moral quandaries, because both of these nations are evil, and therefore one could not possibly support either of them; and yet there would be people supporting them. Now in the case of the much maligned (sometimes fairly, sometimes not) Iran, this problem could conceivably be ameliorated via the perspective of ethnicity and the affection the diaspora has for the homeland, without necessarily having the tacit approval of any of the policies of said nation state.

For Saudi Arabia and North Korea, this is complicated by all sorts of things. In Saudi Arabia's case, because it's not even a real country as we know it today, just the parts of the Arabian Peninsula ruled by the Saudi family since the 1930s. There were quite a lot of Saudi fans at the game yesterday, but not many women as far as I could tell. Still, the Saudi fans managed to hand out quite a few flags to a lot of people who would probably be revolted with the way that country is run. For the North Koreans, run by an equally hideous regime, there were as far I could tell (or reasonably expect), no actual North Korean fans from North Korea in the stadium. Instead their supporters end at the northern end of the ground was taken up by various members of the Melbourne Victory's active groups.

A good clue towards establishing that they weren't real North Koreans, even from my spot in the good seats, is that the chants (all in English, and all largely taking the piss, eg. North Korea is best Korea, or some such), is that they kept referring to North Korea, which the real North Korea would never do, since they (like the South) consider themselves the real Korea. Speaking of real Koreans, that is people from the Korean Peninsula, there were apparently some in the crowd, I'm guessing sitting well away from the 'North Koreans'.

Told the South Koreans have had their reunification flags confiscated by security. They're here to support North Korea. #PRKvKSA #AC2015
— Joe Gorman (@JoeGorman_89) January 14, 2015

There were also apparently people wearing Kim Jong-Un masks in the northern end, and when security went in to confiscate them, they were jeered by those North Korean sympathisers, who didn't seem to appreciate the gesture made by stadium management towards creating a genuine North Korean experience.

Security moving into the north end for some reason. You'd think the N. Korea supporting hipsters would appreciate the irony #PRKvKSA #ac2015
— Paul Mavroudis (@PaulMavroudis) January 14, 2015

Closer to home in Aisle 4, Row D, we were more concerned with not getting crushed to death by the ceremonial flags hanging off the rafters.

Flag lowering ceremony. #PRKvKSA #AC2015 pic.twitter.com/ZnCmL9N2P7
— Les Street (@official_lesdog) January 14, 2015

As the patrons in the relevant area were moved across into the neighbouring bays without too much fuss, one had to wonder though: what was the cause of the problem? While the half filled stadium (attendance at a touch under 13k) allowed patrons to be moved to adjacent bays, what would have happened had the stadium been filled up, say, for a Socceroos match? And who's going to be held responsible for this debacle?

I think @nutmeg_2015 needs to kick a few arses over this flag debacle #PRKvKSA #AC2015
— Mark Boric (@MarkBoric) January 14, 2015

Of course, because no one was killed or injured, there was also a lighter side to the flag situation.

The flags falling down disruption was North Korea's Peter Hore moment #PRKvKSA
— Mark Boric (@MarkBoric) January 14, 2015

Can you believe that lighthearted comment spiralled out of control into a Bitter vs New Dawn argument? Of course you can, it's the internet.

Now friends, there was also a match being played, and it was pretty damn fun and frustrating to watch in equal measure, as both teams pinged the ball back and forth as quickly as possible. The North Koreans looked the more likely to score in the beginning and they did, but surprisingly perhaps the Saudis didn't collapse in a heap, and actually ran over the top of their totalitarian counterparts, while looking quite stylish at the same, though their finishing could do with some work.

The most bizarre thing about the North Koreans though, apart from their coach apparently being on a direct line to Pyongyang, was the overly physical approach they brought to the contest. They copped a yellow card within the first couple of minutes for a pretty savage tackle, and after a few more bad tackles interspersed throughout the game, they finished it off with a brilliant shirtfront which somehow managed to avoid receiving any sort of card. Of course, if you did that in the AFL these days you'd get suspended.

Epilogue mode stolen from Gillian Rubenstein's Beyond the Labyrinth
If you rolled six or under:

Not that it matters anymore, but where is the social club? Since the only acceptable way to socialise in Australia is with booze, and goodness knows no one can possibly have fun without it, it'd be nice if we had some place of our own to have 'fun'.

If you threw over six:
A week or two before Christmas, someone at Victoria University did a bit of a ring around to all the relevant people (except me, and possibly others who I am not aware of) looking for ways to contribute to finding connections to the Asian Cup so Victoria University's academics could be at the forefront of writing on the tournament, thus reinforcing our reputation as the 'sports university'.

After being included (eventually) via being CCed into an email, I did get a phone call asking me what my expertise was exactly, and how would that fit into what the project was about. Well I tried to put forward what my angle is, difficult as it was considering I don't really conduct interviews, and nor does my research have an utterly direct and completely obvious connection to the Asian Cup, and neither did this person really explain what it was that they wanted, but could I at least email him some examples of my work for him to see.

I did so, and never heard back from him. After looking back at this post, it was probably for the best.