You will still have players fatigued as they are now. personally I don’t see any negattives to it.

sorry for the ‘TrueDan’,

“Its that when you make big statements you don’t back it up with facts.”

Now that you mention it.

I’m truly interested in you coming back to my article (FIFA eligibility) and back up some of your criticism of my comments.

I find a lot of it as playing the man not the ball and I’m truly am curious to what’s your actual objection about what I’m saying and why it is a load of rubbish.

I used to hate them, but after the Johnny Aloisi penalty kick – it was a memorable and fitting way to end one of the most exciting nights of football this country has ever seen.

A game of chances and a truly wonderful way to break the Curse of the Socceroos after 32 years of frustration and being on the wrong side of lady luck.

You make some good points there. Indeed, I am of one mind with you in thinking that soccer’s massive size is simultaneously its greatest strength and most debilitating weakness; being able to move the game all over the world and command the greatest audience, yet also finding it nigh on impossible to affect changes in rules so as to evolve their game in any meaningful way (for instance the lack of video assistance) due to all the conflicting voices within its oversized governing body.

And you’re right; the local should most certainly not be brushed aside in favour of the global. Variety is the spice of life after all, which again goes back to what Australia offers to a sports fan: choice.

Can I just say – I’ve always viewed it like the Australian Move/Music industries, I’ll focus on music for this purpose.

The local performers/artists are faced with a barrage, a bombardment of international ‘cultural imperialism’, and yet, have managed to hold on and do okay – - however, there’s those who seek to head off OS to ‘break’ the US or UK market, and there’s those quite content with being big locally and not really giving a stuff what anyone in New York thinks of them and their music/art.

We know well enough that popular culture in terms of the biggest selling bands seems to justify a claim to greatness. ONce upon a time Milli Vanilli, Bros, Vanilla Ice etc were the biggest selling acts going around. So, we know that claims based on that basis are fraught with danger.

I would have thought that most the ‘intellectuals’ on theRoar would have a real soft spot for localised music culture (i.e. find the Luka Blooms et al or Ireland in your travels, or the Mick Thomas’ et al of Australia etc). Without the true culturally distinct balladeers, story tellers – - then, we may as well give in to the global commercialised nature of mass produced music.

NOw = to ever imagine that you can glean all you need to know about music and it’s many layers and cultural significance and the stories and learnings and teachings available – to assume you can glean it all from the Stock,Aitken, Waterman stable of the 80s/90s for example – is absolute folly.

WHy then do some folk assume that the world of soccer is fully self containing of all sporting wisdom that can or should be known/applied?

We know from the business world, that the large global corporations can get burdened by their size. Sure, they have the distribution networks, as to the global music labels. But, they have the overheads and requirements to churn out ‘product for product sake’.

It’s the smaller, regional or national based independants that offer variety, flexability, more pro-active structuring and decision making not burdened by multi national politics/antagonisms.

So, I find it ironic that many from the AFL ‘world’ have travelled the ‘real’ world and studied the NFL, the EPL, the NBA from both an on and off field perspective. Surely, surely common sense would suggest that it would be sensible for soccer folk to leverage off the capacity for an independant like the AFL to pick and choose the best of worlds practice and see how it’s applied. Lack of global size does not invalidate the AFL as a potential bastion of worlds best practice.

and TrueDan -

it’s oh so easy just to fall in line with the rest of the world. I think people like Pip and I get annoyed when there appear those who choose to hate and hope for the downfall of the AFL – rather than recognise it as a unique and valuable component of the Australian landscape that (like or not) is worth celebrating. Whether 50% or 60% of people engage in it is not the issue. How many Australians each year traverse the Harbour bridge or gaze up at Uluru or live in swim Bondi Beach or by a multi parks pass on the GC. It doesn’t have to be 100% blanket coverage. I’m not sure why some folk believe it is difficient if it isn’t or demand that it must to be valid.

Good on you for bringing up cultural imperialism because this can be applied to sport many levels.
It will need to be addressed a later time and maybe in a new post.
I have a mixed futsal game beckoning. I will then back on the pedestal that Pip built to do some thinking.

Firstly it may not be his own culture – and by that to be clear I’m not suggesting Australian culture but rather AFL culture (which is quite different and NOT a default part of Australian culture)

Second he didn’t seem to be spurning it, to me he just seems to have a globally rather than locally/parochially calibrated view of the relative importance of things.

TahDan – interesting, most of all because the paradox in Australia has been that following the “world’s game” has been the counter-culture here, and following domestic fringe codes has been the mainstream. As a country we’ve been 180 degrees skewiff for a century in terms of what you right and have just started what I think is a 2-3 decade process of doing the big and long-overdue U turn.

In any case, Art is right, culture is not fixed. Nevertheless context and time still plays a part in discussions such as these. I find a lot of soccer fans in Australia, especially those who have grown up seeing their sport derided as a game for “wogs, poofers and sheilas” (as the saying was), are now joyfully getting their own back now on the heels of the game’s recent surge in popularity by hopping on the “world game” pedestal; a position from which all other sports are viewed and derided as being irrelevant and indicative insular arrogance due to their limited international scope. The fact that soccer is the only true world sport, is constantly brought up as evidence that being a fan is reflective of some how being “part of the world”. This is of course not the case with everyone, but it does seem to be the common knee-jerk reaction from soccer fans who confront anyone who either deride their game or (in the more sensitive cases), suggests that it should be more like their own preferred football code (this is even more common if you’ve ever heard a discussion with an Americans and Europeans discussing sport). This is certainly understandable and is in that sense a classic “counter culture” position, but nevertheless all it ends up doing is entrenching both camps further.

Not singling you out as doing this art, as I think you’re more open minded than that, but some of your responses are certainly tinged with this attitude.

What is culture Pip? Culture is never fixed, its fluid. Therefore, I am not spurning any culture.
Otherwise, we’d still be wearing animal skins, clubbing animal for sport and grunting at the missus.

Actually, come to think of it, I know a few people like that. So you might have a point there : )

still smacks of the “I’m a truer fan than you” malaise.

You will have many opportunities to show it in the coming months.

I will read your posts with extra interest now that you have placed yourself on such a grand pedestal.

I will need a fair bit of convincing that you’re not just another wanna-be ultra, yearning for acceptance from your cohorts across the globe, willing to spurn your own culture in doing so, dreaming of being able to walk into a favela, unkempt and barefoot, and hoping that you will be accepted as one of them…

Furthermore, just because you think you know the game does not mean you understand the game. I have the same issue with other football commentators in this country. This is why I made general comment about the lack of quality in regards to football writing. Ofcourse, this is a purely subjective viewpoint made on the basis of my own personal observations. In return, people are free to think what they will of my opinions.

In closing, I will reply to your naive comment .

“you in return suffer from the “new fan’s” malaise of thinking you must detest everything else to be a “true” soccer fan. Try and show a bit more love.”

How do you justify that statement?

I don’t detest the AFL, I am just aware of its place in the grand scheme of things.
As I said earlier. I grew up watching the Bombers at Windy Hill. I still go to a few games every year.
I even played AFL in the EDFL when I was a kid as a centreman.

But, at the same time I went to hundreds of NSL games. The first WC final I watched on TV was in 78.
Pip, you are not the only one who grew up with two codes. So, I don’t need to show any love.

Unlike you, I don’t ask to be shown any love.

You are not alone Pip

I find you post about oepidal complex hypocritical (in light your misguided and incorrect article on the AFL Ad campaign against soccer). I suggest you either suffer the the oppiste of this complex if born and bred in Melbourne or simply put up with AFL until your native football code developed further here which means you also suffer the alledged complex having just returned to what you know anyway and that is hardly enlightened.

Ohh and I like penalties.

Redb

from my point of view – it illustrates that some issues have been exactly the same whether occurring in Soccer in London or footy in Melbourne.

It’s just the number of zeroes on the end of the contracts that varies.

Personally I’m all for safe and comfortable venues that most anyone who wants to CAN get to.

Ironically, some people put down the AFL as still predominantly Melbourne centric suburban competition, however, ground rationalisation has killed that element off – - and yet, the EPL, still has a suburban/town centric competition with still too many smallish local venues etc etc.

Anyway, that’s another topic altogether and Perhaps Pip should do an article on that article. It’s always interesting looking at predictions from ‘then’ vs the outcomes of ‘now’.

Not criticising you Michael C, but the flip side to this is that nobody would ever take their kids to the game for fear that they’d end up in hospital (or worse). With events such as the Millwall riot at Luton, and various stadium disasters, it’s pretty clear (at least to me) that English soccer is a lot better off now.

So, it IS considered a serious enough issue the distortion of the ‘sport’ of anybody from anywhere coming in with an open cheque book and distorting the ‘competitive balance between teams’, and seemingly only concern for the colour of the money rather than the ‘proper’ test of persons owning a club.

I like one of the reader comments : Ahh, you mean the days when players were not overpaid jessies, when the average working man could afford a season ticket, when clubs fans actually came from the area, when you could actually pronounce the players names & the players had a little more affinity with the fans. Yeah, dark days?

I checked out your link above and, I know there was the look back at soccer 20 odd years ago, and there were parallels of London to Melbourne for example, – - – but, the present ‘look’ forward was looking about ten years out of date.

Under a headline of “Football 2000”, it looked forward to the millennium and asked: what if the tired First Division was replaced by an exciting super league powered by TV money? What if stadiums were gleaming and family-friendly? How about English matches being the equal of those in Spain?

Apart from the Spain bit, we can compared directly to Melbourne and the VFL. NOT so much the NRL – partially but not entirely.

when you see current day predictions like : Other developments Roxburgh imagines include the technological: “Computer analysis of player performance, like Prozone, is available simultaneously. You will see managers on the touchline with hand-held devices, reading their data before going into the dressing room at half-time.”
I simply think “They AREN’T doing that already??” What the ‘f’ are they doing??

and on Sports Science :
“Premier League players have to be sprinters and marathon runners at the same time,” is how Professor Tom Reilly of Liverpool John Moores University describes it. Reilly was a pioneer of sports science in the 1970s. “Thirty years ago a football team would be representative of the general population. Now players are on average taller, more muscled, more linear in body shape and have body fat levels of under 10% when the average male’s is 17%.

“Because of greater monitoring and more power training from a young age, players will become even more exceptional. With some running 13-14km during games, I used to think football was getting close to the maximum in workrate terms but recent studies suggest there’s still some leeway for even higher intensity.”

Yup, again, they’re about 10 years out of date on this front too.

Perhaps some soccer folk DO spend too much time looking intraspectively within the code. And not enough time having a look outside.

anyway, an interesting read, and knowing how many AFL coaches over the years who have toured England and the US – - right now, mostly they’d comment re the soccer world illustrated up there “Nothing there for us just at the moment”. The Brit coaches might be doing a few study tours to the NFL and College circuit perhaps?

What the managers were supposed to think when playing golden goal extra time: “If we score, we’re through. Let’s attack!”

What they actually thought: “If we concede, we’re out. PARK THE BUS!!!!!!”

The idea of an extra sub for extra time makes sense: longer game, more substitutions. And I agree that TV scheduling and crowded fixture lists mean that a winner has to be found on the day. However, there should be an exception for the WC Final, and possibly even for games such as the Champions League Final. It’s not like the players have more important things to do in the week after the game.

A cup final, I believe should be decided on the day and the penalty situation, although not perfect is in my opion the fairest.

The excitement generated from these shoot outs is unreal.

Yes the players are put under the utmost pressure but so are the fans – how good is that!

Forget replays and decide on the day.