It’s an old game but a new sport. At least in Australia, foosball isn’t well known as a serious sport. Yet.
Big in Europe, where the first World Cup was held in 2006 to coincide with the FIFA World Cup and in the US, where lucrative events attract huge audiences, local fans are hoping the inaugural NSW Open in Wollongong next weekend will flag the growing enthusiasm for foosball in Australia.
“The usual response is one of laughter and confusion,” says the president of Foosball NSW, Viktor Desovski, when he tells people he plays foosball and has to clarify with, “Do you know table soccer?”
Desovski, 32, registered Foosball NSW as a non-profit organisation in December 2012, a year after Australia joined the International Table Soccer Federation (ITSF), the latest of 62 participating countries.
Germany, for example, where the first national championships were held in 1967, now has 6,000 professional members, a number Australian organisers can only dream of.
“Australia wide we have about 60 members in seven clubs,” says Danny Gruden, co-founder of Foosball Australia. “But you have to take in contention that all states have just been opened up in the last three months.”
Gruden created Foosball Australia with fellow Tasmanian David Morgan, after they had played more often on the tables bought for his children than the actual children had.
“It was actually David Morgan’s wife who discovered that that’s a big sport overseas, and we started the long trip,” he says. That was five years ago.
Now there’s Foosball NSW, Foosball Victoria, Foosball Tasmania and Foosball WA. Desovski says Queensland and Southern Australia are the missing links but “we’re trying to find people who would volunteer their time and have the same passion” to spread the word.
What’s the next step? To get foosball recognised as a sport, he says.
To do that they must conduct three years of formal competition, send a team overseas to play on the international stage and create a governing body for each state.
After the first Australian competition was held last year in Hobart, the first national team was formed, competing at the World Cup in France in January. “We finished 40th out of 43, which we are quite proud of,” says Gruden.
Next weekend’s NSW Open in Wollongong is the first of four state-wide competitions planned in the run up to the Nationals in September, when the new team will be picked to go to the World Cup.
Gilles Gaborit, who founded Foosball Sydney after he bought two tables from his own money four months ago, is excited.
Originally from France, 52-year-old Gaborit came to Australia 30 years ago.
“Every French teenage boy starts playing at 13 or 14,” he says. But he’s never been a member of a club before. He says there are about 1,500 club members in France but an estimated 500,000 people who play every day in bars and cafes.
“I think if we can manage to get something like 40 people to the NSW Open that would be a success.”
Sanctioned by the International Table Soccer Federation (ITSF), the NSW tournament will be played on Fireball, a Chinese table, Danny Gruden explains. So far there are 18 in Australia.
Five different tables are officially recognised by the ITSF, but “the Fireball is the most dominant table in Asia, that’s why we decided on that one.”
For Frenchman Gaborit, it’s a “nightmare.” He was raised in a foosball culture with Bonzini, the French table.
“Unfortunately it’s very different from all the other tables, which means my style of play doesn’t fit the Fireball,” he says. The Fireball is too slippery.
“When I play the Bonzini my heart is beating faster, I feel it, I feel it inside me. Fireball doesn’t give me the same pleasure,” he adds.
But at his workplace in Marrickville, where Foosball Sydney is located, he has both. “So that the others can practice on Fireball for com-petitions,” he says with a grin.
The NSW Open goes for two days with seven categories, including singles and doubles for men, women and juniors and a single event for seniors. Kids under 16 play for free.
“We want foosball in Australia accessible to all children; not just those who can afford it,” says Viktor Desovski. Once it is recognised as a sport, Foosball Australia would like to see it included in schools as part of their health and education programs.
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