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Another anti-football tantrum by Patrick Smith

17th September, 2013
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17th September, 2013
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Devout AFL fan Patrick Smith, who writes for The Australian, is at it again. Poor Mr Smith has not been a happy vegemite of late, and one can certainly understand why.

The GWS Giants continue to be the laughing stock of Australian sport, and the Essendon drugs scandal and possible implication of Andrew Demetriou in the whole saga meant Smith had only one option in his mind – time for a soccer shame article.

For starters, Smith seems to have no concept whatsoever of football – what it means to people, how complex it is, the skill involved or the passion of the fans.

Yet he still insists on commenting on it maybe once or twice a year.

It’s like Craig Foster writing about the Australian fiscal policy in the Sydney Morning Herald. Of course, it goes without the mention that the only time Smith writes about football is when he has something negative to say.

Where were Smith’s comments when:

– The Western Sydney Wanderers won the A-League Premiership, with a higher average attendance than the GWS Giants on a budget that the Giants would burn through in a matter of weeks?

– The Wanderers fans travelled in numbers of 5,000 to 10,000 to significant away games and sang their hearts out in the rain?

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– The Socceroos qualified for Brazil 2014, the greatest show on earth, in front of a mid-week crowd of 80,000 in the rain?

– The visits of world sporting icons such as Manchester United and Liverpool wowed the country with attendances of 82,000 and 95,000 at the matches in the heart of the AFL and NRL season?

– 95,000 sang ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ at the MCG with the kind of passion that the AFL could only dream of?

– World football icon Alessandro Del Piero joined Sydney FC, a man of such fame and glory, yet such humility?

So when does Smith finally comment on football? When ten no-name football players are busted for match fixing in a state league team.

Here is what Smith had to say in The Australian on Tuesday:

“Soccer joins the NRL and AFL in a year the three codes will be desperate to both forget and remember.”

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Excuse me? Is Smith trying to say that this incident exceeds all of the positives moments for football listed above?

Incredible.

Smith is of the opinion that this incident was on par with the Essendon scandal. A scandal which involved the systematic use of performance enhancing supplements at a club in the highest level of their sport and implicated a former legend of the game in James Hird.

All the while, the AFL and Essendon management are playing Chinese whispers with the media and with the report.

Contrast this to the FFA, who hired sports betting watchdog Sportsradar to keep an eye on the betting market.

Sportsradar shared information with the FFA, who immediately passed this information onto the police. Sounds like it was seamlessly managed to me.

It would be great if Patrick Smith could stick to what he knows, which is AFL. His attempt to drag down football out of jealousy for the lousy year that the AFL has had sounds like a schoolyard child throwing a tantrum.

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Anyone can see that football in Australia has had a great year and will only get better with the A-League soon to start again. Bring it on!

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