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Melbourne Victory's Kevin Muscat, right, is tackled by Sydney FC's Ruben Zadkovich during their round 7 A-League match in Sydney on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2007. AAP Image/Paul Miller
Australian sports philosopher and Melbourne Victory hard man Kevin “Muskie” Muscat was asked recently what he thought of the AFL’s carryings on about a FIFA Football World Cup being held in Australia and the Melbourne Herald Sun’s back page story that it would mean the end of Melbourne’s freedom, democracy and way of life.
Expecting a barrage of AFL abuse from the A-League’s most feared defender, Kevin simply answered, “I think it’s a huge compliment to football in Australia, a real big compliment.”
Simon Hill paused for a few moments of stunned silence.
Not many football fans would have thought that Andrew Demetriou was being very complimentary at all to football and its followers in this country, especially since the AFL has really been getting up the noses lately of most Australians living outside the AFL Capital of Australia.
Especially Sydney and the Gold Coast, where the AFL army, loaded up with huge bags of cash and a stacked forward line of marketing geniuses, as well seasoned AFL campaigner Field Marshall “Iron Balls” Sheedie and willing Lieutenant Carmichael “Give Me The Money” Hunt, are planning another explosive offensive, deep into traditional non-AFL ‘heartlands’.
It took me and my border collie Bonny a few days to really appreciate what Muskie was actually saying. It IS a huge compliment to football in this country.
If, as little as five years ago, Soccer Australia announced they were going to bid for not one, but two World Cups, you would have heard the roars of laughter right across Australia from Collins Street in AFL la-la-land, all the way up to George Street in Sydney and Rundle Mall in Brisbane.
John Howard and his government would never in a million years have parted with 46 million dollars of Australian taxpayers money to find out if we had any chance of winning it.
And rather than opposing a FIFA World Cup bid, five years ago the ARU, NRL and AFL would have been patronisingly patting Soccer Australia on the back, wishing them all the best of British luck, with a big smirk on their faces, knowing Australia wouldn’t have had a snowflake’s chance in hell of actually winning the right to host any football World Cup.
How times have changed.
How far must football have progressed in Australia and internationally in the last five years to get so much attention?
On the field, some unkind people have wished Muskie would break a leg (literally, not figuratively speaking), but off the field, he once again proves himself to be one of our greatest ever sporting philosophers.
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