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The greatest team sport in the world is about to start and Australians will be rallying behind our team – the Socceroos – just like other countries will be rallying around theirs. But for us Aussies, it’s more in hope than fact.
We don’t have a great sporting tradition in association football, or soccer, which is what we often call it in our country to prevent confusion with Australian football.
We Aussies like to think we’re the best athletes per head of population on the planet. But until we win a FIFA World Cup, our boasting rites will remain hollow.
I’m uncomfortable with Australian football being our major football code. Basically because we get no international flow-on from our national game.
So Australian football is our own game – whoopy do! Don’t get me wrong, I like Aussie rules. I played it briefly at school and also socially.
As a participation sport, there are few better games to play.
I used to love the freedom of the sport, the ability to roam, and the thrill of taking a mark and kicking a goal. Or denying same.
We might have outstanding athletes playing Australian football, but how good are they really? They are never fully tested against the best from other countries.
We play an abridged International rules against the Irish Gaelic footballers, and we’re only traveling about 50/50 win-wise against them. The Irish hardly have a huge pool of talent to draw from themselves.
The International rules is barely satisfactory to either code, although you could argue it favours the Irish slightly more than the Aussies.
And, of course, while we have so many of our outstanding youth playing domestic Aussie rules, they are denied the opportunity of playing, and perhaps adding lustre to, other football codes like rugby union and association football.
Or basketball, perhaps.
Then there’s rugby league, the other major football code in our country. There’s only three serious international players in rugby league, no matter what the diehard fans say – Australia, New Zealand and England.
There are truly outstanding athletes playing rugby league, but you can’t help but feel sometimes their talents are being wasted in a sport that doesn’t really do much for Australia on the international stage.
Even rugby union struggles to justify its supposedly true international footprint. Rugby folk will tell you the game is played in over 120 countries, but seriously, only about 5-6 countries at any one time play it with any great skill or depth.
When the Wallabies first won the Rugby World Cup in 1991 it generated huge interest around the country – amazing when you consider the game was still amateur, and a lot further behind Aussie rules and rugby league than it is today.
Which brings us back to football.
No wonder the AFL were nervous about the FFA winning hosting rights and thus making such a fuss of ground usage. AFL has more to lose from football becoming successful in this country than either of the rugby codes.
This is because football would most likely cut deepest into AFL’s constituency, many of whom follow both codes.
Australian football is the most affluent and popular game in Australia.
We really are the land ‘Down Under’, with the domestic popularity of our football codes in almost complete inverse of their international reach. Whether this situation will continue into perpetuity remains to be seen.
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