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Memo to Aussie Rules and rugby league fans across the country: please tidy up after yourselves as you leave your favourite Football World Cup venues this weekend and be on your best behaviour on football blog sites next week, as the FIFA delegation comes to Australia.
Take your Ben Cousins, Reg Regan, Freddy Fittler and Gary Ablett face masks with you as you’re going home and don’t leave any NRL or AFL Footy Card bubble gum wrappers behind, or old chewed gum stuck under the seats.
FIFA are coming to town next week as part of a two-month world tour to inspect the candidate cities for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
The tour is already underway as the delegation hit Japan on Monday. After dining on steamed lobster in chilli and ginger sauce at the famous Iron Chef’s Tokyo restaurant, the FIFA board members had an extensive tour of the Kabukicho entertainment district.
The delegates also managed to pick up some well priced necklaces for their wives and girlfriends while in Tokyo’s famous pearl district.
The five-member FIFA WC Bid panel will then move on to see South Korea, Australia, the Netherlands and Belgium (joint bid), Russia, England, Spain and Portugal (joint bid), the United States and Qatar to view stadiums, facilities and presentations of the candidates and generally have a lovely time at other football confederations’ expense.
Australia’s four-day visit starts next Monday and concludes on July 29.
However, we won’t know how successful we’ve been until FIFA’s 24 executives choose the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts on 2 December 2010 in Zurich.
Fortunately, they arrive after the Master Chef Australia Final on Sunday night, so someone will be available to pick up the FIFA delegates from Mascot airport and shuttle them to their temporary headquarters, deep in the heart of Kings Cross.
Ben Buckley and Frank Lowy will personally escort the delegates to a number of opal and pearl necklace jewellers in Sydney’s famous Strand Arcade.
Then its off to inspect Blacktown’s new AFL training facilities in Sydney’s west and then a quick check on progress of the Sydney Showground upgrade for future AFL matches.
The following day the delegates fly down to Melbourne to see Etihad Stadium for themselves, as a classic example of where a football match should not be played. Then it’s off to Geelong to inspect the site for the $100 million upgrade of Skilled Park to fit in more Aussie Rules fans, should the WC bid be successful.
The next day it’s a quick dash to Adelaide oval to see how the re-development of Adelaide oval for AFL is progressing and then on to Perth to see how the upgrade of Subiaco oval will be undertaken to allow more Aussie Rules fans to see AFL games there.
On their final day, the delegates return to Kings Cross in Sydney for a well earned rest, some more local entertainment and pearl necklace shopping.
While in Australia, the delegates are also prepared to overlook the recent slap over the wrist that Football Federation of Australia received from FIFA for their behaviour regarding its World Cup bid.
The ethics panel, chaired by former Switzerland international forward Claudio Sulser, is still to finalise its investigation into the behaviour of Australia’s bid team, in the wake of a probe into allegations that FIFA delegates and their wives had received free travel and had been offered jewellery in exchange for their votes.
The FFA, however, have been cleared of all wrong doing by the Australian government and as a show of solidarity behind our bid, the Federal Communications Minister, Senator Conroy, has ordered all Australian newspapers, radio and TV stations and Andrew Demetriou not to say anything nasty about football while the delegates are in the country.
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