Last weekend, I travelled down to Sydney from Townsville to watch my beloved Glasgow Rangers play against AEK Athens. It was an opportunity I couldn’t let go, as who knows when Rangers would be in Australia again (hopefully not a further 26 years)
Since I’ve came back home, I’ve been reading articles on the net about how the football festival was a waste of time, which I was very disappointed to see. This competition allowed fans from all over Australia, and even as far as New Zealand, to watch the teams they support live.
As I’m a Glasgow Rangers fan, I was in their supporter’s stand, and what a great atmosphere to be involved in. Many people say watching it on pay TV is the better option. Although it may be a cheaper alternative, it’s far from better.
Being at the game with your fellow supporters and showing your support is one of the best feelings ever.
So even though the ticket prices weren’t the cheapest things out there, it’s still cheaper then spending thousands of dollars to travel out of the country and over to Europe to see the same team play.
At the third match day of the tournament, I was speaking to Rangers fans from Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Wellington in New Zealand. The amount of money that Tourism Sydney would have received from just Rangers fans alone would have been phenomenal.
This is another reason why the festival of football was a great success.
Lastly, the competitiveness of the tournament was of a very high standard. Even though AEK Athens won the tournament by a clear margin, every game was evenly matched, with only one goal separating most games.
Allowing the teams to receive a point for each goal scored was a very good idea as it made each game open, thus keeping the fans entertained as there were many chances at each end of the field during the 180 minutes
In the end, Sydney’s Festival of Football was a great success, with the fans being able to see their clubs they support live amongst fellow supporters.
Tourism Sydney would have been pleased with the result of supporters flying from all over Australia and New Zealand to cheer on their club.
Finally, all the games themselves were very entertaining and competitive.
Fra-Dog
Roar Rookie
Cheers botts. Thanks for reading my article means a lot haha. Yeh ill do one about adelaide crows in near future. Love the feedback Fra-Dog
Hugh jarse
Guest
Great read, glad to see other Rangers fans out there. Pitty i wasn't able to make it to the games, but I hope the Festival of Football will feature RFC in years to come. GO RANGERS!
Botts
Guest
Great story bro, im glad to see someone like the festival and it was well worth the trip. People here dont see how football is played differently until they actually go to a game. They see the games overseas on TV and say that its not bad, but until they physically go to a live game and witness the different atmosphere, skills and way of playing the game they will never know. So great story man hope to see another one soon about Adelaidians and how they play :P Keep the good work up, I know your working hard towards something big so keep going mate. Take care Fra-Dog, much love from Botts xo
Fra-Dog
Roar Rookie
Yeh ill be at the fury games im a football statistician and covering those games. Hopefully they do better then last year, they have been pretty impressive in friendly games the last few weeks. Also J-ROC your lucky you went to the game they won hahah. We outplayed AEK Athens but just couldnt get the goal we desperately deserved.
Sean
Guest
I hope you will attend NQ Fury games. They need all the support they can get.
J-ROC
Guest
I was only able to make it for day 1 of the festival and a Rangers fan too. I was in that Rangers section I loved every second. It was by far the best atmosphere I've experienced watching a football match so much so that it depressed me that I had to watch the rest of the festival on TV haha.
Fra-Dog
Roar Rookie
Cheers for the reply. Yeh the field wasnt the best but nothing compares to Etihad Stadium in Melbourne. But all up was a good weekend to go down to Sydney to watch my favourite team play.
jimbo
Roar Guru
Fra-Dog, good story and well done for travelling all this way to the Festival of football. This is the real fans story that I love to read about. In many ways it was a success and provided some good entertainment and football. Shame the weather in Sydney was lousy for most of the week and the pitch was muddy and chopped up from the rugby games. The only big disappointment was the attendances were a bit low after 42K saw SFC play Everton the week before. The Festival is backed by the NSW Govt who were expecting a $10-20M windfal from visitors to Sydney such as yourself. The tournament is an anuual event and look forward to the 3 international teams for next year.