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Plenty of interest in A-League Grand Final

Roar Guru
9th March, 2011
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Roar Guru
9th March, 2011
117
3735 Reads

I lost a good friend recently. No, not to cancer, but to the United Kingdom. We hadn’t known each other for very long, but we had become the best of mates.

He had moved down from Brisbane and I’d moved up from Melbourne to live on the magnificent North Coast of NSW. We got to know each other from our kids playing football together in one of the local teams.

We made lots of friends through the football club, it’s a great bunch of people, mainly volunteers who do a great job or running the teams, especially when you have to travel a fair bit during the season.

But strangely enough, most of them were Broncos fans and not Brisbane Roar fans.

They hardly knew the rules of football and the conversations over the years and over the beers and barbies were more about Wendell Sailor or Darren Lockyer or Carmichael going to AFL, rather than Frankie Farina or Matt McKay.

We did go along to the occasional Roar game in Brisbane, but the interest seemed to die down in the last year or two.

But this year it’s come back on and they’re the topic of conversation again. A big group of us are going up for the A-League Grand Final on Sunday.

Funnily enough, my good mate won’t be coming with us and it’ll be strange that he won’t be there in the Suncorp stands with us.

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He works in the entertainment industry and has appeared in clubs and on the TV a little bit, but he is by no means a household name.

He went over to the UK to pursue his entertainment business.

However, it wasn’t for himself, it was for his lovely teenage daughter, who’s got a voice like Barbara Streisand.

It was a brave call, but he upped his family and moved to the UK last October and is now settled in Oxford.

She recently appeared in a UK open song contest, and although she didn’t win it, she made the final and attracted enough attention to get her first professional entertainment contract to sing in clubs across Europe.

We’re all thrilled for her and their family.

My mate, of course, still follows the news in Australia and Australian sport. It’s going to be a big weekend this weekend; Broncos on Friday and the Roar on Sunday.

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Sky Sports in the UK are showing the A-League Grand Final on Sunday morning UK time.

In fact, we had a Google of the Sky Sports TV guide and apart from Sunday, the A-League Grand Final is going to be repeated on Sky Sports six times throughout the day on Monday.

The betting shops across the UK are all showing it live with Roar the favourites at 1.77 and the Mariners at 3.00 to win in 90 minutes of play.

There seems to be plenty of interest in it.

Through Skype and emails I’ve also found out that he has already organised an A-League Grand Final breakfast at his place with a few Aussie expats and some of his Oxford mates.

True to form, he has already made friends over there and organised a few social events for the locals.

The temperature overnight in Oxford on Sunday will be about zero degrees with light rain forecast, so it won’t be an outdoor BBQ brekkie.

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The forecast for Brisbane on Sunday is for a few showers in the morning clearing to a sunny day, but pretty warm and very humid and about 28 degrees. Might be even hotter than that for the Mariners fans.

I read that ticket sales for the A-League Grand Final had already reached about 44,000 by midday today and they look like breaking the 50,000 mark by the weekend. Should be a great atmosphere.

Broncos tickets for Friday night are selling very well too.

I’m looking forward to the game and having a good time at Suncorp and I know my mate and his new found friends will be having a good time watching the A-League Grand Final from Oxford.

Win, lose or draw we’ll be having a good discussion/Skype about it all on Sunday night, hopefully about the Roar’s first A-League Grand Final win.

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