I am the kind of football fan that the FFA needs. I don’t come from a family of immigrants where football was the main sport they played in their home country. Neither my mother, nor my father played football into their adult life.
In fact, the biggest sporting influence I can cite in my life was my father; a devout rugby league and cricket fan, from whom I never got to find out how he felt about football.
I spent my youth playing basketball and supporting the Newcastle Knights.
I did my highschooling in Queensland, and being so far away from the team I loved in Newcastle, my passion to be a sports supporter waned.
Then came the 2006 World Cup. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.
Everyone was talking about it, and being the trend follower that one must be to wake up at 4am in the morning to watch a sport that you have never watched before, bleary-eyed, I set myself in front of the television to watch our national team take to the pitch.
I think, by this point, I need to give some background to this story.
Growing up in Newcastle in the 90s means I was witness to the 1997 ARL Grand Final.
Andrew Johns (the greatest Rugby League player of all time. Shut up Queenslanders!) receives the ball with less than 20 seconds to go, stands in a tackle and offloads to Darren Albert to run in the winning try.
My household goes wild. My street goes wild. My town goes wild.
For me, 99 per cent of the time, some way through the second half, you know who is going to win a game of Rugby League.
On very special occasions, however, a game can be so close that one try can make all the difference. And how special that one try can be!
I learned on the morning of 12 June, 2006, that there is a sport where almost every goal is that special.
As I began to wake up on that morning, I sat by myself in my living room watching a new sport where Japan was winning against the team I supported.
Then on comes Tim Cahill, who in a scramble gets a foot to the ball and drives home Australia’s first ever World Cup goal. I was no football fan at this point, but even I knew how special that goal was.
Five minutes later, Cahill gets the ball again at the top of the 18 yard box and fires home another for Australia. And all of a sudden this interesting sport is now the most exciting sport I have ever watched.
The glory! The excitement! The celebrations!
I woke up my family screaming out in excitement after the second goal. By John Aloisi’s third, I was out of my seat and I knew I was hooked.
I watched every Australian World Cup game in 2006 and was on my knees in front of the television when we played Italy in the round of 16 after the horrendous injustice done to the Socceroos.
As part of a fitness kick in 2008 I started playing indoor football. After making some friends who also held this passion for the world game, I started going to the local Brisbane Roar home games.
By now you can probably see where this is going. Last month I was a part of the 50,000 strong crowd at Suncorp Stadium.
Standing in the middle of the den after two seasons watching the Roar, in my Roar kit, face painted orange, hair sprayed orange, I sang until my voice was hoarse.
This time I witnessed not only two very special goals; but a game that rivals, if not overtakes the 1997 ARL Grand Final for top sporting event in my mind.
I really hope that the FFA get their act together, because I’m sure that there are thousands of people out there like me who are just one exciting game away from being hooked.
These days I wonder what would have happened had I decided not to wake up at a crazy hour of the morning to watch a game of an alien sport being played in Kaiserslautern by people I’d never heard of before.
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