Response to Fozzie's call to forget 'eggball'

After months of Craig Foster’s propaganda war in the newspapers against ‘eggball’, surely someone deserves the right of reply.

Going by his articles, Fozzie seems to have nothing but contempt for all football codes other than football.

To understand Fozzie’s disparaging comments against Australian rules football and also rugby league football, one must firstly dissect the language he is using in his articles.

Let’s call it “the dictionary of Fozz”.

Whilst our ex-prime minister Kevin Rudd made sure his personal dictionary included certain words and phrases that he repeated ad nauseum, such as “working families”, “in due season” and his “course of action” (which, by the way was used as many as 70 times in 2009), Fozzie also has a personal dictionary.

His articles include the following words or phrases, which he likes to repeat not once or twice, but a lot. They are:

Fozzie’s dictionary – word number one: ‘Football’.

According to Fozz, soccer is football and all other codes of football, where the foot connects with the ball during the course of a game (i.e. Australian rules football, rugby league football, rugby union, football and American football), don’t deserve the right to this title.

If being deemed a code of football by Fozzie is judged by the number of times a foot connects with a ball in a match, then there are doubts as to whether soccer deserves this title alone.

In an average game of AFL football, the ball connects with the foot at least 390 times. I would be surprised if a game of soccer (association football) has this high incidence of kicks during a match; that is unless one includes all those numerous one-two metre back passes that occur throughout a match in an attempt to slow the game down even further.

I searched to find statistics on the number of kicks players get per game in the EPL, but it doesn’t seem to be recorded.

Perhaps the number of kicks a player gets in a game isn’t important or perhaps, much like a game of soccer, I just got bored of looking and decided against continuing the search.

Sorry Fozz, I am joking.

Soccer is very exciting at all times – even during a nil-nil draw, of which incidentally there were a few in the opening round of the EPL season.

In the opening round of the EPL, five matches were draws and three of those were nil-nil draws. But when all is said and done, if Fozz wants to classify soccer as being ‘football’ in this country, I think he should keep on doing it.

But if in his missionary work, he comes across anyone who screw up their face and look confused when he is describing a game of ‘football’, then he should automatically add to that definition by saying ‘British football’ or ‘Association football’.

Then the respondent can look at him knowingly and say, “Ah, okay, you mean soccer.”

Fozzie’s dictionary – word number two: ‘The beautiful game’.

Fozzie uses this phrase of the ‘beautiful game’ in reference to association football. I presume that all the other football codes in comparison are, therefore, ugly games.

I had to search far and wide to read from the oracle that is Fozzie, for the reasons why soccer/association football is the ‘beautiful game’. Or perhaps it is our duty as readers just to accept as a fait accompli that soccer/association football is the only beautiful game.

I went on a search and eventually found some sort of explanation for this phrase in his article on the Barcelona club.

“The reception of the ball, the beautiful technique, the positional play and the intelligence of young kids who already react well off the ball, no wonder they play with such style,” said Foster.

Personally, I need more persuading than that article to swallow the line hook, line and sinker that association football is the only ‘beautiful game’.

The definition of beautiful according to the common dictionary (that is not the Fozzie Dictionary) is something that is pleasing on the eye or graceful. With this in mind, when I think of the most beautiful moments from the other codes of football, the ‘eggball’ codes, I refer to these moments:

1) Australian rules football – Andrew Walker’s high mark at the MCG this year.

Seeing someone leap that high in the air and balance themselves up there above someone’s shoulder to me qualifies as a ‘beautiful’ moment.

I think it qualifies as it is satisfies the criteria of being pleasing on the eye and graceful.

2) Or in rugby union, when David Campese took on Ackerman in the 1984 game against the Barbarians. Campese could have run past Ackerman but instead decided to make his opponent look foolish as he zig-zagged around the Welsh international.

Alan Jones stated, “Ackerman, unfortunately, had criticised the Australian victory after our crushing victory in the Test against Wales and Campo didn’t have the words to retaliate then. But he retaliated now, with his feet and hands. He turned Ackerman inside out, threatening to go past, then changing direction, offering himself to be tackled then accelerating away until the crowd erupted, first in disbelief, then in sheer amusement and joy at what they were seeing.”

Again, this moment deserves to be considered as ‘beautiful’ as it was graceful and pleasing on the eye.

3) Or in rugby league, when Benji Marshall does his magic and evades opponents.

As commentator Phil Gould states, “He just has the dancing feet, doesn’t he?”

Perhaps Fozzie believes that each of these moments from these football codes cannot be called beautiful, as I presume under his definition they weren’t graceful or pleasing on the eye.

Fozzie’s dictionary – word number three: ‘AFL and southern states’.

This old chestnut – I love this one. Apparently Australian rules (sorry, ‘AFL’) is only played in ‘southern states’ and anyone who plays it in a northern state must have emigrated from a southern state or so the saying goes.

So the people who played Australian rules in Sydney in 1880 for the East Sydney club must be referred to as southerners too I am guessing.

Yes, why not – it fits within a neat construct for those people who have little knowledge of the sporting history of this state.

Anyone with basic knowledge about sport in Sydney knows that East Sydney’s Australian rules club was set up 28 years prior to the establishment of rugby league in Australia and before the establishment of the NSW English Football Association (that was what association football/soccer was called back in those days- English football).

Fozzie’s dictionary – word number four: ‘The world game’.

For sizable chunks of the world, the game of soccer (also known as football, English football or association football) is their game. England used to be a world power and exported their game well.

When English traders, investors and engineers went to South America and Africa, they made sure that the locals also found out about their sport.

This same cultural colonisation happened across other regions of the world too, but what about the sizeable chunks of the world where it isn’t their primary game – USA, China, Canada, Australia and India amongst others.

Does this mean that it is slightly inaccurate to give it the marketing slogan of ‘the world game’ and instead does it mean it is more accurate to refer to it as ‘half of the world’s game’.

I guess that wouldn’t work too well as a marketing slogan though.

At the same time, while discussing the topic of marketing slogans perhaps we should refer to Coca-Cola as the ‘the world drink’ and McDonald’s as ‘the world restaurant’, or is it possible for people to drink more than one type of drink and enjoy more than one type of food?

I hope so, if we all end up eating at McDonald’s and drinking Coca-Cola and nothing else then the world would surely be a duller place.

The aim of this article wasn’t to come across as mean-spirited, as I have nothing against association football and believe it has a prominent part to play in the Australian sporting landscape.

The game helps to improve the fitness and well-being of Australians and that is a great achievement.

There are over 380,000 registered players of the game in this country and I would say the vast majority enjoy this sport without feeling the need to force it upon people who might have different tastes.

Nevertheless, it does become alarming when there are people in the media who seemingly belittle people and their pastimes if they dare to have interests that are different to what they believe is acceptable.

If you kick someone long enough, eventually they are going to kick back. In short, Craig Foster wrote one too many ‘eggball’ articles.