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Arryverdici Fabio read one of the snappier headlines in the English press yesterday, as the London tabloids enthusastically endorsed one of their own in Harry Redknapp to take over the vacant England manager’s job.
It wasn’t so much the sentiment but the fact we rarely see these sorts of puns in the Australian press which got me thinking.
That’s partly because the influence of Search Engine Optimisation has made using keywords a fundamental part of headline writing, but perhaps also partly because humour is so subjective.
That came across in spades yesterday when I read fellow Roar colleague Ben Pobjie’s unique appraisal of Channel Nine’s cricket commentary team.
I’ll put my hand up and admit I’ve been a fan of Ben’s for some time – I read his hilarious Masterchef blogs in the Fairfax press and I don’t even watch the show – and I was thrilled when he landed a column on The Roar.
But I knew immediately he wouldn’t be writing about football.
Much as I wish this wasn’t the case, the A-League isn’t yet the broad watercooler topic we’d one day like it to be.
And I wondered if Ben’s sardonic wit would even be tolerated by A-League fans who, let’s face it, can be a surly bunch at the best of times.
To put it bluntly, there’s an air of desperate earnestness about pledging one’s support to the A-League which can sometimes feel oppressive.
Perhaps it’s much easier for the English to inject wit into their football coverage because the sport has been well established in that country for over one hundred years.
They’ve been doing it particularly well since the 1990s, when Nick Hornby made it cool to be a closet fanatic and the fanzine ‘When Saturday Comes’ reached ever-growing audiences on the back of England hosting Euro ’96.
After the 1998 World Cup I wrote to English comics David Baddiel and Frank Skinner and asked them to mail me some furniture from the set of their ‘Fantasy Football League’ show.
They sent me a signed postcard instead. (And fair enough, I suppose).
But in a country where large swathes of the mainstream press still speak of the A-League as though it dropped onto the sporting landscape from the bowels of the Starship Enterprise, I can’t see a Tom Gleeson or Dave Hughes (or sadly even a Santo, Sam and Ed) starting an A-League comedy show any time soon.
Which is a shame, because much of the stern pontificating and endless lecturing from certain quarters of the A-League press can be a drag.
And trawling through the some of the online comments on forums is best done with a stress ball in one hand and a stiff drink in the other.
In fact, it’s online where witty raconteurs like Ben Pobjie can make such a refreshing change.
I’d love to see him have a crack at writing a piece about the A-League, if only because I think it’s a competition which could do with an injection of humour from time to time.