What if football was Australia’s only major professional winter sport?

Imagine how football would have developed in Australia if the sporting genie came down from the clouds in the 19th century and made it the only major professional winter ball sport in Australia.

Imagine a parallel universe, a long, long way from the current situation Football Australia finds itself…

Sunday 12 October 2013, Parc des Princes, Paris.

In a performance that reaffirmed Australia’s international top 10 football ranking, the Socceroos were victorious 3-1 against a valiant and skilful French side.

The victory comes just a month after the impressive and unlucky 2-2 draw with Brazil in Brasilia, and extends the side’s unbeaten run in qualifiers and friendlies to six.

Australia led for most of the game, and were dominant for large stretches.

Socceroos manager Paul Roos praised the skill levels displayed in the attacking third:

“I thought our defence and midfield were dominant, but it was the flair and vision shown by Gary Abblett, Jarryd Hayne and Israel Folau up front that I think won us the match.”

Socceroos captain Will Genia was pleased with the discipline in defence and the overall team cohesion on display:

“When you go up against a historical rival like France, you know the match will be tough.

“I thought Harry Taylor, Matty Pavlic and the entire defensive line laid the foundation we needed to operate freely in midfield, and God, Haynsie and the boys did the rest in attack.”

The Socceroos go into the upcoming World Cup in Brazil as one of the favourites to at least make the quarter finals, with many international betting agencies putting them in the top five of competing nations.

John McDermott from Betfair noted that punters from around the world had been placing an increasing number of bets on a Socceroos World Cup win:

“I think the punters have picked up the vibe in the camp, and it is influencing their betting.

“Though Australia has not been a semi finalist in the last two World Cups, the dominant qualifying round, form of their top stars in Europe, and the form over the last four friendlies have led to people sensing this team can go beyond their usual quarter finals placing and go all the way like in 1998.”

Fabio Capello, the manager who led the Socceroos to World Cup victory in 1998, saw many parallels with the current squad and his squad from the ‘Golden Generation’.

In Paris as a commentator for Italian television, Capello lauded the Socceroos’ attack and playmakers, and was hopeful of a top four finish:

“In Jarryd Hayne I think the team has one of the most physically gifted attacking players in world football, and the class of Gary Abblett Jr is well known from his time winning European Cups with Liverpool.

“I have also been happy with the development of some young players like Chad Wingard, Jeremy Cameron and Tom Rogic.

“Football Federation Australia should be praised; they appear to be developing a squad that can match the golden teams of the late 1960s and my team in the ’90s.”

The Socceroos continue their round of friendlies in two weeks’ time with a match against their arch rivals, Germany, in Stuttgart.

The above article is mere fantasy. But imagine if it was real.

Imagine where Australia would lie in the international footballing landscape if, for over 125 years, our sports-obsessed nation focussed its recreational, financial, scientific and emotional attention on one sport in winter as it does in summer with cricket

I love rugby league, rugby union and Australian Rules football. However, if given the choice by a sporting genie to pick one winter ball sport for Australians to play, football is the sport I would pick.

Why? Because I like watching football, obviously.

However, I would primarily want to see how good the Australian football side could become at playing the World Game with at least 75% of its natural talent available.

It would be for selfish, nationalistic reasons, but I would love to see the athletes from AFL, NRL, Super Rugby, even cricket run out on a world stage where 5 billion people stare transfixed.

Where you can be in a bar in any city in the world talking to someone, and not need to go through the cringe-worthy explanation of what Australian Rules football is, and why (despite considerable empirical/participatory evidence suggesting otherwise) it is the greatest game in the world Javier/Sven/Sun-Hi has never heard of.

I would love to be able to say I am Australian, and have a foreign sports fan rattle of one of the dozens of elite sportsmen who will never grace the (truly) international stage in the same way Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona are synonymous with Argentina, Pele with Brazil, David Beckham with England, etc.

Most Aussies would have to go through a 10 minute explanation of why rugby league evolved from rugby union before boasting to a non-Australian that Billy Slater is one of the best athletes in Australian sport.

In the ‘parallel universe excerpt’ that started this post, Australia is a top footballing nation, making World Cups comfortably, and generally finishing in the second round or better. A bit like the Netherlands.

When thinking about what we would look like as a ‘football only’ nation, the Dutch spring to mind.

Australia and the Netherlands are liberal democracies with a broadly similar population (22mil versus 16mil), and are both developed economies.

Both nations have taken a scientific and rigorous approach to their sport – the Dutch are renowned for the development of football concepts, like total football and have an elite academy system, while Australia has been at the forefront of sports science and development with the Institute of Sport and elite training programs across the professional sporting codes.

The Dutch, among many others, have achieved successful international results, despite their relatively small population; much in the same way the New Zealand All Blacks dominate world rugby.

For both nations, football and union respectively are the national sport, the one code that truly captures the national attention.

The difference is that, per capita, we are one of the most successful sporting nations in the world.

In Australia, the four major professional football codes – AFL, rugby league, rugby union and football- compete for talent, supporters and funding in their search for dominance.

The players are similarly split up – four ways in Queensland and NSW, two ways in most of the AFL States.

With the monetary pull of AFL and the international attraction of football starting to impact on less wealthy sports, even cricket is under a bit of pressure from financial clout of the football/rugby codes and their search for young talent.

What if none of this ever affected Australian football and all the kids only played the sport?

Furthermore, if AFL can attain such impressive attendance and membership figures as an orphan, provincial, one-nation code, imagine if football was the one sport that captured the imaginations of the diehard Collingwood, Port Adelaide and West Coast fans?

The attendance figures and participation rates for Australian sport, individually and in combination, are impressive.

AFL has one of the highest average league attendance figures in world sport, bettered only by NFL in America, Germany’s Bundesliga and the English Premier League.

Super Rugby attracts around 20,000 people to its games and even the NRL, often derided by the southern states as having poor average attendance, is in the worldwide top 20 for averages, with 15-17,000 attending live matches.

The financial clout of Australian sporting franchises cannot be underestimated.

AFL clubs commonly have 40-60,000 paid members, and the top NRL clubs have seen their membership figures grow rapidly from a low base, with Souths and Brisbane tipping over the 20,000 mark.

Television deals for AFL and NRL have exceeded the $1billion mark, and sponsorship is healthy.

Imagine the additional revenue that would be earned by selling our best young talent to major football clubs in Europe and South America. South American teams have made considerable money over the years doing the same thing.

In the parallel Australian sporting universe, Buddy Franklin would be making a multi-million dollar move to Juventus instead of the Sydney Swans, with a $5million transfer fee sweetening the deal for Hawthorn (who would then go and pay $2milion of that windfall on the best young replacement plying their trade in the ‘A League second division’).

Imagine the number of indigenous players who already grace the AFL and NRL fields, plying their trade abroad and the spectacle that would eventuate – Gavin Wangeneen, Nicky Winmar, Peter Burgoyne, David Wirrapanda, Greg Inglis, the list goes on.

There would be European talent scouts flooding the north in search of the next Arthur Beetson or Larry Corowa.

Coming off the back of recent 6-0 losses to quality opposition, it is easy for football fans to bemoan the predictability and inevitability of that Australian football only ever being a poor cousin or ‘work in progress’ in the world game hierarchy, unable to sustainably match it with the big powers in terms of numbers and results.

We might despair at the capacity of the FFA to ever get its act together to punch through the cronyism and backward thinking that has traditionally held back the sport in Australia.

But there is no reason why Australia couldn’t become a big gun of the World Game, no reason why it couldn’t reach the pinnacle of the World Game.

The alternative scenario in this piece is obviously one of fantasy. It will never happen in my lifetime.

Even if Australia reaches – let alone wins- a football World Cup, it will be via a very different trajectory and journey.

However, there is no reason why the FFA should dismiss being in the world’s football elite as a possibility, even if they are thinking of reaching this level as part of a very, very long strategic process.

It may take 100 years, but with every World Cup appearance (regardless of results), more and more Australian sporting fans feel that buzz in their gut generated by the pride and excitement of seeing their countrymen representing Australia in the competition watched with passion by billions.

This feeling of pride and excitement is rarely forgotten.

Very roughly comparative team sporting events like the Rugby World Cup lose that little bit of lustre with every Socceroo World Cup performance.

Confected creations like the hybrid AFL-Gaelic football ‘internationals’ look that much more absurd, and the Mt Everest facing rugby league administrators when trying to increase the legitimacy of international matches grows that much higher into the sky.

All of this is lost in the haze of disappointment resulting from two embarrassing football annihilations. Posing ‘what if’ alternative scenarios to make us feel better doesn’t really help.

However, playing Brazil and then France at this stage of football’s development is a good thing.

Hopefully our great grandchildren can look at the history books and marvel how one of the strongest international footballing nations of the 22nd century could have been humiliated 6-0 in back to back games in 2013, and not be able to ever relate to the feelings Australian football fans are feeling this week.

Football as the national sport? Dare to dream I say.