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With your team advancing to the quarter-finals after the win against Mexico, I know you are probably extremely busy, however, I write to you in the desperate hope that you might do me a significant favour.
Australia is a beautiful place, as you know. Long, picturesque coastlines, wonderful food and wine, and a passionate populace that values sport, culture and entertainment.
The affluence here permits us to participate in our hobbies and passions; wide and varied as they are.
What would be helpful for you to know is that football isn’t enjoyed by much of the population. I know that may come as a shock, but if you say the word ‘football’ out loud in Australia, a host of other images come to mind.
Some people here actually still call your game soccer – crazy hey? Down Under, football is widely used to describe rugby league and our indigenous game, Australian rules. Many people also enjoy rugby, which I am not sure you have had the chance to see.
It is a weird game, with plenty of kicking and played by colossal men with stomachs capable of consuming your little five foot, nine inch frame in one fell swoop.
The rugby league boys are also huge athletes capable of knocking the living feijoada out of you in an instant. Australian rules players are endurance driven; many running up to 15 kilometres per game. You would really like them as I feel you may have something in common.
The issue is that the millions of Australians who enjoy these sports, dislike football.
[latest_videos_strip category=”football” name=”Football”]
As part of explaining why, may I ask a favour? Could you please stop rolling around on the pitch in artificial pain?
We all know it is insincere. You actually look like a bit of a twit when you do it and while South American and European fans might pass it off as a part of the game, and expected histrionics in search of sanction for the opposition, you are killing us down here.
Football in Australia began to significantly grow through the 1950s and ’60s, when migrants from all over the world came to our shores. Naturally, they started to kick around a sphere.
The burly, beer-drinking Aussie men didn’t like it too much and saw their step overs and nutmegs as emasculating skills.
Aussie men generally preferred running directly at each other and colliding like human cannonballs. Other men stood around with large glasses filled to the brim with beer and wet their pants with laughter when someone was injured.
Players in all games were encouraged to physically intimidate and do whatever it took to gain a psychological advantage over opponents.
Insults were traded, eyes gouged, tripping of players became popular, scrotums were grabbed (and bitten in one case) and in a moment of genius, a finger was even inserted into the anus of an opposition player.
Former NRL player John Hopoate (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)
The violence and aggression became immensely popular among the young and impressionable, and generation after generation of fans were born.
The only thing that topped the playing of the game itself was the violent brawls that became common when tensions rose. Australia celebrated in all the raw glory of watching athletes king hit, knocked out and assaulted.
All the while, football competitions struggled to gain traction; obviously burdened with a reputation that its players lacked the toughness and manly qualities of the more traditional games.
The big meanies even made up names for people who enjoyed the round-ball game. Terms such as ‘girl’, ‘fairy’, ‘lady boy’, ‘fag’ and ‘poofter’ became common insults directed at football fans. I am not sure of the Portuguese equivalents for these terms, but I am sure they exist.
Collectively, the game became known as ‘wog ball’. Australia embraced the term ‘wog’ like no other nation. We have wog ball, wog mansions, wog style and even a new stage show called Star Wogs.
Since that time, the offence in the word has dropped off to some extent, yet still, at the core of Australian society lies an ever-present suspicion of the World Game and its propensity to culturally destroy our island nation.
Even though our national league has grown and become a tasty part of our sporting palette, your incessant, diving, rolling and play acting is beginning to re-invigorate anti-football sentiment in this country.
For the sake of Australian football, please stop!
Facebook and Twitter are rife with parodies of your silliness and headlines around the world are calling you out for your Oscar-like performances. Can’t you see what you are doing?
Footballing backwaters like Australia don’t need more ammunition for our macho population to kick sand in our faces all over again.
Just yesterday I was verbally assaulted while wearing my Mexican strip before your match with them. Yes, I was supporting them, you thespian.
A man shouted out, “Go and play wog ball somewhere else you diving, rolling, poofter lady boy.”
I was hurt.
Therefore, for the remaining matches in Russia, could you please stop the theatrics and play football. Australian fans would greatly appreciate it.
Stuart Thomas