- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Opinion
There is no sporting team that can unify Australia like the Socceroos. There is no domestic competition that can divide them like the A-League.
I’m an AFL writer, but this is no code wars article. I’m the very definition of a casual soccer (yes, yes, football) fan – I tune in at the last moment when we need to win to qualify for the World Cup finals, and then will try and ride every bump along the way once we’re in.
Whether your primary code is AFL, rugby union or league, or even whether you’re not into sport that much at all, there must be plenty like me out there.
And I’d imagine many of them are like me right now, wondering what the hell just happened.
The Socceroos at a World Cup get the pulses of the nation racing like no other team.
The Australian cricket team? Forget it. Too much meaningless cricket, too often. And the smallest possible pool of international competitors. We’re a big fish in a small pond.
The Wallabies? Barely on the radar anymore. The Bledisloe Cup doesn’t register like it once did.
The Olympics, being once every four years like the World Cup, does also capture the nation’s attention. But our attention is divided across sports. We expect to win swimming medals, and more niche sports can provide great stories without necessarily having any staying power.
The Boomers and Hockeyroos really only pop up at every Olympic cycle, but are part of that two week fervour.
Of course, once a decade we might get a Cathy Freeman or Steve Bradbury, but these are individuals more than team.
Tennis and golf also provide individual highlights, and Ash Barty winning the Australian Open this year was a long awaited holy grail.
A horse like Makybe Diva, Black Caviar or Winx comes along every so often, but racing these days is even more niche than the industry would readily admit. Car racing even moreso.
The women’s cricket team is one of the most winningest sporting teams in the world, but are still off-Broadway.
The Matildas will give it a mighty shake in 2024, and will absolutely have the nation behind them if they can make a run in their home World Cup. Again proving that soccer is the sport most likely.
I barely knew any of this current version of the Socceroos a month ago. Andrew Redmayne was the extent of it, thanks to his goalkeeping heroics/theatrics in the final stage of qualifying. Perhaps I had vague memories of Mathew Leckie and Aaron Mooy.
Yet there me and many others were, admiring our pluckiness against France before being well and truly outclassed, our defensive resilience against Tunisia, and our courage and tirelessness against Denmark, running them ragged in the end.
And then, putting the frights up Lionel Messi and Argentina, favourite to win it all, as a $10 underdog.
Two wins. Two clean sheets. Scored in every match. All new Australian records. What a campaign. The nation was buzzing.
It is truly a feeling that can only happen at a World Cup, where we will be always underdogs. Which is who we truly love to identify with, a scrappy fighter against all the odds. It’s part of our national psyche.
Then of course, the administrators stepped in.
The AFL was cowardly and disgusting in releasing their Rd 1 fixture in the middle of the Round of 16 match against Argentina. It was truly pathetic.
But the APL, the organisation that runs the A-League, seemed to kick an own goal by announcing the next three grand finals would all be played in Sydney thanks to a deal with the NSW Government. This, instead of the hosting rights being determined on merit, by ladder position.
The social media backlash was swift, and extreme, even by social media standards. The overwhelming sense was one of betrayal, duplicitousness, and self-interest. This only heightened when various club representatives across the league distanced themselves from the decision, or declared they were uninformed.
No sport in this country seems to shoot itself in the foot more than soccer, and there is no mob that gears up for a fight like a soccer crowd either. Which they certainly proved on Saturday night at the Melbourne Derby.
It was supposed to be a walk-out at the 20 minute mark. It would have been powerful, co-ordinated, dignified. And it would have spoken to an integrity, and carried a weight of feeling that many were going through.
Instead, a small minority decided to have the sport eat itself alive, not even two weeks after it’s highest and most glorious point.
From an outsiders perspective, all it did was reiterate every stereotype that I am sure disgusts 99% of football lovers in Australia. Soccer crowds are dangerous. Mob mentality. Violence. Flares. Injuries. Unsafe for children. Unsafe full stop.
Compare this to the love and joy that was in those crowds at Melbourne’s Federation Square throughout the tournament. Images that carried around the world, and forced other states and cities to create their equivalent.
How in the hell did it come to this?