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Opinion
The huge crowds turning out at FIFA Women’s World Cup venues across Australia and New Zealand are a reminder of the popularity of football – and the irrelevance of mainstream media.
Just under 40,000 fans filed into the Sydney Football Stadium to watch France draw with Jamaica on Sunday night, with the highly fancied French unable to break down the stubborn Jamaican defence.
It followed on from the bumper crowd of almost 45,000 who turned up in Brisbane to watch England struggle to a similarly laboured 1-0 win over minnows Haiti, courtesy of Georgia Stanway’s twice-taken penalty on Saturday night.
Attendances have been decent in New Zealand too – despite the inclement weather – with the Football Ferns’ heroic 1-0 win over Norway in front of a packed Eden Park arguably the match of the tournament so far.
There’s no doubt World Cup fever has well and truly arrived on our shores, with Australia’s tense 1-0 win over the Republic of Ireland last Thursday night making front and back page news.
And it mostly made news for all the right reasons, with stand-in skipper Steph Catley’s expertly dispatched penalty helping to calm the nerves after the Matildas struggled to overcome stiff Irish resistance over the opening 50 minutes of the match.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Yet the reason Catley was handed the armband in the first place irked a certain type of critic – chief among them long-time Daily Telegraph rugby league reporter Dean Ritchie.
“Sam Kerr’s last-minute withdrawal a dishonest way to treat supporters,” thundered Ritchie in a tweet that went up eight minutes after the Matildas kicked off their World Cup campaign.
“The Matildas’ last-minute withdrawal of superstar Sam Kerr was calculating and conniving, and has made all the fans waiting for this historic contest feel pretty foolish,” reckoned Ritchie.
Here’s the thing about Bulldog’s rapidly-written column. I have no idea what it said because it was locked behind a paywall, and not being remotely interested in whatever the NRL is up to on any given day, I have zero need to ever read The Daily Telegraph.
But it did the business either way, with Ritchie’s tweet racking up more than 270,000 views on Twitter – even if the overwhelming majority of responses were negative reactions to a column no one read.
Negative reactions are a stock-in-trade for News Corp publications these days, which is why news.com.au‘s weekend World Cup coverage was anchored by stories like: “USA anthem protest draws severe backlash, “Handshake snub exposes relationship rumour,” and “’Utter joke’: Fury at World Cup streaming fail”.
And since it’s not every day a major FIFA tournament lobs up on our shores, perhaps we should forgive the old-school journos raised on a more familiar regime of Tuesday arvo team sheets and text messages to coaching staff.
But it was hard not to notice that plenty of those complaining about the Matildas failing to inform anyone of Kerr’s calf injury – as if any right-minded coach in any other code wouldn’t do exactly the same – all hailed from a rather narrow demographic.
No doubt punters were aggrieved by Kerr’s late withdrawal, with plenty of bets invariably placed on the Aussie attacker finishing as the tournament’s top scorer.
Yet none of that is Tony Gustavsson’s concern, and the carping from certain quarters on Thursday night smacked of ignorance.
Sam Kerr could be out for the balance of the World Cup (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
In the absence of having anything remotely insightful to say, why not conjure up some clicks by stirring up a bit of controversy instead?
Which is a shame, because as the packed stands and joyous scenes that have played out across Australia and New Zealand have proved so far, there’s much more positivity to be enjoyed around the tournament instead.
The Matildas’ clash with Nigeria in Brisbane on Thursday night has been sold out for weeks.
And the Women’s World Cup has captured the imagination of sports lovers across Australia and New Zealand – whether the mainstream media likes it or not.