The Brits Are Taking Notice

Ben Sandilands’ knowledge of Australian football and its history is way off the mark for him to claim that “before the Socceroos….played their first match in Germany this month and made their first World Cup Appearance since 1974, almost no one old enough to vote, drink or drive even knew the rules of the game”. Where did you collect his statistics? Did he ask 50 people in a shopping centre at about 4.5pm on a Saturday afternoon, in Earls Court, London? His article is so supercilious’; the you-know-old-chap “A week or two into the tournament Australia remains ’soccer illiterate’”. Oh dear, the mother country must be so surprised we play THEIR game so well. Thank you for the compliments, Benjamin, jolly good. Tally-ho, then.

Posted from  Australia

thats a funny article. the aussie rules description was the funny bit. slightly insulting and illinformed i think. he left out the greatest change that aussie rules is suffering more than rugby and cricket. i mean cricket for gods sake is played in summer. so thats not going to be infected. but overall i’m glad australia is becoming more competitive in the only truly world cup that every nation has a crack at. i do feel empty when we win cricket world cups or rugby world cups because they arent sports a majority of the world compete in. so eventually national pride says we must go for the one trophy that we havent won. thats the fifa world cup. and the world knows us australians that we will not rest untill we have won it. its a matter of when not if as far as i’m concerned. unlike other nations in the world that have been around for so long, they want to win it the cup dont get me wrong, the mental attitude is they have been there done that its just expected from them from there respective nations. look at brazil. won it twice out of the last three cups. they just expect to win. every team in the world expects to lose to brazil. or they try to win but arent disapointed when they lose. every thing is fresh for australia. a good mental attitude, a good physical toughness and a never say die attitude. look out world for australia!

Posted from  Australia

Cricket has more to fear from soccer as long as the A-league is played in the summer.

Obviously the article was full of a lot of generalisations, but I think anybody reasonably intelligent reading it would have to assume that there are quite a lot of people in Australia who do know the rules. At least 23, anyway.

Posted from  Australia

Interesting article, thanks Matt. I dunno why you’d run with quotes from Roy Master (of all people!) and Mark Webber, who confessed a couple of weeks ago in an F1 press conference that he didn’t know who Australia’s first round opponents were

I’m not so sure about Mark assertion that 10 years ago you couldn’t find fields with football goals either. I’m the same age as Mark (a year older infact ), and there were “soccer” goals on just about every public oval or field where I grew up. Maybe things were different in Queanbeyan.

Posted from  Sweden

I searched for “how to play football” on google trends, a statistically based analysis of countries and cities whom have “googled” particular phrases or words. The top ten cities comprised of 7 american cities, with Houston coming in first, Melbourne came in ranked seventh but BIRMINGHAM of the UK came in at number 2. “how to play soccer” on the other hand was, i suppose a little predictable with (as far as i know) only two countries do or have used the term, the US of A and Aus. Subsequently Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane came top three with the other 7 spots filled by yank land cities.

Posted from  Australia

RESPECT to our down-under brothers! Let’s both win and advance today!

This was one of the most biased and ill-informed articles I have read in a while. Ben obviously did no reasearch for this article. Football (Soccer) is the most played sport in Australia. This is only one of a spate of recent articles coming out of Britain that try to degrade Australia in some way. Many paint a picture of an ignorant, racist or hugely macho society. I would say this is no more the case than anywhere else in the world and possibly less.

Posted from  Australia

Bojaman, I can answer the reason Birmingham was ranked. Look at their two biggest teams, Birmingham City and Aston Villa. Neither are exactly setting English football alight. Perhaps Bruce and OLeary jumped on for some insight in to how to run things

Posted from  Australia

What I would like to see is an Ashes style football series. What bigger rivalry is ther than Aus v England. Though there isn’t really a lot to play for it would still be a good battle each year. Especially considering we beat them last time. Another one of those things the Brits dismiss as a ’stupid meaningless friendly’

Posted from  Australia

Socceroooossss Celebrates….

What can I say? I just reported on the end game tactics of Australia to capitalize on Croatia’s weaker defense because of banned player Robert Kojac sitting out the last game.

The game is arguably the most exciting and heart stopping show so …

Posted from  United States

Football has been played in Australia since the 1880’s.

It is not the major code but to portray that ‘Australia knows nothing about the game’ is silly. As saying that Australian Rules is “a cross between a pub brawl and gaelic football”.

Stupid comment. It is the reverse of saying that soccer is boring or for sissies.

Posted from  Australia

Matt the game between England and Australia was a friendly.

Last night was brilliant and you guys deserve to go through. You have done so well in such a difficult group. I think you will beat Italy as well.

Posted from  Australia

Yes, Matt, it was a friendly. Between a (soccer) football “backwater” and the self proclaimed home of football.

I’m sorry, but Australia’s team has been derided by english supporters for so long, and we had our one chance to play against our masters…and beat them.

England either weren’t as good as Australia or underestimated us at their peril. Australia won. Call it what you like.

I’d be the first to admit that Australia is not as good as England, but you can only beat the side that is put up against you.

To deride Australia’s team, then underestimate them by either fielding an understrength side or just not not taking them seriously is not our problem. We won.

We were ranked at 44 before the World Cup. Now we’re in the 2nd round. At worst we should move up the rankings.

The worst part is the USA is out, beaten by Ghana. We won’t get a chance to tame their a***.

Posted from  Australia

About that Aust-England friendly. I was working in Moscow at the time with alot of English folk.

Before the game: We’re gonna beat you! Finally, agame we can smash the Aussies at! It’ll be 10-0! Revenge for the Ashes! Aussies play football? What a Joke!

After the game: It was only a friendly, who cares.

Posted from  Australia

Also, England played a close to first team side for the first half and Aust went into the break leading.

Posted from  Australia

I have been a Socceroo fan for as long as I can remember. I do ot watch any other forms of “soccer” as I’m not a fan of the game. I watch the “wallabies” and “Kangaroo’s” play rugby. I do not watch any other forms of this sport as I’m not a fan of it.
I am a biased AFL fan and will watch any “Aussie rules” game.

In saying this I know all the rules in all forms of “football” (maybe not 100% on the union though). I think that as Aussies we try and learn the rules to sports that we watch. If this Ben Sandilands character thinks that it is a bad thing that Australians are looking up on how to play a game that has just attracted millions more supporters here then It proves that not only is he ignorant when it comes to researching his “news worthy articles” but also when watching sports he may not be accustomed to.
I am proud of the fact that Australians seem to not only “jump on the band wagon” but when we do we want to make sure we understand what and why our players/ opposition and ref’s are doing when a game is in progress.
We wont watch 15minutes of a foreign game and decide it is a version of ” a cross between a pub brawl and gaelic football”.
Harry kewell speaks with an english accent?? sure does but I am yet to hear anything here negative or warranting mention in an article from someone estabilshed enough in the “news world” that he has a gig writing tid-bits in “The Observer”.
Im sorry now I am rambling in this post,and when I do that I tend to go off track from my original idea.A bit like Ben Sandilands has done in his article it seems. After all Im sure that all he set out to do in the first place was to congratualte his poorer cousins from the other sude of the world for performing much better than anyone outside of Australian “soccer” thought we could do. As I’m sure he also meant to wish us luck for our coming game against the Italians.
As one of his fellow English sporting commentators once said
“Australian sports thrives , one reason is because of self-belief, something that seems to be handed out to every Australian along with their birth certificate”.
Enough said.
I belive that we have done well in this world cup, I belive that we will beat Italy, I belive that we can go as far as the final. I belive we can win the world cup.

Posted from  Australia

I have emailed the guardian letting them know my thoughts. You can also email them if you like and let them know your thoughts.
Their email is
reader@guardian.co.uk

Posted from  Australia