MATTY'S MAULING

Matty Lamington spits out the latest crumbs from his overcooked paasion for the game of association football. Never one to back down Matty is happy to throw his opinions into the mix.

#2: The F-Word
20 May 2008

There is a word that is taboo. Media outlets will shy away from it; kids will be reprimanded for using it; pub fights will erupt over it . . . that is, of course, unless the word is associated with a sport that does not threaten the VFL (or whatever they call it these days). That word is FOOTBALL.

If the word is mentioned to anyone in the world, apart from gun-toting fat yanks, bogan pie-eating Aussies and a few deluded Irishmen, they immediately think of the main game in the world; the best sport to watch; the best sport to play. So, why is it that these minor sports like Gridiron, Boganball and Gaelic are obsessed with owning the name ‘football’ when it comes to their irrelevant sports?

You see it in American movies, you hear it in the Australian media, especially the VFL puppets in the Melbourne media, where every chance they get, they will ram the F-word down your throat and emphasise “SOKKAH” like it’s a jar of sulphuric acid. The Melbourne media is almost on a Crusade in their use of the word. Redneck outlets like 3AW & the Herald Sun are the biggest offenders almost going into a frenzy to avoid the F-word or emphasise it when it comes to Boganball, even repeating the word six times in a sentence to drum it in to the mindless masses that swallow their garbage.

The media in Melbourne go so far as being factually wrong to avoid using the F-word when it comes to real football. The Football Federation of Australia (FFA) is commonly referred to as Soccer Australia . . . FACTUALLY WRONG! Melbourne Victory Football Club is commonly referred to as Melbourne Soccer Club . . . FACTUALLY WRONG! The Football World Cup is referred to as the Soccer World Cup . . . FACTUALLY WRONG! These are just three of many examples. Does the media call Telstra ‘Telecom’ because it suits their agenda? No they don’t because it’s factually wrong. This begs the question: what else do they report on that is factually wrong? Do we believe these media outlets that have the credibility of New Idea or Women’s Weekly, especially when it comes to reporting on football? I think not!

So I say to those above outlets, F… YOU!!! The game is Football; use the word; embrace the word and maybe find your own F-word to describe your miserable sports. As a great man once said in a recent article in Das Libero, maybe ‘Failure’ is an appropriate F-word . . .

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