ISSN 1834-9277 (Print)
ISSN 1834-9285 (Online)


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Books on Soccerphobia

Johnny Warren, Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters

Reviewed by Ray Jones (contains publication details)


Franklin Foer, How Soccer Explains the World

Review by Ian Syson (contains publication details)

Interview with Foer


Andrei S. Markovits & Steven L. Hellerman, Offside:
Soccer and American Exceptionalism

publication details

Soccerphobe
of the Month

November, 2008

The juggernaut that threatened to come of the last World Cup campaign has failed to materialise.

Soccer is in crisis and Adelaide United's horrendous two losses proved once and for all that something has to be done to fix it.

April, 2008

John Birmingham

"We have a tradition here at the sports desk of never giving soccer an even break.

It is not simply because its woebegone followers are so easy, and so much fun, to stir up. It is because it would be needlessly cruel to do otherwise – to lend them any hope in the face of brute reality."

 

 

 

 

 

Soccerphobia (Australia)

The following quotation from Philip Mosely's Ethnic Involvement in Australian Soccer: A History 1950–1990 (Australian Sports Commission, 1995) indicates what association football had to put up with in years past.

For decades soccer’s rivals had cruised along with virtually no competition. However with each new season in the 1950s they grew restive and even reactionary over soccer’s growth. The strongest responses were found in the Australian Rules states. Particular schools banned soccer and education authorities in charge of school sport were known to hinder the game as best they knew how. For example, staff at White Hills Technical School, Bendigo did not so much ban soccer outright as ban instead the use of school funds for soccer equipment. As early as 1951 buckets of glass were scattered on North Hobart Oval the night before a Tasmanian representative side took the fireld against a visiting English Professional XI. Next season the VFL directed its operatives to secure all available public sporting space in Melbourne in order to stifle the burgeoning threat posed by soccer’s migrant-inspired growth. Similar moves had been made in 1927 and 1928 when British migrants so rattled the VFL that it wrote “with alarm” of this “foreign code”. The 1950s boom in migration promised to be far more of a problem than that of the 1920s. In 1958 a Melbourne soccer club sought to lease a council ground usually used by an Australian Rules club. In response to the application one rules-supporting sneer, “let them play . . . in the gutter”. Melbourne’s reputation for paranoia was crowned in 1965 when youths daubed anti-soccer slogans over Middle Park, chopped down the goalposts and tried to set fire to the grandstand. (59-60)

Below you will find random examples of soccerphobia and its responses. Look to the right to find the usual suspects.

 

DAS LIBERO Issue no.
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Soccerphobia around the world

Australia

Canada

Ireland

New Zealand

South Africa

The United States

 

Australian Soccerphobes
role of honour

John Birmingham
Is Australia ready for a new national game? No,

Leonard Colquhoun
The Obsession of Lenny
*Playing with globalised balls

Michael Duffy
Give World Cup the boot

Steve Price
Uruguay Game 2001

Peter Fitzsimons
at his petulant best
*more spleen

Mike Sheahan
Soccer just too ho-hum
 
*follow up of the above

Michael Voss
Soccer our top sport?

Ray Hadley
What? Me? Hate soccer?
  (scroll down to bottom)

Jason Akermanis
discussed on-line

Email us the details of your favourite Australian soccerphobes

THE ANTI-FOOTBALL LEAGUE
(The real AFL!)

 

 
polls Favourite Australian soccerphobe
Peter FitzSimons
Mike Sheahan
Michael Duffy
Peter Goers
Sean Sowerby
Peter Quartermain
other

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Victoria, 3054
Australia