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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)
|
Regulars
Phillip
Dimitriadis
Adrian Deans
Ben Goldsmith
Roy Hay
Paul Mavroudis
Ian Syson
Occasionals
Jesse
Fink
Tony Wilson |
Australian
Soccerphobe
of
the Month
June,
2009

Phil
Rothfield
G’day
Dave. It’s a terrible, terrible waste of money. The PM and Kate
Ellis keep handing out all this money to SOCCER but brush the real football
codes that are far more popular. Frank Lowy has obviously got powerful
mates in government.
February,
2009

Geoff
Roach
I TRY, you know.
I really do try to enjoy and appreciate soccer. To the extent of regularly
watching televised coverage from the A-league all the way up to international
level.
There is no doubt
I'm often hugely impressed by the intuitive skill and marvellous reflexes
displayed by the players and the fanatical devotion and involvement
of the fans.
So, it must just
be the game itself that bores me . . . well . . . witless.
November,
2008
Rebecca
Wilson
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."
|
Below you will find
random examples of soccerphobia and its responses. Look to the right to
find the usual suspects.
- Jul 12, 2010 Time
for Australia to get behind the 2022 World Cup bid (pro-soccer)
comment on World Cup bid
- Jul 2010, Jim Main Bring
on the Beautiful Game
- Jul 1, 2010 World
Cup soccer fans abandon reality for fantasy, says Neil Mitchell
- Jun 30. 2010 Jason Akermanis 'Soccer
takes a dive at World Cup'
- Jun 26, 2010 Rebecca Wilson 'An
ordinary display'
- Jun 25, 2010 James Hird, 'Who
dares wins'
- Jun 24, 2010, Football,
football, football...
- Jun 17, 2010 Danny Katz, 'Some
people just don't get it'
- Jun 15 2010, John Birmingham, 'Soccer
in Australia will never be anything more than a lame joke'
- Jun 13 2010, 'NRL
faces a new foe'
- Jun 2010, 'Sorry,
but I’m not sold on the Socceroos yet'
- Jun 9 World
Cup diving
- Jun/July 2010, John Birmingham on 'Soccer's
Blown Goal'
- May 28 2010, All
aboard the ’soccer haters’ bandwagon!
- May 25 2010, 'Socceroos
snorefest a sign of things to come'
- Jun 21, 2009, Star
breaks silence on 'disgraceful' behaviour (Phil Rothfield reveals
what is starting to look like his obsession)
- Jun 18, 2009, Tim
Cahill's sour grapes overshadow win Adam Mobbs
- Jun 17, 2009, Pampered
soccer elite could learn from League by Stathi Paxinos ('sub-moronic'
would be a kind assessment)
- Jun 14, 2009, 'Socceroos
star Tim Cahill allegedly in altercation with bouncers in Kings Cross'
by David Riccio (while Riccio has a modicum of a point, his hysteria
and use of hyperbole point to a highly developed soccerphobia)
- Jun 14, 2009, NRL
would throw the book at Cahill
- Jun 13, 2009, Heroic
Socceroos in desperate need of a few scamps and villains (not as
phobic as some but still silly)
- Jun 10, 2009, Why
Pim is holding soccer back (Phil Rothfield giving some advice to
the game he despises)
- Feb 14, 2008, 'Defensive
soccer bores me witless'
- Nov 17, 2008 'Columnist
Rebecca Wilson slams Reds as humiliating'
- Nov 13, 2008 'Quality
beats home-grown' Richard Hinds
- Mar
11, 2007 'Put
a soccer in it: Why I can't stand the game',
Peter Goers
- Jan 30, 2007
I
don't like Soccer - it's a Stupid Game Phill Chadwick
- June 28, 2006
Ugly
aspects of the beautiful game, Malcolm Knox,
- June 27, 2006
A
force more powerful than footy,
Gary Lyon (a thoughtful and positive piece by the ex-AFL star about
rejecting soccerphobia)
- June 20, 2006 Is
Australia ready for a new national game? No, John Birmingham (Originally
published in the Bulletin but wisely taken
down from their site)
- May 16, 2006 +
May 31, 2005
Can You Smell the Fear? Parts 1 and 2 ,
Simon Hill
- Nov
27 2005 World
game needs a little respect to win us over, Kevin Naughton
+ Phil
Chadwick's response
- Nov 19, 2005 Why
I fear for our own beautiful game, Geoffrey Blainey, (a good piece
that openly and temperately expresses the author's fears for Australian
Rules)
- December 18, 2004,
Richard Hinds Call
it what you like, but to many of us it's just not footy
(a reasonable piece that nonetheless misunderstands the fact that Rugby
League and Australian Rules are not cultural equivalents)
- May 23 2003 AFL
can repel soccer challenge: SOS
- Anyone
for a game of Wogball? Anthony Ferguson
- Soccer,
the racist code! (this article has been since edited to remove
some of its silliness -- though some still remains)
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