Aussies through!

[cwphoto]

Held on for a draw against the Croats this morning - woohoo!!:)

[cpaussie]

I missed the game:(
Must have been a great game.
Our power went off and did't go back on until 6:30 am.

[cwphoto]

Scrappy, but typical Aussie come from behind, gritty win.

Ref lost control of the game (3 were sent off - one of them actually received three yellow cards in one game!:confused: ), and our goalie was terrible but Harry Kewell slotted the important goal.

[coldrain]

uhmmm...

"I told you so" :eek: :cool: :rolleyes: ;)

[cwphoto]

Italy next.:cool:

[cpaussie]

I'll have to watch the replay.
Next match should be interesting.

[noyjimi]

Heheh, around this area, when you're "through," it means you're done - eliminated. :D

[arigato]

Out of curiosity, how popular is soccer in Australia? Here just outside of Washington D.C., people are completely clueless despite ABC advertising it. The news dedicates no more than 10 seconds to it for all the games that day, and gives 1 baseball game 30 seconds. My wife went to the store and was wearing a jersey (Italy) on the day the US was to play Italy and people stopped her and said, "whats that?" "The US is playing soccer today?" Pretty sad.

The US would probably get alot more into it if we won a World Cup, but if no one cares how can you get the talent to win?

[JTL]

Out of curiosity, how popular is soccer in Australia? Here just outside of Washington D.C., people are completely clueless despite ABC advertising it. The news dedicates no more than 10 seconds to it for all the games that day, and gives 1 baseball game 30 seconds. My wife went to the store and was wearing a jersey (Italy) on the day the US was to play Italy and people stopped her and said, "whats that?" "The US is playing soccer today?" Pretty sad.

The US would probably get alot more into it if we won a World Cup, but if no one cares how can you get the talent to win?The U.S. was in the world cup? Isn't that some kind of sailboat race? :p

[cwphoto]

Out of curiosity, how popular is soccer in Australia? Here just outside of Washington D.C., people are completely clueless despite ABC advertising it. The news dedicates no more than 10 seconds to it for all the games that day, and gives 1 baseball game 30 seconds. My wife went to the store and was wearing a jersey (Italy) on the day the US was to play Italy and people stopped her and said, "whats that?" "The US is playing soccer today?" Pretty sad.

The US would probably get alot more into it if we won a World Cup, but if no one cares how can you get the talent to win?
How popular? Very popular right now!

It's probably one of the most popular Winter ball-sports for boys, along with Australia Rules (which is played nationally but is more popular in the Southern States) and Rugby League (which is less national but dominates in the Northern States). Cricket is by far the most popular sport in Summer.

Which begs the question why we don't dominate the game Internationally like we do Rugby League and Cricket. Partly because it hasn't been managed well from the top down in the past. The local National League was very much based on ethnic groups so mainstream Australia tended to stay away at League level - and there was plenty of rioting and bickering that come with ethnic tensions (Serbs vs Croats for example).

As a consequence it enjoyed poor popularity due to the perceived violence and closed enthnicities at games, and so corporations didn't invest because they didn't want to be associated with it - a vicious cycle.

So even though it's a very popular youth sport, typically those youths gave the game away when they got older to pursue other sports at League level.

A few years ago a revolution of sorts happened and the administrators got their act together and disbanded all the ethnic clubs and replaced them with clubs based on geography. They also changed to a summer competition so that they didn't compete with Rugby League or Aussie Rules which are very strong. They got their shit together with marketing, signed some big overseas players and coaches and all the cities started to get behind their club.

I think as a nation we are fanatical about International sports for which we are competitive. And for so long we didn't ever qualify for the World Cup (we have to qualify through South America which is almost impossible when you see the strength of those teams), so we kinda lost interest. But recently the game has been building and all of a sudden we qualified for the World Cup for the first time and the whole country went bananas with soccer overnight.

Even if we didn't win another game in the WC, this has been an historic turning point for the game in this country. Every newspaper in the country would have today's victory against Croatia as the headline - that's every single paper. It was the leading story on radio breakfast shows and all evening news broadcasts from every network ran with the soccer result as their opening story tonight. We only have five free-to-air networks, and one of them (SBS) has exclusive rights to broadcasting the WC - it's practically 24-hour soccer or related stories with three games back to back (many not even featuring Australia obviously) being broadcast every single night - this is free-to-air TV, not cable!

To answer your question, it has always been popular at a grass-roots level - most children I know from my son's school would play the game in some form. It was reported casually in the papers etc, but now that we are at the WC it is on the everyone's mind. They even had thousands of people watching in the middle of winter at 3:00 in the morning outside in a big city park! It's just gone crazy.

[cwphoto]

Out of curiosity, how popular is soccer in Australia? Here just outside of Washington D.C., people are completely clueless despite ABC advertising it. The news dedicates no more than 10 seconds to it for all the games that day, and gives 1 baseball game 30 seconds. My wife went to the store and was wearing a jersey (Italy) on the day the US was to play Italy and people stopped her and said, "whats that?" "The US is playing soccer today?" Pretty sad.

The US would probably get alot more into it if we won a World Cup, but if no one cares how can you get the talent to win?

Hey did you know we are playing Italy next?

That's interesting, because from overseas we see the US as an emerging soccer great - although they've always had an easy ride into the WC because FIFA want the game to succeed in the world's biggest economy (for obvious reasons) - it's interesting that Bernie Ecclestone (F1) doesn't have the same attitude!

[cwphoto]

Remember, this is the front-page news headlines from our country's biggest paper - not back-page sport (it's a special edition for chrissakes - even QANTAS had a special front-page ad ready, and not even one mention of any other piece of news on the front-page):

[arigato]

Thats great that its taking off there. Yup im aware that you all are playing Italy, Ill be following the game by radio or TV depending on if I have to work.

[cwphoto]

less than 12 hours to go now...:)

[cwphoto]

Under four hours now...:)

[rawpaw18]

Somebody check on Christian and make sure he is O.K.

[cwphoto]

Gutted...:(

[aparmley]

Gutted...:(

Its progress still, no? ;)

[cwphoto]

Yeah sure. The result is probably fair as Italy's defense was incredible being a man down for most of the second half and we had a lot of chances to win the match during that period but couldn't convert.

The way it happened though just ripped my heart out. I thought International Rugby Referees were bad...

[aparmley]

I thought International Rugby Referees were bad...

They weren't french were they?

Did you see the Russian refs wonderful job with the Portugal v Netherlands game? He lost it. . .

OT - but have you seen this commercial CW? One of the best commericials I think I've ever seen. . .

Nike Soccer Commercial (http://www.nike.com/nikesoccer/justdoit/spot/video.html)

[cwphoto]

...should have been more prepared:

http://usa.worldcupblog.org/group-e/secret-italian-training-video.html

[cwphoto]

They weren't french were they?

Did you see the Russian refs wonderful job with the Portugal v Netherlands game? He lost it. . .

Hmmm, how did you know?:cool:

Missed that game, Coldy would have seen it though?

[rawpaw18]

I feel for you cdub, we can get seriously attatched to our sports teams. I just heard about the ending but I did not see it. Sounded like a real kick in the shorts.

[aparmley]

Hmmm, how did you know?:cool:

Missed that game, Coldy would have seen it though?

Most bookings in world cup history I believe. . . !

[cwphoto]

Most bookings in world cup history I believe. . . !

Really? I'll check it out.

The standard of Refereeing is atrocious - we have a much better standard at club level.

For an International event such as the World Cup (arguably the top sporting event in the world next to the Olympics) you'd think they'd get their shit together.:rolleyes:

[aparmley]

Yellow Cards - 12
Red Cards - 4

I think the previous record was 15 . . . But I'm not a die hard fan - In my older age I'm enjoying soccer more and more.

[cwphoto]

Yellow Cards - 12
Red Cards - 4

I think the previous record was 15 . . . But I'm not a die hard fan - In my older age I'm enjoying soccer more and more.

Wow, that's amazing.

I think soccer can take a few lessons from some of the other codes in how things are run. Like I know of no other code where you are allowed to bully the ref like they do, or where the administration publicly berates a ref (no matter how bad the decision is), or where players cheat so much (taking a dive can change the course of history, as we have just witnessed).

It really spoils the game for us Aussies and is why we have resisted soccer's call for so long and stuck with our own home-grown football.

There's an interesting view of the whole thing here:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/aussie-update/why-the-sleeping-giant-is-more-like-a-bad-soprano/2006/06/27/1151174202868.html

[aparmley]

Wow, that's amazing.

I think soccer can take a few lessons from some of the other codes in how things are run. Like I know of no other code where you are allowed to bully the ref like they do, or where the administration publicly berates a ref (no matter how bad the decision is), or where players cheat so much (taking a dive can change the course of history, as we have just witnessed).



In my opinion that russian ref had his hands full and probably was the sole barer of the blame for that game. They said he lost control of the game - but when you deal with two teams that don't play with class I think this kinda thing is going to happen.

I LMAO when I see all the diving going on and think that those flamboient actors should be booked for how they intended to disrupt the flow of the game. But like I said - I'm not all that is soccer so I speak a little ignorantly about the topic.

[cwphoto]

teams that don't play with class.

Quoted for truth.

[aparmley]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/aussie-update/why-the-sleeping-giant-is-more-like-a-bad-soprano/2006/06/27/1151174202868.html

Just finished it - good article by the way - the author shares a lot of my viewpoints on the sport and the port v neth game too.

[cwphoto]

Says it all really:

[aparmley]

Says it all really:

LMAO :D :eek:

[rawpaw18]

Says it all really:

That is funny. Good to see you are putting it behind you.