What’s this? The Sunday program’s cover story was on “SOCCER.” The Weekend Australian devoted page after page to the “ROUND BALL REBIRTH.” Even the (Anglo-Saxon) Age
on Saturday produced a 24-page tabloid lift-out called “GOAL.” Has the
world gone mad? What have Frank Lowy and John O’Neill put in the water
to get a media reaction like that?

I’ve been following
“wogball” in this country for over 30 years and I’ve never seen
anything like it in the mainstream media. The old Australian Soccer Federation is now called the Football
Federation Australia and the old soccer is now the new football – up to
a point.

But just what is this new-fangled wogball
going to do to get our gonads bouncing about and bending them like
Beckham? Well, first they are going to dip it in green paint and get
all these cool One-Tel dudes to bounce them off walls on the tele to a
vacuous hip-hop tune and the esoteric message: “It’s football, but not
as you know it!” If this is John O’Neill’s answer, I’m buggered if I know
what the question is and why we wasted some $3 million asking it.

Of
course, O’Neill escaped from rugger to soccer just like the original
rugger escaped from soccer in 1863. He doesn’t really understand the
game, or know its rules, but he quite likes it, he told the Sunday
program. He has devised the new A-League so that every major urban area
has the same “one city one team” model – this is designed to “unite the
tribes” according to O’Neill.

Now these “tribes” of traditional
“old soccer” or wogball supporters are proving a wee bit difficult to
pacify and win over to the cause of “new football.”

Old
soccer v new football. Blah! Same old, same old, if you ask me.

The full column is on the site here.