John Kosmina is the coach of the Adelaide United football club here in Australia. He has established a reputation through playing and coaching Association Football in this country that even I, a barbarian who refers to the game as soccer, can recognise his name as significant to his chosen sport.
He was mentioned in an article I read on “The Roar”, a sporting website that seems to be unusually infested with “soccer” fans where the average punter can respond to articles written by legitimate sports writers or submit articles themselves for publication on any sport of their choosing.
In this article he suggested that all the negativity about “soccer” in this country was generated by other football codes who were jealous of football or “soccer” as most know it and this was contributing to the current trials and tribulations the game is suffering in this country.
Now why the AFL, the richest, most popular, best paying football code in the country would be jealous of a game that barely registers on the national sporting landscape is beyond me.
It has always seemed to me that “soccer” followers, administrators and commentators are the ones that suffer from jealousy when it comes to the other leather ball games in Australia.
Association Football or “soccer” is undoubtedly the most participitory and popular sport in the world. Every country plays it and it’s fanaticism seems to know no bounds with English football fans frequently making the tribal antics at Collingwood look like a juvenile dummy spit!
But it has never caught on in Australia like it has elsewhere.
Here, Aussie Rules and Rugby League have been king with Rugby Union a distant third only just outpacing “soccer” in sporting coverage and financial sponsorship.
Now the game obviously has great appeal given the devotion of it’s adherents worldwide but as a sporting activity it has always left me cold and reaching for the off switch whenever I have spied it on television.
For me, hurtling down a mountainside in the French Alps at 100km an hour on thin as chips tyres has always had a more worthy sporting application. The courage and skill of professional racing cyclists has always inspired me and their willingness to get up and keep going after hurting themselves in spectacular accidents is to me what makes them great sportsman.
Facing the new ball in fading light on a wearing pitch in a game of cricket or hitting the ball up in a game of rugby knowing you are going to get smashed by the opposition forwards or backing into a pack to take a mark in Aussie Rules knowing that up to a dozen 100 kilo brutes are flying the other way in order to foil your intentions always fills me with a spirit of admiration that soccer and it’s stars never has.
So be it. I’m sure Sepp Blatter or Pele don’t have their heads in their hands tonight knowing that Matt Sumner doesn’t like football.
But I do think there is a bewilderment among the followers of the code in Australia that it can seemingly make no headway against the juggernaut that is AFL and to a lesser extent the NRL. If the game is the most popular in the world then it should also be the most popular in Australia! Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.
Aussie Rules, Rugby League and Rugby Union are outstanding products that are very well promoted and have been embraced cuturally in this country as “soccer” never has. I think it is always hard for a sport coming from outside that cultural vice to break into the mainstream.
Soccer in Australia has it’s A-League which as anyone who reads the sports pages knows is struggling at the moment with clubs folding and multi-millionaire owners handing back liscenses for their own self centered reasons. The Football Federation itself is trying to bankroll clubs in the game’s heartland regions but the artificial national competition they have created always seems to be on the point of collapse.
I believe “soccer” has a place in Australia. There is a market for it. But the game’s administrators are trying to achieve in a few short years what it has taken the AFL 150 years to do.
Patience is a virtue and I think, for the moment, soccer administrators need to realise that their game is a long way from matching the dizzying heights of popularity achieved by our one true Australian game, Aussie Rules.
Take it to the heartland and build it slowly from there instead of perservering with the same business model that has failed again and again.
And maybe, a realisation that the game isn’t quite the spectacle they think it is would help. Modesty is of course another virtue.
He was mentioned in an article I read on “The Roar”, a sporting website that seems to be unusually infested with “soccer” fans where the average punter can respond to articles written by legitimate sports writers or submit articles themselves for publication on any sport of their choosing.
In this article he suggested that all the negativity about “soccer” in this country was generated by other football codes who were jealous of football or “soccer” as most know it and this was contributing to the current trials and tribulations the game is suffering in this country.
Now why the AFL, the richest, most popular, best paying football code in the country would be jealous of a game that barely registers on the national sporting landscape is beyond me.
It has always seemed to me that “soccer” followers, administrators and commentators are the ones that suffer from jealousy when it comes to the other leather ball games in Australia.
Association Football or “soccer” is undoubtedly the most participitory and popular sport in the world. Every country plays it and it’s fanaticism seems to know no bounds with English football fans frequently making the tribal antics at Collingwood look like a juvenile dummy spit!
But it has never caught on in Australia like it has elsewhere.
Here, Aussie Rules and Rugby League have been king with Rugby Union a distant third only just outpacing “soccer” in sporting coverage and financial sponsorship.
Now the game obviously has great appeal given the devotion of it’s adherents worldwide but as a sporting activity it has always left me cold and reaching for the off switch whenever I have spied it on television.
For me, hurtling down a mountainside in the French Alps at 100km an hour on thin as chips tyres has always had a more worthy sporting application. The courage and skill of professional racing cyclists has always inspired me and their willingness to get up and keep going after hurting themselves in spectacular accidents is to me what makes them great sportsman.
Facing the new ball in fading light on a wearing pitch in a game of cricket or hitting the ball up in a game of rugby knowing you are going to get smashed by the opposition forwards or backing into a pack to take a mark in Aussie Rules knowing that up to a dozen 100 kilo brutes are flying the other way in order to foil your intentions always fills me with a spirit of admiration that soccer and it’s stars never has.
So be it. I’m sure Sepp Blatter or Pele don’t have their heads in their hands tonight knowing that Matt Sumner doesn’t like football.
But I do think there is a bewilderment among the followers of the code in Australia that it can seemingly make no headway against the juggernaut that is AFL and to a lesser extent the NRL. If the game is the most popular in the world then it should also be the most popular in Australia! Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.
Aussie Rules, Rugby League and Rugby Union are outstanding products that are very well promoted and have been embraced cuturally in this country as “soccer” never has. I think it is always hard for a sport coming from outside that cultural vice to break into the mainstream.
Soccer in Australia has it’s A-League which as anyone who reads the sports pages knows is struggling at the moment with clubs folding and multi-millionaire owners handing back liscenses for their own self centered reasons. The Football Federation itself is trying to bankroll clubs in the game’s heartland regions but the artificial national competition they have created always seems to be on the point of collapse.
I believe “soccer” has a place in Australia. There is a market for it. But the game’s administrators are trying to achieve in a few short years what it has taken the AFL 150 years to do.
Patience is a virtue and I think, for the moment, soccer administrators need to realise that their game is a long way from matching the dizzying heights of popularity achieved by our one true Australian game, Aussie Rules.
Take it to the heartland and build it slowly from there instead of perservering with the same business model that has failed again and again.
And maybe, a realisation that the game isn’t quite the spectacle they think it is would help. Modesty is of course another virtue.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 