Socceroos!

Stu's insightful piece on the countdown to the World Cup in South Africa next year got me thinking. And then I found this, and didn't need to think anymore, because someone else did the thinking for me:

When I sit at the brekkie table, in the post-shiraz fog which has characterized my (happy) life, I thank Divine Providence for three things. I am grateful for Vegemite which restores the delicate balance of an athlete’s physiology; I marvel at the effect of black Aspirin (Coca-Cola from the can); and I am just so pleased that God didn’t confer on me the gift of yelling, “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie: Oi, Oi, Oi.”

Now I feel a deep relationship with the land on which I walk, and its people, and its culture. I know that because I feel it. At home, and away. In my travels around the globe, even when the excitement of new places and people has me on a high, I have a strong sense that Australia remains home.

But I don’t feel any need to express that by wearing a big sombrero and a yellow T-shirt and chanting, “Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi.”

However I will admit this: although I find jingoism mindless, and the national chest-thumping which accompanies the Commonwealth Games and other folk festivals ridiculous, there are occasions when the jumper leads of an international sporting fixture will jolt me into Frankensteinian life.

And it sometimes surprises me when it happens. (And when it doesn’t.)

My Offsiders' (Barrie Cassidy’s sports show which follows the must-see Inside Business) colleague, Gerard Whateley and I have been musing over the question onto which Australian sporting side are Australians most projecting their nationalist feelings.

It’s not an insignificant question culturally, and certainly not insignificant commercially. This is about national identity and there are rivers of gold for the sporting administration which can garner support by presenting itself as the embodiment of national aspirations.

For a long time it was the cricket team. From the late nineteenth century until that moment – and we can try to pinpoint the time – when cricket became another product in the sports market. A survey of the national news services will show that cricket is buried three-deep in the sports reports behind the football codes and the barney outside the local night club. And we’re mid-Ashes. (If we’re talking about the trend of the graph, S.C.G. MacGill is not doing much to send it north.)

In Queensland and New South Wales it has been the rugby side (if you drink pinot) and the rugby league side (if you drink Jim Beam). I’d argue that people south of the Barassi Line feel a greater connection to the rugby side, and will watch a test match when it is conveniently scheduled for TV viewing, although given the choice between an early-Saturday-afternoon Bledisloe Cup match from Christchurch, and walking the dog to the TAB to put on a Flemington quaddie, the quaddie would start favourite.

This year the industrial dispute that is Australian rugby (not quite as bad as the industrial dispute that is Caribbean cricket – yet) and the fact that Australia is the outsider in Tri-nations betting ($3.55 on Betfair) haven’t served the cause.

Forget about the national rugby league side.

It’s not only teams. Sometimes individuals carry with them a groundswell of nationalist support. There will be some enthusiasm for Adam Scott in the British Open (but that’s not so much nationalist sentiment as it is the best wishes to a bloke who’s found a decent spot for his slippers) as there was for Sam Stosur and Lleyton Hewitt at Wimbledon.

Not to forget motor-racing and its appeal to our inner (national) bogan (as Catherine Deveny would say). I was surprised the tabloids didn’t print a lift-out when Mark Weber won pole-position on the weekend. I’d love to know what went on in the editor’s office when he crossed the line first at Nurburgring.

Then there is the slightly different form of attachment precipitated by the national game. Indigenous in nature, it captures something of what it means to live on this continent – for those who find it meaningful. And many at the MCG and sitting in front of TVs from Yelarbon to Yallourn to Yuendumu felt whatever that connection might be during Liam Jurrah’s first half yesterday.

But I think over the next 12 months it will be the Socceroos (as Gerard Whateley suggests) who find themselves the principal national team. Partly because of the respect for the depth of world football. Partly because it is fresh and growing. Partly because the team is on the rise.

But also because the mainstream commercial media have turned: they can no longer ignore the advertising dollars that their coverage of soccer will bring.

While this love of soccer has always existed in sections of the Australian community the mainstream media have worked to protect the minor empires that have been the local skippy codes. That has changed.

Which brings me to the other reason. Enough of us now imagine ourselves to be citizens of a genuinely multicultural nation, and soccer is profoundly symbolic of that.

Sorry Ricky Ponting and Cricket Australia, as important as you are in the national culture, your spot is being challenged.

While it does ignore the fact that our national squad is aging, and their don't appear to be any new Harry Kewell's on the horizon, there's no doubt that The World Game has more support in Australia than ever. Let's hope FFA have the future of Australian football in hand...