Byron Shire Echo July 3, 2007 35
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Sports Roundup with John Campbell
The game that has found its feet and is ready to roll John Campbell Soccer or football, whichever you prefer, has been for too long the sleeping giant of Australian sport, perennially on the verge of taking off and becoming the mega entertainment that it is overseas. Events at Kaiserslautern in June 2006 provided the game in Oz with its greatest boost for yonks. Who didn’t go up when Tim Cahill slotted the ball into the back of the net in Australia’s opening game against Japan, becoming Australia’s first ever goal scorer at the World Cup ďŹ nals? And who didn’t go completely spare when John Aloisi dribbled through the defence to shoot in that scintillating third? But for mine, the memory most touching, the one that will linger longest, is of Rale Rasic after the game against Croatia. Rale, if you’ll remember, was coach of the Australian team led by Peter Wilson that made it to the World Cup, also in Germany, in 1974. It was, until 2006, our only appearance on sport’s biggest and most watched stage. In last year’s tie against Croatia, we needed a draw to progress to the second stage of the tournament. Nobody had really given the team much hope of getting beyond the preliminaries, but, after defeating the Japs
Juventus v Celtic at Goonengerry. Picture by John Campbell
and playing brilliantly against Brazil, suddenly anything was possible. Australia trailed 0-1 after a Zelco ‘Spider’ Kalac howler in goal and it seemed we were doomed. Then cool Harry Kewell got the equaliser, and the boys had done it. Back in the SBS studios, at some ungodly hour in the morning, was the panel of experts, Rale among them. Jowlier now, and with his hair turned silver, he sat with a green and gold scarf
wrapped around his neck. When the camera closed in on him you could see that his eyes were brimming with tears. I’d be the last bloke to have a dig at Rale for for being so lachrymose (I cried just in the previews of Eight Below), so I went out in sympathy with him. It has been a long road to hoe for Rale and the true believers. As fans, we all invest our strongest passions in the sport that we know best
and, almost invariably, it is the one that we grew up with. In my case it’s rugby league. But attending an inner city school at which names such as Kaladelfos, Mavromades, Bertocchi and Rissicato were commonplace, I was exposed to the round ball game at an early age. I could not make head nor tail of it and, like my Anglo mates, referred to it derisively as wogball (and don’t think for one minute that our Mediterranean cousins didn’t make
fun of us in return). At the back of the paper, buried behind the usual four or ďŹ ve pages of league, you would find reports of matches played between strange sounding sides in vertically striped jerseys; Yugal, Pan Hellenic, Hakoah, Apia. The establishment of these clubs was of inestimable worth to migrants newly arrived in this country who, as is only natural, sought out their own kind to help cope with the challenges of a new environment. But the clubs’ exclusiveness was unarguably a hindrance to the development of the game in the broader community. We’ve all moved on since those days, with the overdue decision to abandon the ethnically based competitions in favour of a professional, nationally based premiership a watershed. Two seasons in and the A-League, successor to the NSL, is ourishing, if not yet to the point where it is strong enough to challenge the two rugbys and ‘rules for a decent share of the winter market.’ I’ve been willing it to happen since my road to Damascus moment in England many moons ago. Living in London, it seemed only logical that I should check out a game (‘when in Rome, do as the Romanians’ has been a lifelong credo), so I got the tube to Stamford Bridge and
paid a scalper ten quid to watch Chelsea host Man U. It was a thrilling, end to end contest (Blues 1 Red Devils 3). In it I missed league’s raw physicality, but I enjoyed the other skills on show. Henceforth I became a regular at White Hart Lane, Highbury, and Loftus Road (home to QPR, my team sigh) and even learnt to accept the validity of a nil all draw, a scoreline which, probably more than anything, has curtailed the game’s growth in the more reward-oriented US. This month the Socceroos (don’t you reckon it’s time they lost that naf nickname?) are competing in the Asian Cup. Our presence there – and it won’t be just to make up the numbers – is testament to the quality of player we are now producing and, more than that, is a further step in Australia’s self realisation of its place in the world.
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All’s well that ends well at Donnelly Field John Campbell It was as cold as charity on Saturday evening at the Les Donnelly Field. The NRRRL A Grade ďŹ xture between the Mullum Giants and the Tweed Coast Raiders was delayed owing to a serious injury in the reserves. Late in the second half, a Raiders player went down in a seemingly innocuous tackle, but he didn’t move after it. For half an hour trainers knelt over the youngster and kept him motionless in the northwest corner of the ground, with the scoreboard and glowing red light of the stopped clock as irrelevant props to the drama unfolding. A sponsors’ function was being catered to in the club house at the other end of the ďŹ eld and kids played touch footy at half way after it was announced that the game had been abandoned. Blankets were brought to protect the boy from the chill. It was not the sort of night that you’d want to hang around motionless in just shorts and a polyester jersey but, as you’d expect, his team mates stood by him until the arrival of the medicos. Even
Bad moon rising. The Raiders’ reggies moments before the abandonment of their game.
A Raider charges into but does not come out the other side of the Giants’ defence.
then it was a long and delicate procedure getting him on to a stretcher and into the van. The applause of the Tweed Coast players when it was done cracked the eerie quiet that had descended. At last the ambulance made its way slowly out of the ground and on to Mullumbimby Hospital where, happily, the player was later discharged from Mullum Hospital with an all clear. In the main game, the Giants leapfrogged the Raiders into second place on the ladder by giving them a 40-22 touch up. As victories go, it was a bit like the curate’s egg, good in parts. It has to be said, though, that those good parts were extremely so. Coach Damon Scott’s side has plenty of tries in it, with abundant speed on the anks and, making his debut at full back, Jy Hitchcox, who got the Giants’ ďŹ rst try, showing a willingness to run to all points of the compass in order to progress the ball. Regular custodian and new captain, Murray Brown, crossed a couple of times himself and looked comfortable in the centres, where he
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