The World Cup has started and although Australia is one of the participants, you wouldn’t exactly say that excitement has reached fever pitch here. It’s more like a small cold with the occasional sniffle. Losing 4-0 in their first game hasn’t helped of course. The Aussies like winners and have expectations way above their ability. A trait they clearly learned from the English.
I kicked off an office sweep last week, drawing displeasure from my boss who thought the reference to France as being a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys was not in the spirit of an International Banks diversity policy. He didn’t mind my reference to the English as whinging Poms, but that’s Australian double standards for you.
I think it’s fair to say that if Australia was not taking part, then interest here would be confined to those of us brought up in a European soccer culture and the young Asian fraternity who have been brainwashed by the Murdoch driven promotion of the English Premier League. Apart from Kiwi’s of course. There is a huge population of New Zealanders in Melbourne who are discovering the beauty of the World Game, helped of course by a last minute goal against Slovakia in their first game and an even better performance against Italy. I would mock their jubilance in achieving mere draws, but as the Irish are still celebrating the time we hammered England 1-1 in the 1990 World Cup, any giggling by me at New Zealand would be as hypocritical as Thierry Henry appealing for hand ball. And he would never do that, would he?
The past of course is another country. In 1994, that country was the USA. I was supposed to go, but impending nuptials got in the way. We kicked off that World Cup with a win against Italy. It lives in Irish folklore with the English game in Stuttgart in 1988 but doesn’t have the same pleasant memories for me. I watched the game in a house in Limerick in the heartland of Irish Rugby. In much the same way as many Kiwis are doing now, Ireland’s rugby fraternity jumped on the football bandwagon in 1994 without bothering to school up on such trivialities as rules and tactics. While the country enjoyed the match, I had to listen to a bunch of middle class oafs with no necks and cauliflower ears call for line outs every time the ball went out of play and triumphantly cheer every time we won a corner.
We beat Italy that day of course in Giants Stadium, New York. Paul McGrath played with a dead arm but still mastered the Latin millionaires that adorned the Italian side. Ray Houghton scored a freakish goal that made us dream about winning the World Cup. But it was all downhill from there. As was my impending nuptials as it happened. Our football woes were caused by FIFA dictating that we should play our remaining games in Florida, which in June is a smouldering cauldron with the sort of clamminess that could drown a fish. In short, it’s probably the last place freckly, pale skinned Irish people should play football.
Not only that, but they made us play at lunchtime when only mad dogs would be found on the Tampa streets.
I called my Mother to discuss tactics before the Dutch game in the last 16. She was a late convert to the beautiful game but like many Irish mammies, she was seduced by the dulcet Northern tones of Ireland’s then manager, Jack Charlton. She was pessimistic about Ireland’s chances. “It’s not the hate that will get them. It’s the humiliation”. In the end, it was heat and humidity that got them, but as the team that Jack built fractured at the end of that tournament, I can’t help thinking that my mother was right all along.
By the time France 1998 came around, I was in Ireland, surfing on the back of the Celtic Tiger (who was just a cub back then). I had just joined my current employer and was given the task of migrating data to the US. This meant dealing with technicians in India and Hong Kong, who were blissfully unaware that the festival of football was underway. They pencilled in a call for the afternoon of the day that the final was being played, to my great annoyance. But luckily we wrapped things up with an hour to spare. Our final conversation that night was around our plans for dinner.
I told the Asians on the call that they should head out and have an Irish, as I was tossing up between having a Chinese or an Indian. The joke flew over their heads unfortunately, but they felt a vague sense of being offended. That began a long history of me putting my foot in it at work, which has lasted right up to these games.
2002 was the year Ireland split between the Keane and McCarthy camps. I was a McCartyite, loyal to the conservative traditions of servitude and class order. If football is war without guns, then we fought ourselves to a bloody stalemate that long, hot summer. Eight years on, I’m still not sure what the argument was about. Lack of balls was mentioned at the time and in fairness that seems an appropriate metaphor.
I started a new job in 2006, one that would eventually lead me here to Australia. Strangely I remember very little of that summer’s World Cup, while I can still name the Zairian midfield from 1974. Maybe football has become less important to me or perhaps my brain had little else to think about back then. But those long ago games seemed filled with spectacular goals, vibrant green pitches and scantily clad Brazilian girls in the stands. World Cups now seem to be filled with dodgy penalties, bizarre refereeing decisions and people clad in overcoats in the stands. Is that all 2010 will be remembered for? Or is there a kid somewhere eating apple tart in his auntie’s house and memorising the middle names of the Honduran squad?
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