March 28, 2006
Weird round ball
Monday morning I was online for the priority sales of tickets to the Socceroos vs Greece at the MCG in May. I'm not the worlds' greatest soccer fan, it is after all only slightly more action-packed than cricket, but this will be worth going to for several reasons.
As the last match of the Soceroos before they head off to Germany for the FIFA World Cup the crowd will be besides themselves with joyful anticipation. As the third largest Greek city in the world (including Greece, where only Athens and Thesalonika have more Greeks than we do) Melbourne is THE place to hold this game. The MCG can hold 100,000 people. I don't think its going to be big enough.
Its amazing the extent to which soccer has become popular in the five years we've been away. Before I left it was a game that you knew existed but didn't have anywhere near the following of real football. (not that I'm into either). You knew all the southern and eastern europeans living here played it but it had no visibility or credibility with the general public and as far as the business-end of sport went in Australia was a non-starter.
Now, you have to fight for a ticket to a venue that can seat 100,000, there's a national league of sorts and the volume of juniors-in-training is apparently, going to give the rest-of-the-world a big shock in a few years. Who'd have thought! And with such an odd shaped ball too?
(As I mentioned below I have removed the comments facility, you can email comments to you-know-where)
Posted by Faith