My colleague Frank on Monday, at the entrance to the office, congratulated the Serbian victory over his Germany. Emotional pople would have commented:  "How sweet!". On the other hand, Slovenian born Jim presented the theory that Australia will enter the next round.  Other colleagues are completely uninterested in any discussion about the World Cup in South Africa. The first neighbor could not even explain why his India, which has one hundred and fifty times as many potential players (people), has no football team at the World Cup.

In fact Australia has two "footballs":  the main one (footy, AFL, Australian Football League), and this one  played in the World Cup (soccer). The first one is discussed on Mondays while the sporting nation "sober" by the weekend. The main football "the futie" is played on huge stadiums (MCG in Melbourne, SCG in Sydney) and the teams are named after the cities or towns with addition of an animal. So you have "Geelong Cats" (current champions)," Sydney Swans", " Brizben Lions","West Coast Eagles "and so on. This "futie" is played  in Australia only, so that the nation is very proud of this invention. The game is played with the "big" goals with elliptical ball, on the elliptical field.

The other football - soccer was previously dealt only with immigrants, but the last time they hear claims that he let go of MCG. The shift that took place mostly observed in children who play more. and more soccer. 

Televised from World Cup is broadcted on a state channel called "Special Broadcasting Service" (SBS) and which has attribute "emigrant's". It is interesting that SBS's main news at 6:30 pm very often begin with World Cup news, as opposed to Belgrade news, where you first need to see all those politicians that, as a reward for that view, at the end, find that the athletes that you are Day celebrate Serbian flag.

In today's major daily newspaper "Herald Sun" news about the World Cup at the eighty-eighth page, while the news of the domestic "footy" in the sixth. 

Serbian people were previously "given" players for the national team of Australia (AC Milan Ivanovic, Zdravko Lujic, Rale Rasic and Milan Blagojevic) but today Serbian best teams (White Eagles from Boniriga, Springvale White Eagles in Belgrade from Adelaide) playing in lower leagues, and there are no
Serbian backgound players in the national team.

Although the broadcasting of games with World Cup is on a free channel, Serbian people love to cheer together for sports clubs, where the matches shown on big screens.

 And my family is ready for the game: the flag is on the wall and there is a large screen. The younger daughter, who was born in Australia, will cheer for soceroos, whi;e the rest of us to for Serbia. When you think better, I will have to be fifty-fifty - that the child fdoes not feel rejected. However, as the match starts at half five in the morning by Australian time, the best would be if the others do not wake up and we leave home cheering for replays.

Australia is a sporting nation, and with this very proud of it, so that goes into this game very seriously but with a gentleman's readiness to lose. If  they win, it will show that Serbian defeat against Ghana was not  a random event. Let's hope not.

Thats all from me  "the football wanka" to start this topic. Now you continue ...


George Petrovic, Melbourne, Australia
Posted: 22/06/2010.