WHY, members of the Academy, I really don't know what to say! I see that in the latest edition of FourFourTwo magazine, your humble correspondent has been given the "Soccer Knocker of the year award for 2007" by SBS's Simon Hill.
Thank you, thank you all! No, no, really, you are too kind. If I may just say one thing though, Simon, it is this: I am offended by the word "soccer", do you hear me?!?! My good man, it is "FOOTBALL", got it? Football! Football! You may choose to call it "soccer" in your blinkered, insular, xenophobic, racist, neanderthal, knuckle-dragging, egg-balled way, but we worldly sophisticates who understand how important these things are insist that everyone calls it soccer, even if the result is tired confusion in a nation that already has three other, much better, football codes. I feel so strongly about this, Simon, that I am going to email everyone I can think of, write letters to the editor, besiege talkback radio, and bore the pants off everybody else by introducing into every deadly dull conversation I am a part of - and by God, they are many - that it is called football, must be called football, WILL be called football! And I just don't care that some people will think that I must have a tiny life to be so very concerned about such a total irrelevance.
It is really, really, really, (sob) important to me.
Still, apart from all that, thank you, thank you all!