ACL: Shanghai Shenua v Sydney

433 - 22 Feb 2018 6:47 PM

bluebird - 22 Feb 2018 4:22 PM

433 - 22 Feb 2018 4:10 PM

bluebird - 22 Feb 2018 1:59 PM

BETHFC - 22 Feb 2018 1:41 PM

1 or 2 teams? Really? So the Australian talent pool is 36 players

Give me a break

We already have a shitty domestic comp and the ACL is a constant reminder

Australia is a sports mad country with large sport investment and programs. A few results will go our way purely based on Athletical ability and ability to grind out results in a low scoring game but for the most we will continually be outperformed by nations that don't fear a Scotland type scenario even though they don't have a 3+1 rule and we do

I don't know why people keep saying this, what exactly makes us "sports mad"?

Football is 3rd and there is a $50m TV deal and average attendances that are still amongst the highest in Asia - this has happened 14 years after the game was nothing

The Australian government has put up billions of dollars in stadia and infrastructure and also multi millions in hosting events (and not hosting them)

There are 2 public holidays in Victoria for sporting events

Investment in sport is huge and would be amongst the highest in the world per capita - the only time the per capita argument is valid because it demonstrates proportionate expenditure and interest

There was even one Olympics where Australia sent over 400 athletes

If your country invests the most in medicine then the citizens will most likely choose a path in medicine and you'll have the most doctors. If military is the object of your country, then your army will be bigger and you'll have a dedicated army. If your country invests in sport then a lot of citizens will become athletes

And this isn't just Melbourne or Sydney either

There is no danger in 2 teams dominating football, investment dropping and everybody walking away

So really a bunch of neat factoids and hearsay, I point you to this article: http://www.traveller.com.au/popularity-of-sport-in-australia-were-not-that-into-it-and-were-not-good-at-it-either-gzfw27

And we Australians are certainly not bizarrely better than most other nations in our athletic endeavours. Iceland, a country with a population of 335,000, has already qualified for the FIFA World Cup. New Zealand, a nation of 4.7 million, absolutely dominates the rugby world. Jamaica, with just under 3 million people, produces freakishly talented sprinter after freakishly talented sprinter.

But Australia? We're good at AFL, a sport no one else even plays. We used to be good at tennis, but then everyone else caught up. We have very few great track athletes; very few world-beating footballers. We're just average really – a fact that doesn't fit in very well with the national myth, but it's true. And that's largely because we're actually not that into sport.

It smacks to me of just Australian parochialism, similar to when ANZAC day rolls around people like Peter Fitzimmons like to jerk themselves off to the idea that we're the only country on planet Earth that has things like "mateship", or that we're the "land of the fair go" or some bullshit.