Inside Sport

Professional football is not popular in Australia...why?


https://forum.insidesport.com.au/Topic2924759.aspx

By libelous - 28 Sep 2020 7:08 PM

Why does football (the world’s most popular sport) fail to measure up in Australia. Is it because of poor administration or is it simply the fact that we only like winners. We have won the Cricket World Cup, the Rugby World Cup, even the Netball World Cup. Does Australia’s insularity condemn football to always be inferior. Maybe we have to win the Football World Cup before we can be considered a legitimate contender.
By quickflick - 2 Oct 2020 5:45 PM

scott20won - 2 Oct 2020 4:47 PM
quickflick - 2 Oct 2020 2:21 PM

Shouldn’t it be started focusing on football at 15?

The way it is sometimes described makes it sound like a Disney movie, Jamaican bobsled team or Eddie the Eagle.

May have played most days as a kid at or after school and Aussie rules I assume.

Don't know. How much did he play? I was (perhaps mistakenly) under the impression that he played Aussie Rules competitively and didn't play football competitively until around the age of 15. By "competitively", I mean in an organised competition, rather than a professional competition.

No idea whether or not Leckie played football after school.

In any case, I understand "focus on", in this context, to mean that they'd already played the sport competitively, along with other sports. Then they ditched the other sports. E.g. Ricky Ponting played both cricket and Aussie Rules (in competitions) up until the age of 14. He could have gone pro in either. Then he decided to focus on cricket and basically stopped playing Aussie Rules.