Tyson_85 wrote:And its probably nothing compared to what England, Brazil, Spain etc. players are going through.
That's an assumption that I completely disagree with. 'Mass media saturation' and 'access to players' are two completely different topics. You can have 'mass media saturation' like there would be in every other country without having a select group of players spending practically half their day doing interviews. There is mass media saturation during State of Origin time in Australia, but have the media been given the sort of access to the players as they have to the Socceroos? No.
Why? Because it is a distraction that would cause detriment to the performance of the team.
Access to players in most bigger football nations is much more regimented... and if you don't think that matters then you are very naive. The British press are always regarded as one of England's biggest hurdles to winning any major tournament. I'm sure the Australian press core would love nothing more than to have that situation develop here. They couldn't care less if the team wins or loses... in fact I think they'd rather they lose so they can savage them. Bad news sells better than good news.