Peter FitzSimons: All aboard the four year express.
Questions to Aussie media and sports fans: What is South Africa's most popular sport?
Cricket? Wrong
Rugby Union? Wrong
AFL..well some Melbourne guys keep telling me it's huge in South Africa? Wrong.
It's football not that you'd ever see it or know it from the Aussie media over the years.
Now Pete you've spent four years writing books and bagging the game, perhaps significantly less offensively than in the past, it has to be said, maybe it's age or a tad of guilt after taking that freebie to Germany 2006 and cheering for Australia's favourite team.....
so now you've been to Germany it's time, once again, to get the passport out coz ....you're off to South Africa to watch the footy next June! Toot toot!
But it won't be the South Africa you know, the one with all the rich white people following the Union boys, nah this will be one full of young kids, in their millions, dreaming of the World Game.
Coz despite what the Aussie media tell ya the South Africans most popular sport ain't cricket or Union or even AFL, it's football.
All aboard Pete..great to have you there again...would you mind just mentioning the Australian team once or twice before you go in your Saturday column in the SMH?
Hey and Pete shove up, Rebecca Wilson, Patrick Smith, Andrew Bolt, John Bermingham want in as well..
1 comment:
hi eamonn
i can confirm from living/working in johannesburg for 18 months that football is easily, by a football pitch, the biggest game in south africa.
some of the clubs, kaiser chiefs, orlando pirates and mamelodi sundowns are huge; i remember seeing surveys suggesting that chiefs had something like (almost) 5 million "fans" around the country, pirates had something like 3.5 million "fans".
i took delight in telling everyone i met and emailing the media telling them that football was much bigger than rugby union in australia.
and you can add "tiresome" tim gavel to the list for the bandwagon. he is a disgrace. the amount of time dedicated to the brumbies, who are essentially an interstate team based in canberra, is disgusting. he should resign immediately and join the brumbies as their publicity officer.
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