The Weekender: Football at the 20/20 Canberra Summit

I attended last Saturday's Canberra 20/20 Summit. This weeks "The Weekender," is my reflections on the summit.

The Weekender guarantees Canberrans can read a football article on a Saturday in their own time, written by one of their own. Email me if you'd like to write football.

“I heard you say football, in the group, and I groaned. But when you started talking about Asia I got it. I’ve just been to Beijing talking about their website for the Olympics, the size of the World Cup they say is bigger than the Olympics, and I realised the numbers and interest in football in Asia. I get what you are saying. Forward a page to Senator Lundy outlining your idea.”

Football at the 20/20 Canberra Summit

Okay, let’s get one thing right.

I wasn’t invited.

Senator Lundy, Former ACTEWAGL CEO John Mackay, Olympian Rob De Castello and all of the Australian National University might have been, but I wasn’t.

I’d sent off my email pointing out the numbers of people playing football and the emerging and increasing possibilities for Canberra linking with Asia through football in the coming years.

And that was deemed worthy of attendance, sort of. 350 delegates plus me.

Kick-Off:

I spotted Gibbo in the Theatre, down the left-wing, Ian Gibson, former Aberdeen FC player, now head of a Computer Academy in Canberra. A good start.

But a slow start, we were quickly herded into teams, but I hadn’t been allocated to a team. Felt a bit like the fat kid at school in PE.

“Why don’t you go to the Economy and IT group. They don’t have many people and you might be able to get your (wacky) idea up there!” smiled one of the Matchday Stewards.

First Half.

Senator Lundy was at my table, impressive, but so were about ten people from the same department at the ANU. Disappointing!

And we talked broadband, pipes, open source and data retrieval and Internet, and free stuff and on and on it went.

So after listening to these very intelligent people discuss their ideas I thought I’d like to hear what they thought about mine.

“Ahem,” I interrupted nervously...not really more obsessively. I’d worn my Socceroos shirt so maybe one of the boffins would possibly make a link to what I was talking about.

Senator Lundy waited for me to speak.

“Football,” I said and I’m sure someone groaned, most of the boffins went off into cyberspace but I rambled on.

And it was a ramble about the benefits of football, to our young people, obesity, to linking with Asia, culturally and through business, and the number of tournaments we could have in Canberra, and the numbers of Canberrans already travelling for football, and well you get the picture.

“Thankyou,” said the Chair and we moved on to other ideas.

“It will just happen, a natural thing,” scorned Mr Computing Software from across the table.

“It needs to be driven,” I shot back.

One ANU man smiled. Was that good?

Another ANU man said, “People don’t need to meet anymore, it’s all done on the net!”

“We will list the three ideas to take to the main hall,” said our chair.

“The second idea (after broadband) was to link with Asia through Business and Sport and .....”

“That’s fine,” I interrupted, “but the idea I put forward concerned football. If the group here want to just say sport, that’s fine, but I would see that as a rejection of the idea I put forward. It’s the potential of football linking with Asia that I see as having real potential,” said the assertive little sokkah man!
And they accepted it!

As we left the table, a women (from the ANU) turned and said, “We’ve got the best Equestrian facilities in Australia.”

“Yeah and everyone in Asia has a pony,” I thought.

Back to the Theatre of Dreams:

The rapporter stood for our group.

“The second idea was linking with Asia through Business and Sport particularly soccer.”

The three hundred and fifty delegates rose as one and shouted, “Chief Minister John Stanhope, get to work on that soccer idea immediately. Abandon this talkfest now, we have our future.”

Actually the Organiser didn’t even write the word soccer on the ideas board. It was gone.

Second Half.

An ANU man ran up to me.

“I heard you say football, in the group, and I groaned. But when you started talking about Asia I got it. I’ve just been to Beijing talking about their website for the Olympics, the size of the World Cup they say is bigger than the Olympics, and I realised the numbers and interest in football in Asia. I get what you are saying. Forward a page to Senator Lundy outlining your idea.”

At drinks:

An Ausport Director came forward.

“Would you be interested in working on a Commonwealth games bid for Canberra.”

My Irish blood stopped its flow just a little.

“There’s no football in the Commonwealth Games,” I bristled.

And later he added, “Hockey is much bigger than football in Asia.”
So I left, I’d achieved nothing and yet everything.

Canberra will get a team, an A-League team, and will push into Asia.

But we’ll have to do it ourselves.