Australia's Number One Team.
Cricket, Socceroos, Wallabies and Kangaroos all vie for the title of Australia's number one national sports team.
The AFL team lacks a real international edge so fair to discount methinks.
For years many Wallabies fans tried to put the Union side up there, but with an Aussie Union World Cup a distant memory, and only 20,000 watching the Wallabies play in Melbourne on the weekend, the Union side has clearly slipped down the rank if indeed it was ever really above the Socceroos.
Only our lack of games perhaps reducing the Socceroos popularity.
Union doesn't have a national league, therefore limited coverage for kids. And former FFA Press Officers who were also Wallabies Press Officers said if you judge the popularity of a side by the media scrum, the Socceroos beat the Wallabies by some margin everytime.
The Kangaroos rarely fill a stadium, never mind rate a mention in Melbourne or other parts of the country and this is unlikely to change.
So that leaves the Socceroos and the cricket team.
The cricket team will get a huge boost from the Ashes tour, but aside from that the game has limited appeal across the World, and in terms of World Cup's, desperate qualification routes, the games lack an intensity...unless you love five days of inaction....and they say football is to slow!
Indeed the changing formats of cricket whilst set to strengthen Aussie clubs may hinder the national team as we have a Test, One-Day and Twenty Twenty team. Who plays for which team and when?
Long-term 20/20 may win out but it may also die much like the One Day series in years to come. Will cricket fans really take to the shorter form at a national level?
Which makes the Socceroos the number one code on a par with cricket.
The fickle nature of the Aussie sports fan will quickly turn against the cricket or football teams should they not succeed. And with more teams playing football it will always be hard to "succeed" in terms of winning trophies.
A tad easier to win The Ashes than the World Cup.
There maybe some debate about the number one national team status but when it comes to the football codes the Socceroos win the tag by in increasing margin.
Freee-To-Air TV anyone?
2 comments:
yeah you can also read it at their blog, www.qantassocceroos.wordpress.com
eamonn, if you are specifically talking 'national' and not 'inter-national', then you can't ipso facto eliminate afl. so of course geelong cats are the best team...
but of course, in a real sense the socceroos are the principle and premier side representing australia on a number of scores: they are the most successful in that we are the top ranked side in our confederation of a sport that is truly global; the team probably has the greatest number of people genuinely interested in their code and as such as aussies are de fault fans, even those myriad aussies with a previous national affiliation!
and of course in this blog you'll be preaching to the converted ; )
but for genuine interest and passion for their code, i'd bank on afl being as influential on the market as football, and will remain australia's 'national' sport no matter if the socceroos win the world cup, 'cause it is very really 'our' sport.
but forza fusbol!!
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