Canberra already Smelling The Fear?

Canberra ABC Sports journo and friend Tim Gavel has taken the easy option, like many older Aussie sports journos, once more.

Now Tim is not a noted friend of the round ball game and rarely gives any coverage to the game on his one hour Saturday morning ABC Radio show.

So when the phone-in section is devoted to football for the first time this year, or so it seems in living memory, something must be up.

Tim announces that someone somewhere has said "if Australia gets the World Cup football will take over from the other codes as the number one sport."

And of course everyone who listens, the Union and League older fellas, are up in arms and on the blower in an instant.

All good craic of course, but how many times will Australian journos use the punching bag of football to scare the horses.

Were we afraid athletics would take over Australia if we got the 2000 Olympics or god forbid, swimming?

Most football fans follow all codes in Australia and I suspect you'll find many AFL, League and Union fans follow more than one sport; suggesting football would takeover if granted the World Cup in 2022; well it didn't in America and it won't here.

So Tim lift your game. If you want to talk football, how about talking about the A-League, the quality of football, the tactics, the players and what they bring, or Canberra United at length, add in the Socceroos or Matildas. In fact how about occasionally covering the Australian game with the same non-biased affection you have for other codes.

No couldn't do that could we. Scaring the horses is all we'll ever get on football on ABC Radio in Canberra it seems.

Canberra football fans deserve a little more air-time sometimes.

Then again we couldn't be bothered waiting. We just started our own radio shows, Farpost 3-5pm Sunday www.3xxfm.org.au and Nearpost 6.30-7.30 Tuesday and we even arranged to call our own Canberra United games live because the ABC might have it on TV but they'd never cover local women's football would they!