Summed up in a senetence, Australia made it to the second round with every referee having a bizarre prejudice against them.
The media pushed forward the idea what Australia making it to the world cup would somehow make soccer a popular sport in Australia. However after years of being screwed over by Fifa with the Oceania grouping saga. Then the quite obvious bias of referees when we do actually make it. I believe that soccer is now almost guarenteed to be relegated as a second rate sport.
In Australian sport we value fairness as much as victory. Take the third umpire in cricket or video referee in football (Rugby). We take great lengths in each sport to ensure that the correct decision is reached by the umpires and referees. Soccer on the other hand has dubious decisions regarding penalties and fouls and hasn't attempted to rectify this in any real way.
Perhaps even more important is that in cricket, league, union and afl players get hit and hit quite hard in the course of playing. It is seen as a desireable characteristic to be able to shrug it off and continue with the exception of a clear and obvious injury which sidelines said player. Even then players don't act even half as injured as soccer players whom have simply been touched by an opposing player and fall to the ground demanding a penalty for a fake injury.
As far as most people will be concerned other countries in effect cheated and Australians will be quite content to point that out and say. If you want to play us at a real game and fair game then try Rugby, League or Cricket.
The popularity of a sport in Australian does not hinge on "fairness of play", but rather having a hero to celebrate. It's difficult to realise it when you have all the media bias here (how many people actually attend these events regularly?), but a majority of the sportspeople that are celebrated locally are often undeserving of the attention when you look at it on a global scale. The situation is magnified ten-fold in the States. Like the Americans, Australians also have a penchant for rooting for the underdog. History and statistics in almost every sport will attest to that if you'd care to look it up.
Another factor that will add to soccer's popularity is the fact that Australians do tend to like to whinge about things. They'll turn a blind eye to the fact that their own sporstpeople play just as dirty, only to whinge when it's thrown back at them. Because these mistakes are "easy to spot" in soccer, much of the nation will be watching to see if we get cheated yet again in any small call by the ref - just so that they can go on about it being "the rest of the world against us".
Don't forget that racial tensions add fuel to the fire as well, and many of the cultural backgrounds in the forefront of these problems tend to be football nations.
Sorry if the post was less coherent that I'd have liked it to be - it's nearly 1am now and I've been sleep-deprived more than usual lately.
Oceania's half a point is roughly fair enough. If we're not good enough to qualify, we're certainly not going to win. If we continuously got in and did a second rate job, I don't know if that would do much for the popularity of the sport, not to mention the skill of the Australians. Guus was probably the best thing for them, and he likely did more than change the grouping.
As for the yellow and red cards, other countries get them too. The commentators have been pretty consistent mentioning that the refs are under a lot of pressure not to let the players get away with anything. Frankly, Australia are a pretty physical team, but still underrated players as well. Italy's goal was unlucky for Australia, but not referee prejudice.
Priya's absolutely right in that Aussies are complete spoiled sports, and they have this expectation of winning, and whinge a lot when they don't win. Frankly, I've become quite interested in soccer because the retarded Aussies who demand victory are off watching the cricket, or Rugby, or something else.
Australia is clearly a young team, with a lot of fire but not much experience, and even I can tell that and I've only really watched this sport for this year. Aussies (the fans) weren't bitching about anything up until the point that they lost, so anything they say from this point on is something that I would ignore, if I were FIFA.
Video refs don't really suit the game of soccer, due to the way the timing runs. Stopping play for minutes at a time every time someone gets tripped is ridiculous. Further, the rules in soccer are such that there's a lot of interpretation, and judging intent is difficult enough on the ground, probably even more difficult via TV screens.
The only match that mattered that we lost was on a pretty reasonable call at an unlucky time. There were few occasions where a better call could have helped our situation, or made any real difference to the fact that we lost against Italy. The fact is, if we didn't, you wouldn't have written that post.
So there we go. A completely incomprehensible post and completely incomprehensible responses.
Oh no it's going to slow down the game too much. They said the same fucking thing with League and Cricket and there's been no problem with either. You know why? Because for most of the calls the referee's are in a good position to see what happened. It's when he's out of position he can check with the video referee just like in League and Cricket.
As for that bullshit about how it'll add to it's popularity. I wasn't talking about large international events. Where's the coverage of local Australian tennis tournaments? I didn't think I'd have to spell it out for you but I was refering to an Australian competition which will not benefit in any real way from the World Cup. Do you honestly think that even a single person whom didn't watch Australian soccer before the World Cup would sit down and watch a Sydney FC v Melbourne United game*? How many of the big name players in the Australian team actually play in Australia? I don't know any and like just about everyone else I'm not going out of my way to either find out or remember if I did somehow find out. The only ones I would recognise play in Europe and even then I couldn't actually name many if any of them.
If any game cried out for a video referee it would be Cricket. If any game besides Cricket cried out for a video referee then it is Soccer. It produces the lowest scoring of any game and thus errors on part of referee's have a major impact on the final outcome of a game. Not to mention that it has about as much in common with an actual sport as the WWF.
Just a suggestion for next time. Pull your head out of your arse before you decide to open your mouth.
*If there are teams that have these names it's purely a coincidence.
The refereeing was just sub-par. As the saying goes "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."
I'm split when it comes to introducing a video referee. It is true that something needs to be done, especially considering what you mention about the rarity in goal-scoring, and that using video replays would be the most effective way of making the right decision. I also feel that it's because of the low scores present in soccer that video referees could harm the game. In a sport where an entire 90 minutes can pass by without a single result (and this is something that happens quite often) I don't think fans would enjoy a goaless game that also has it's flow broken up every 2 or 3 minutes to make some sort of a decision. Personally, I'm for introducing a 2nd on-field referee.
However, the video replay approach is a moot point. FIFA requires that, with exception to the quality of those participating, the sport is played equally at every level. Whether it be the fierce competitiveness of the UEFA Champions League or an under 6's competition in Campbelltown where all 22 players are running after the ball, the tools necessary in order to play the game in an official manner are easily acquired. In order to maintain it's appeal and ease of play to all peoples, regardless of economic conditions, this is necessary.
1) You claim soccer is not going to be slowed down by a video referee, and the evidence you give is that people said the same thing about cricket and football, but they were wrong about cricket and football. This arguement is clearly silly (along the lines of "Hitler brushes his teeth, and he killed Jews, therefore anyone who brushes their teeth must kill jews"), and ignores the main point I was trying to make. Cricket has a short play time with a lot of downtime in between. This is why practically every aspect of the game is video-refereed. Football only uses the video referee for very limited uses, like figuring out if the ball was over the line. If the same thing was done for soccer, it would have limited value. What you're talking about is a video ref. for a close call on a penalty, which would necessarily stop play anytime anyone is suspected of breaking a rule. Nathan's comment is quite enlightening as to the FIFA requirements, and I do agree with him for the most part.
2) You mention local soccer (not) benefitting from the world cup. And you mention the fact that nobody mentions tennis either (presumably for the same reason: they only recently started using the automated line calling machines). I guess you're saying that local cricket coverage and local football coverage is increased by the video referees. I think this is a weak point, seeing as relatively few people play aussie rules football outside of Australia, and League is also pretty small, relatively.
I would also claim that Cricket is already big in this country, and would be even if there were no video referees. Cricket is big in India, and if you've ever seen a cricket match in India you'll notice that there isn't as much technology behind it. If you were right in that you needed video referees for a country to watch and be interested in cricket, you'd be wrong, because India doesn't have this technology, but we're cricket mad.
You're right in that errors on the part of the referee can significantly change the result, and this is magnified by a game with a ruleset as retarded as soccer. However, that doesn't change the fact that you wouldn't be angry if Australia won, and you're really just attacking the points that would make Australia seem like they were cheated. The fact is that they just suck, and you can't handle that.
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