Let’s get out the cold water bucket here and toss in a few ice cubes and then toss the lot over a few people like Kevin Rudd, and Frank Lowy and Jeff Kennett and the Sunday Age before this gets out of control and costs you, the taxpayer, millions of dollars.

I am talking about Australia’s quixotic quest to host the World Cup in 2018.  And it is jousting with windmills. For heaven’s sake we don’t even call the game football here. We call it soccer. And Australia has only qualified for the event twice in its history.

The Sunday Age devoted virtually all of it’s front page its front page to the story under the headline Let’s Land the World, Cup. It quotes the Prime Minister who says ‘Winning the right to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup is a herculean task, but overcoming tough odds is what  Australian football does best’. Which code of Australian football he is talking about there I’m not sure.

But there is a myriad of other reasons why an Australian bid is doomed to fail. Europe is the home of soccer. That’s where all the money and the power is. That’s where most of the fanatical fans are. The sport is also huge in South America and Africa.

If Australia did win the host’s role our time zone is all wrong. Hundreds of millions of fans would have to sit up all night to watch it. We did in 2006 but we are inconsequential when compared to the audiences and the commercial dollars in Europe and North America.

We are also cruelled by our geography. The world reluctantly came here in 2000 for the Sydney Olympics and the Commonwealth Games here in Melbourne were a financial and spectator disaster and inconsequential to most of the globe.

British and other European fans, the core of the game, can get on a train or a ferry to go to a World Cup there and England is already a favourite nation with the 2012 Olympics stadiums all in place in advance. By 2018 it will be fifty years since Britain hosted the event.

Australia would also probably face competition from China, Russia. A joint Netherlands/Belgian bid and the United States and Mexico. It would cost, they say, $30 million to even get to pre-selection. Judging by past form you can make that $560 million for starters.

Talk about give them circuses. At a time when Canberra is demanding spending cuts everywhere this could be a case of Kevin Nero fiddles while Rome burns.

Our stadiums, as brilliant as they are were built for cricket and our football. They are not suited for soccer. The spectators are too far from the action. So are the TV cameras.

And speaking of our football. The World Cup must take place in June and July. Do Frank Lowy and Kevin Rudd really expect the AFL and the NFL to give up their main grounds for five weeks mid-season?  Would Melbourne fans accept the loss of the MCG for more than a month mid-year? Would they accept one day in November just to give soccer a leg up? I don’t think so. They won’t fall for a Lowy blow.

Monday, February 25, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008