I like Hollywood sports films. You know the story already. A bunch of misfits find themselves competing as a team. They start the movie as losers, and the fans desert them. The owner threatens to sack the players. They begin to use these things as fuel to fire a glorious resurgence of form. They start winning match after match after match, culminating in a triumphant victory at the end of the season. It’s generally great stuff!

The Socceroos campaign to the World Cup to date wouldn’t make it too far in Hollywood. Writer to Producer: “OK, Picture this. There’s this national team, right. They haven’t made the finals in more than 30 years. The star is a young striker, let’s call him Harry. He’s injured, but really wants to play…”

Soccer was probably more suited to Hollywood when it was a marginalised sport in this country, because few really thought, nor did most care, that the Socceroos ever had a chance.

Today, the mood around town is that Australia have a great chance against Uruguay on Wednesday 16th November, although I doubt whether such optimism is warranted. Their track record in this situation is less than encouraging. “But this time it’s different?” they all cry. But on the surface it’s not. We have an esteemed foreign coach and mostly foreign based players. This is the same as in past campaigns and should do little to raise the hopes of this nation. We are playing the same proud soccer country, Uruguay, to qualify. What’s more, Uruguay can still defeat us if they lose, after a 1-0 victory last weekend. Australia might have a chance, but to me it seems awfully slim.

In the sports media over the weekend I heard some ridiculous comments made about how Australia can beat Uruguay this Wednesday. One “NSL Championship Winning Coach”, whose name escapes me, suggested that the difference between the two teams would be the actions of the Australian fans. Not lusty patriotic cheering at the match, which would make sense to me, but by finding out where the Uruguayan hotel is and making sure that the traffic route out to the stadium is blocked so the visitors would be disrupted before the match. Furthermore, he went on to suggest that if our air traffic controllers were true Aussies, they would make the Uruguayan jumbo circle aimlessly above Sydney for a couple of hours just to rile their opponents. If he was making these comments in jest, he is one of the best practitioners of sarcasm I have ever seen.

I would like Australia to qualify for the World Cup, after all I am a patriot. But for soccer identities to suggest that the disruptive actions of fans will be the difference on the night is wrong.

Such ridiculous comments have all but confirmed my indifference to this game, and not because I was brought up in that slice of the white middle class that is amused, but not obsessed with sport. I have often heard the game of soccer referred to as the greatest sport because it is played all over the world. “All you need is a ball” they say. But it is this quality that also makes “The Beautiful Game” the basest and most common of all team sports. It reminds me of the saying, “if you invent something that even a fool can use, then only a fool will use it.”