00:03Australia is obsessed with footy the word is ubiquitous in Australian culture just don't
00:10expect it to mean soccer around Sydney footy means rugby league the biggest sport in the
00:20states of New South Wales and Queensland around Melbourne footy means Australian rules football
00:29the biggest sport in the states of Victoria South Australia and Western Australia
00:38footy will also occasionally be used in connection to rugby union
00:45footy is rarely attributed to football so much so that the national team's nickname contains the
00:53prefix soccer because football is so low in the pecking order of Australian sports it has
01:02struggled historically to attract the country's best athletes this is a challenge similar to
01:07somewhere like the USA but when the population is around 12 times smaller that leaves a much
01:14reduced talent pool to compensate this challenge is magnified by the tyranny of distance one of the
01:25reasons Australian sport is so parochial is the difficulty and cost of venturing beyond local
01:31boundaries Australia is a massive country so it makes sense for Melbourne and Sydney to establish
01:38its own local competitions and the company in customs however this has come at the expense of football
01:47which has struggled to establish secure routes playing catch-up to the more dominant codes
01:56even now the domestic leagues receive more headlines for financial or administrative difficulties
02:02than for scintillating on-field action and the cost of doing business has forever been a handicap
02:15while the outside perception of Australia might be its close relationship with the United Kingdom
02:20much of the football culture has been imported from other migrant communities
02:29for many years the loudest voice in Australian football Les Murray carried a Hungarian twang
02:38most of the clubs that helped develop Australia's best players carried Mediterranean roots from the
02:45Greece-affiliated South Melbourne that birthed Ange Postacoglu to the Croatian-backed Melbourne Knights
02:51when Mark Viduca emerged fully formed Australia's cosmopolitan approach to the game extends to its regional
03:04affiliation a long-time force in the Oceania Football Confederation Australia joined the Asian Football
03:12Confederation in 2006 victory in the 2015 Asian Cup under Postacoglu's leadership remains the high watermark of the men's team
03:27but Australia remains on the outer reaches of the territory and has yet to fully embrace this community
03:41Australia's women's team the Matildas have been the focal point of local football in recent years especially
03:49in 2023 when Australia co-hosted the FIFA Women's World Cup with New Zealand
03:56the tournament was a roaring success with packed stadiums nationwide demonstrating the appetite for the game
04:04down under when conditions are optimal
04:09during this period Sam Kerr was elevated to a status few footballers in Australian history have
04:15ever achieved and her injuries during the tournament were a rare occasion football became a water cooler topic
04:22outside the game's heartlands
04:27it is typical of Australia's idiosyncratic relationship with the game
04:32game it is a peculiar football nation
04:38of the season
04:40of the team
04:40the
04:40many
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