00:03Australia is obsessed with footy.
00:06The word is ubiquitous in Australian culture,
00:09just don't expect it to mean soccer.
00:15Around Sydney, footy means rugby league,
00:18the biggest sport in the states of New South Wales and Queensland.
00:25Around Melbourne, footy means Australian rules football.
00:30The 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,
00:49so much so that the national team's nickname contains the prefix soccer.
00:57Because football is so low in the pecking order of Australian sports,
01:01it has struggled historically to attract the country's best athletes.
01:06This is a challenge similar to somewhere like the USA.
01:09But when the population is around 12 times smaller,
01:13that leaves a much reduced talent pool to compensate.
01:18This challenge is magnified by the tyranny of distance.
01:24One of the reasons Australian sport is so parochial
01:27is the difficulty and cost of venturing beyond local boundaries.
01:32Australia is a massive country,
01:34so it makes sense for Melbourne and Sydney
01:37to establish its own local competitions and accompanying customs.
01:44However, this has come at the expense of football,
01:47which has struggled to establish secure routes,
01:50playing catch-up to the more dominant codes.
01:56Even now, the domestic leagues receive more headlines
01:59for financial or administrative difficulties
02:02than for scintillating on-field action.
02:14While the outside perception of Australia
02:18might be its close relationship with the United Kingdom,
02:21much of the football culture has been imported
02:24from other migrant communities.
02:29For many years, the loudest voice in Australian football,
02:33Blaise Murray, carried a Hungarian twang.
02:38Most of the clubs that helped develop Australia's best players
02:42carried Mediterranean roots,
02:44from the Greece-affiliated South Melbourne
02:47that birthed Ange Postakoglu
02:49to the Croatian-backed Melbourne Knights,
02:51when Mark Viduka emerged fully formed.
03:01Australia's cosmopolitan approach to the game
03:03extends to its regional affiliation.
03:06A long-time force in the Oceania Football Confederation,
03:09Australia joined the Asian Football Confederation in 2006.
03:16Victory in the 2015 Asian Cup,
03:19under Postakoglu's leadership,
03:22remains the high-water mark of the men's team.
03:27But Australia remains on the outer reaches of the territory
03:31and has yet to fully embrace this community.
03:41Australia's women's team, the Matildas,
03:44have been the focal point of local football in recent years,
03:48especially in 2023 when Australia co-hosted the FIFA Women's World Cup with New Zealand.
03:57The tournament was a roaring success,
03:59with packed stadiums nationwide
04:02demonstrating the appetite for the game down under,
04:05when conditions are optimal.
04:09during this period, Sam Kerr was elevated to a status few footballers
04:14in Australian history have ever achieved,
04:17and her injuries during the tournament
04:19were 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.
04:32It is a peculiar football nation.
04:35Amen.
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