The World Cup kicks off tonight, and I started my annual leave today to celebrate. I also had those two comedic genii, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner @baddielskinner follow me @leaveforthecup on Twitter, which cemented for me the idea that this post would be about tunes, more importantly, World Cup tunes. Today, one of my followers, @oliyoung made mention of Australia's official World Cup song by Rogue Traders, which I then went on to mention was quite rubbish. If you've been lucky enough to avoid the song, well, I'm about to bring that to an end...
Now, as many people have mentioned, it can't truly be an official song without members of the team singing, or even rapping, on there somewhere, but that aside, this isn't really a song that inspires me to watch football, nor can I imagine it firing the boys up to get out on the pitch. I certainly can't imagine any of us singing it on the terraces (if there still were terraces, that is) which truly must be the mark of what a classic World Cup tune should be.
In 2006, SBS ran a show before the World Cup called Song For The Socceroos, which was a competition to write an official song for the team in Germany. What resulted was a truly forgettable number by an outfit called Freedom of Though which was called Green & Gold, and it went a little something like this...
OK, I promise to get to some good tunes soon. To be fair though, Australia's only had three World Cups, so we have some catching up to do in terms of penning the perfect football song. The Green & Gold Army had a crack this year and changed the words to Africa by Toto, which isn't a horrible effort, and probably more apt to being sung at the game than the other two efforts, but it still isn't really what I'd call a classic.
For me, it's always been the English that have provided the best World Cup tunes, and my favourites when I was younger was New Order's World In Motion from Italia 90.
As mentioned earlier, I have a Grandmother who was born in England, and my Godmother was also English, so I've grown up with a bit of a passion for the mother land, and football is just one of those things that I've grown to be obsessed with. For the World Cup in 2006, a friend made me a compilation of many English football songs, many I was not familiar with, but grew to love instantly. Two of those were Vindaloo by Fat Les...
..and Three Lions by Baddiel & Skinner, which was initially written for Euro '96, but re-released for the World Cup in '98.
As you can see by these last three examples, they certainly are a lot different than Australia's recent efforts. Now, what I'd like to see for 2014 would be an effort made to really embrace the idea of the football tune, and come up with an effort that gives us something to be proud of, something that's memorable and something we'll want to, and be able to, sing, especially if we've had a few, when it's not always easy to remember how to speak, let alone sing. This is my mission to you, Australia, and if you're not willing to step up to the challenge, well, I might just have to defect...
...well, maybe not quite anything that drastic yet.
Oh, and while we're discussing Baddiel & Skinner, if, like me, you have an interest in things English and want to listen to what the lads are up to, they're podcasting for Absolute Radio from South Africa. You can catch it at http://www.absoluteradio.co.uk/football/baddiel_and_skinner/ or on youtube, like this one here...
My next blog will include my thoughts on some of the games I've watched, as well as my experience watching the Australia vs Germany game in 3D, crazy, I know! Also, if you don't have Twitter, you can see my Tweets about this game on @iWorldCup as they'll be publishing my Tweets about the game live here... http://iworldcup.org/live/
Showing posts with label SBS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SBS. Show all posts
11 June 2010
25 May 2010
Paying For The Privilege
Well, Monday night was another dissapointing night in my history of watching Australian matches. Not that the match was terrible, which, from all accounts it kind of was, but more the fact that I could not access this game on free to air television. Ihad reached my internet cap, so couldn't stream the game (not that I would, anyway, or anything) and wasn't able to leave the house to watch the game at a pub, if there was a pub in my area that actually played the game, that is. I had to make do with a radio broadcast on local radio ABC 612am in Brisbane, which actually was quite a good broadcast featuring Steve Austin and Ernie Merrick on the call. Ernie even fielded some questions at the end of the boradcast which was a nice touch.
As much as I enjoyed the broadcast of the game, the thing that's been niggling at me for the last four odd years is why can't I watch the national team on free to air television? It's not just me asking the question either, one look at Twitter last night would have seen many posts from people bewildered as to why the game wasn't shown on free to air television.
Now, I know there are many positives with the deal that FFA have with Foxtel, and I know that this is truly a dead horse, but the anti-syphoning list is coming up for review, and I'm hoping beyond hope that this means that, at the very least, we get the national team games back, hopefully on SBS, but I would also be fine with it on OneHD. What would be fantastic would to get, say, an A-League game per round, or even a highlights package show, similar to what the ABC & then SBS ran for the English Premier League during the '90s. What wouldn't be so fantastic would be for the game to be solely on free to air, as I don't think there's enough airspace to accomodate it just yet, plus, you really don't want to see the likes of Channel Seven's treatment of the NSL to happen again.
If you aren't aware of the debacle that was Channel Seven's treatment of football in Australia is covered quite well by Les Murray in his 2006 memoir, By The Balls. In the chapter titled Iran, Murray discusses the move of the NSL from SBS to Seven, "Football - then, as now - had a desperate need for prioritized free to air television exposure. Only that would deliver the kind of market penetration an underdog like football needed. If Seven was going to do that, as SBS had done for so long, well and good: so be it. But Seven had no such intentions, for all it's expenditure of $23 million. The tradegy was that David Hill (then chairman of Soccer Australia) did not demand any commitment from the network in addition to the dollars. Asked about programming commitment at the press conference where he announced the deal, Hill answered: 'Seven is a reputable television station and I won't tell them how to suck eggs when it comes to their programming strategies', or words to that effect. Seven paid the money but proceeded to bury football. It broadcast some games on it's Pay TV arm, C7, but virtually nothing on its free to air network. The National League, then called the Ericsson Cup, dissapeared from free to air screens. On SBS, this competition had enjoyed a one-hour package at 8.30 on Sunday evenings - the prince of timeslots - simply called the Ericsson Cup. But once Seven took over the rights, Ericsson got no exposure. Within a year, the company walked away from its sponsorship of the National League. Football was once again buried: a second-class sport in a country where it was a second-class citizen. Soon, the football community woke up to the deception - to having been sold down the river - and a movement was spawned with the catchcry: 'Nobody Screws Soccer Like Seven'. Its stickers are still visible on telegraph poles around Australia's mainland capitals. Australian football, for all intents and purposes, dissapeared from TV screens and its television hibernation was to last seven years."
That was in 1998. It's now 2010 and we still don't have the national league on free to air television. Hats off to Fox for their coverage and support of football in Australia, because they truly have been doing a great job, as has the ABC with their coverage of the women's natIonal league games, and of course SBS and their continued commitment to the world game. The new player, OneHD have been doing a fair job withe their World Football News show, but their coverage of both the Bundesliga and Serie A left a little to be desired.
With Australia's current anti-siphoning list ending in December this year, here's hoping for, at the very least, a return to free to air screens for the national team, and at least one game a week from the A-League. There are already promising signs, with Senator Conroy easing the current list to allow SBS to show all of the games of the 2010 World Cup live and free to air. Let's keep our fingers crossed that this is only the beginning.
There is something you can do, check out online petitions like http://www.keepsportfree.com.au/ and let the government know that the current situation just isn't good enough by writing to your local member.
As much as I enjoyed the broadcast of the game, the thing that's been niggling at me for the last four odd years is why can't I watch the national team on free to air television? It's not just me asking the question either, one look at Twitter last night would have seen many posts from people bewildered as to why the game wasn't shown on free to air television.
Now, I know there are many positives with the deal that FFA have with Foxtel, and I know that this is truly a dead horse, but the anti-syphoning list is coming up for review, and I'm hoping beyond hope that this means that, at the very least, we get the national team games back, hopefully on SBS, but I would also be fine with it on OneHD. What would be fantastic would to get, say, an A-League game per round, or even a highlights package show, similar to what the ABC & then SBS ran for the English Premier League during the '90s. What wouldn't be so fantastic would be for the game to be solely on free to air, as I don't think there's enough airspace to accomodate it just yet, plus, you really don't want to see the likes of Channel Seven's treatment of the NSL to happen again.
If you aren't aware of the debacle that was Channel Seven's treatment of football in Australia is covered quite well by Les Murray in his 2006 memoir, By The Balls. In the chapter titled Iran, Murray discusses the move of the NSL from SBS to Seven, "Football - then, as now - had a desperate need for prioritized free to air television exposure. Only that would deliver the kind of market penetration an underdog like football needed. If Seven was going to do that, as SBS had done for so long, well and good: so be it. But Seven had no such intentions, for all it's expenditure of $23 million. The tradegy was that David Hill (then chairman of Soccer Australia) did not demand any commitment from the network in addition to the dollars. Asked about programming commitment at the press conference where he announced the deal, Hill answered: 'Seven is a reputable television station and I won't tell them how to suck eggs when it comes to their programming strategies', or words to that effect. Seven paid the money but proceeded to bury football. It broadcast some games on it's Pay TV arm, C7, but virtually nothing on its free to air network. The National League, then called the Ericsson Cup, dissapeared from free to air screens. On SBS, this competition had enjoyed a one-hour package at 8.30 on Sunday evenings - the prince of timeslots - simply called the Ericsson Cup. But once Seven took over the rights, Ericsson got no exposure. Within a year, the company walked away from its sponsorship of the National League. Football was once again buried: a second-class sport in a country where it was a second-class citizen. Soon, the football community woke up to the deception - to having been sold down the river - and a movement was spawned with the catchcry: 'Nobody Screws Soccer Like Seven'. Its stickers are still visible on telegraph poles around Australia's mainland capitals. Australian football, for all intents and purposes, dissapeared from TV screens and its television hibernation was to last seven years."
That was in 1998. It's now 2010 and we still don't have the national league on free to air television. Hats off to Fox for their coverage and support of football in Australia, because they truly have been doing a great job, as has the ABC with their coverage of the women's natIonal league games, and of course SBS and their continued commitment to the world game. The new player, OneHD have been doing a fair job withe their World Football News show, but their coverage of both the Bundesliga and Serie A left a little to be desired.
With Australia's current anti-siphoning list ending in December this year, here's hoping for, at the very least, a return to free to air screens for the national team, and at least one game a week from the A-League. There are already promising signs, with Senator Conroy easing the current list to allow SBS to show all of the games of the 2010 World Cup live and free to air. Let's keep our fingers crossed that this is only the beginning.
There is something you can do, check out online petitions like http://www.keepsportfree.com.au/ and let the government know that the current situation just isn't good enough by writing to your local member.
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