Transcript of AE 1229 - The Goss: The Matilda’s Have Made Aussies Addicted to Soccer

G'day, you mob. Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally down under here in Australia or non-locally, overseas in other parts of the world. Okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in the Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at Aussie english.com to where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising. And that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

All right. Here we are, back on the couch.

Back on the couch? Yeah. You can't use that. That's already. The title's already been used for a football show.

Is it on the couch?

Yeah.

So we are doing some more Goss episodes.

Can open.

Um, what do you want to do first, Dad? Is there a topic you want to talk about? It doesn't have to be a news story. Um.

Oh, well, it's sort of semi news now. Old news. But the Matildas.

Yeah, we can talk about the Matildas. Yeah. Sucked everyone in, huh?

Sucked everyone! Well, certainly in Australia.

That was amazing.

It was, yeah. For those who are completely unaware of women's football, we would call it soccer in Australia because we have so many football codes.

Every time anyone says that my wife Kel is like it's foot football and I'm like, 'Yeah, but it's just too confusing. No one knows what you're talking about if you say football..'

Yes.

And it's the same, I imagine, in the US. Yeah. So that's why they use soccer. And they have there football is gridiron, right?

Yeah, exactly.

But if you are in the UK, I'm not sure. Do they just say football? They they would never say soccer. No. Yeah. But they don't have any other option. Well they got rugby.

I got rugby union.. Rugby league. Yeah.

Yeah. It is weird. You look up 'footy, slang term, Australia' and it's like Australian rules football, rugby union and league and soccer and you just like God.

Yeah. Although it tends not to get used for soccer so much but yeah, but yes, for, for those of you who are being completely oblivious to the Women's World Cup, the Australian team, nicknamed the Matildas, have exceeded all expectations. Not just in performance but in coverage and popularity during the tournament. They broke all time TV records, biggest crowds ever for a women's World Cup. So it's quite amazing.

For a male World Cup as well?

Yeah. Well, not a male World Cup, but.

But in Australia..

Or we never had one. Yeah. Okay.

Because I was going to say, I don't remember ever having this kind of a kerfuffle about..

No. And I think partly it's because it was in Australia as well that obviously all the games are in Australia and New Zealand. Yeah, the majority in Australia. And with them being successful they just got on a popularity roll. And the media was just filled with it. The obsession for a 3 or 4 week period was outrageous.

What do you think? What do you think changed? Just the fact that it was here locally? Do you think if they had been playing overseas in, say, Qatar or Colombia or something anywhere?

Yeah.

Be nowhere near as sort of interesting for the Australian population?

I think it would have been, there still would have been good coverage of it and there would have been a lot of people interested. But being in Australia I think just made a difference because the Australian press were all over it.

Yeah.

Whereas the, it would have just been the specialist football sports media that would have been covering it if it was anywhere else in the world. But the general media was, independently of Australia, doing well. The general media was covering the fact that we had a World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. And then you add the layer of Australia doing really well and it just sort of went out of control.

Why do you think we just have never gotten into soccer anywhere near as much as our other sports, at least at a national level? Because the ironic thing is like, I need to obviously preface it with, soccer is the most played club sport in Australia, as far as I'm aware.

And as a junior sport.

The highest number of participating kids.

Soccer and basketball are the two most.

Yeah. And yet they just don't seem anywhere near as popular when you turn the TV on.

No, I think there are, just as there are so many alternatives. You know, we have four national football leagues of different codes of football. We've got basketball, we've got cricket. We've got a whole lot of sports that are played.

There's hockey as well.

And hockey athletics. There's all sorts of sports that that people just get interested in.

Yeah. And. I just think it's one of those things where, you know, soccer was played in Australia. For decades. For more than a century, it's been played in Australia. Australia has done reasonably well in the men's soccer- above what you would expect them to do. And then the women have just gone mad this time. They've always been good, you know, top 20 teams in the world.

Yeah.

But you know, now they're in the top ten and then having done so well, reaching the last four in this World Cup, they've played above what you would expect them to do.

Why do you think that is? Because I found that really interesting when I was doing jujitsu that. Girls. The girl side of it. They seem to have fewer competitors. And, you know, I think this is probably the case in most sort of sports, right? For a long time, they're male dominated, the ones that are like shown on..

Male dominated sport.

Yeah, the ones that everyone follows, you know..

Football codes, cricket, basketball, those sort of things.

Yeah. And but the weird thing is, like I found in jiu jitsu that, you know, if you go to any average jiu jitsu club and, you know, get on the mat where you say when you're going to learn, you know, from a teacher there, you're getting going to a lesson or whatever, you'd probably generally have maybe five, ten, maybe 20% women, 20% would be very, very generous.

And our club in Melbourne, it was probably close, getting close to 50, sometimes like 50% because there were so many students. And a lot of the women that came and did it, they would get their friends to come and it became a cultural thing. The weird thing though was when you go to competitions. I would. I would notice that. There would be so many fewer women competing and like the sport for competition for..

So typically, typically women were doing it as a- So that participatory sport and for fitness.

Yeah.

Rather than as a competition.

But the thing that I did notice was that the girls who took it serious, dominated. And you would have like there was one, there was a few girls at our gym that were like world champions, you know, And like, it was one of these weird things where it's like we have now the resources if women decide they want to go nuts with a sport. And it seems like it's easier for them to just at least in our potential- and this, I'm just fleshing this out while I'm thinking about it, but potentially in Western countries where we have the resources and they have the spare time and they have the ability to to really go all out in these sports that seem to have not had a big history with women participating or particularly..

I think in, in minor sports, like I mean, jiu jitsu is not- I dare say there's not more than 10,000 competitive jiu jitsu people in the world.

No..

.. at a high level.

There's loads. Yeah, Yeah.

But..

Now it's getting bigger.

Yeah, at a world level, I mean, yeah. Rather than at local. So it's not something that has, has had a, a long history of participation.

No, it's exploded..

So if you get, if you get into it and it's like you and you were fencing when you're at school. Fencing is a very minor sport. So if you're a sort of half good at it, you can dominate it very quickly.

Yeah.

So I suppose there's that. But getting back to the..

The reason I bring that up is that I wonder with- Sorry to interrupt you. I wonder with say why Australia does so well at sports and punches above its weight weight especially now we see that with the women's sports, I think. Like I think they were showing the numbers or the the interest that the Socceroos had only in, you know, ten years ago or whatever it was a fraction of what it is today and they were obviously nowhere near as good as they are today.

The Socceroos is the men's team..

Sorry, yeah, the Matildas,

The Matildas, the women's team. Well they're both basically the same so.

But I reckon, is there something about them coming from a Western country where. When when they've suddenly gotten a lot of support and, you know, money thrown behind them. We, that's how we have been able to do a lot better proportionately with the female side of soccer. Because the male team, it seems to just not do very well at all.

Well, they've been they've done reasonably well. They, they make the World Cup. Certainly they've made the last, what, 6 or 7 World Cups. So on that basis for the last 30 years they've been..

Yeah. But if you were to see them come up against France or Britain or even Colombia, they're not see them again..

They're not top ten. They've been, I think the highest they've been ranked in the last 20 years is about 20th.

Yeah.

But look, it's a bit different from with the men and the women. But I think for, for soccer, it's it's funny like there's a very high participation sport at club level and a junior level. But at the elite level, almost all of our very good players as juniors end up going to Europe.

Yeah.

And so we lose that local interest at the state and national level.

Yeah.

Now the national competition, we have the A-League, the Australian League for Soccer, and then there's a women's equivalent as well. They're doing reasonably well now because a lot of players are coming back from Europe when they've finished their career to play not just Australians but other people from other countries. So there is that sort of, you know, quality of player that is coming back to play in that. But for decades we've always just lost those players. So I think that level of interest and staying in the sport when you're young, you didn't have anybody to look up to because you're the way you looked up to people was you'd watch the English Premier League or you'd watch the Italian league or the German league or the Spanish league on TV to watch the best players in the world. Whereas if you're looking at, say, cricket, rugby league, AFL football, we've got, you know, arguably some of the best players. Well, certainly AFL, obviously we've got all the best players.

Because no one else plays it!

Rugby league, we're the best rugby league team in the world most of the time. Occasionally we'll get beaten by England and very occasionally by New Zealand. Rugby union. We haven't been very good in a world stage for the last 20 years, but we're still in the top 4 or 5 teams.

Yeah.

And so there's, there's if you're a junior and you're coming up, you can, you can go down to your local park on a Saturday afternoon during the season and watch a national level player players playing. In soccer, that hasn't been the case up until the last..

.. the inspiration is also there for younger kids.

Yeah.

But I think that was the same with jiu jitsu, where it's probably way worse than soccer with trying to make an income from being a professional Brazilian jiu jitsu fighter. But everyone would just go to the US, because that's where all the competitions are.

Yeah!

Yeah. I mean, the good thing is that when you compete, it's just you're an individual, so you are your country, right? You can be Australia and Colombia, wherever you're from, really. You don't have to go. It doesn't have to be a national competition for you to be representing the your country. Yeah, but yeah, it was definitely one of those things where I think for a long time, at least in Australia, you would have all of these freak competitors, but they would just not be here. So, you know, it would be a big thing for them to come and tour the place..

And I think the other the other side of that now, though, the extension of that now in terms of our the quality of our national teams in men's and women's soccer, is that that is increased. And obviously in the Matildas, the women's case, it's increased rapidly over the last ten years, but they've reached a sort of watershed number of players now who are playing in European competitions. Almost all of the the men and women who play for Australia in in soccer are playing for European teams.

Yeah.

There's a couple that are still just playing in Australia, but there's this, there's now the number of them where they can like for instance, the Australian team, the Australian women's team trains in Europe because most of them are there. So their lead up to their World Cup was mostly done in Europe and then they came back to Australia just before the World Cup started when in the off season for the Europeans and did a couple of lead up games and then played in the tournament. But, but when you get to that point where you've got a number of players playing at that level, then you suddenly get this increase. Whereas historically, certainly when Australia started to be successful in the 70s and the 80s, we had 1 or 2 players playing in Europe.

Yeah.

And they were, you know, they were the exceptional players, but they very rarely played with the rest of the Australian players. They would come back to play in a tournament for Australia if their clubs would release them. Yeah, but obviously in a World Cup, that's the World Cup is scheduled so that nothing is clashing with that. But so, yeah, it's, it's one of those sort of weird ones where I think once you reach that sort of level, then you get the interest of players playing and it just sort of continues to spiral upwards.

So do you think the cat's out of the bag? The Pandora's box is open with soccer interest in Australia now that, you know we've had this? Or is it going to be a flash in a pan? Is it going to be something I think..

I don't think it'll be a flash in a pan. I think it'll just be sort of incremental. I don't think it's going to explode because there are still so many alternatives.

Yeah.

The you know, just keeping the conversation to the women as an example, there will be a lot more girls now who will go off and try soccer because they've been sitting watching this on TV for a month, not just watching Australia do well, but watching a lot of soccer on TV. Whereas previously they wouldn't have watched women's soccer at all. You know, it'd be very difficult to find. High class women soccer on television in Australia. Yeah, and they might watch the men, but you don't get the same motivation. I don't think if you're a little girl watching..

Well, it must be..

.. a sport.

It must be interesting. I'm trying to think of what the equivalent would be for boys growing up. It would probably be boys watching, say, female gymnasts and trying to derive motivation from that when it's just like a different sport. Yeah, you're never going to be small enough to be able to do those things. And so it's kind of like, well, you know, you can watch it and enjoy it, but you're not really going to be like, Well, now I'm motivated to go and compete. I remember being at high school and doing soccer as my winter sport, and I think when I was there they started the female soccer team, sort of. Up. Like, I think that was the when I was there, I can't remember what year it was. I definitely remember there being girl teams at senior schools. So when I was 14, 15, it's at least and I think that was just implemented at that time. But..

Part of that they did that is not of interest, that it's a matter of you need a number of other schools that are going to have teams in order to play against them.

Yeah, that was it. I think they had..

.. your school could have said, 'hey, we've got a women's, you know, girls soccer team. There's nobody for you to play. Bad luck.'.

Well, and they had that sort of thing happen where there was probably only one team's worth of girls.

Yeah.

And they wouldn't have had a game every single weekend like we did.

Yeah.

But on the other hand, they were kind of seen as this special thing because everyone was like, 'We need to foster this, get it growing and..'

Of course, yeah, it was interesting. So.

Yeah, but I think there's still a lot of alternatives for girls now that you know, because at the same time that soccer has taken off with regard to girls and women in Australia, the AFLW, the women's AFL competition has started up about 7 or 8 years ago. The NRL, the National Rugby League, has a women's tournament that's very good as well and there's realistically there's probably more money, more likelihood of earning a reasonable income. They're not- Most professional women footballers, regardless of whichever league or competition they're playing in, are not earning a full wage.

Yeah.

But you can earn a bit of money playing AFL or NRL much more easily than leaving the country and going to Europe and struggling to get in a team because I doubt whether the Australian women's soccer players in Australia are earning enough money to make a living. They're effectively amateurs that are making a bit of money. I'd have to investigate to see what they're what they're being paid, but..

Well, and they're probably getting a lot from sponsorships. I think we saw that during and post the World Cup. It's like, 'Oh my God, they're endorsing everything.' The banks and, you know, sports equipment, all that sort of stuff. You just like, oh, I'll milk it while you can.

Well, of course you do. Of course you do. And that's the realistically that's where some of the, you know, athletes and swimmers, for example, the swimming, there's almost no money in swimming. You know, there's no prize money for swimming. But if you're famous enough, you get pretty big endorsements. Oh, so.

Yeah, pretty much. Right. But yeah. Anything else you want to cover with the Matildas? No, I just hope that they, the interest, continues. And, you know, the sad thing will be is if this generation, because there are some senior players who were still playing- well, senior in experience, women in their 30s. If they say now look at it and go well I'm not going to play for another four years to make the next World Cup. If they drop out and then we don't have enough young players coming through. Although we had 3 or 4 of our best players in this tournament were 19, 20, 21. So..

It was crazy, right? Fowler. And you just like, she's 20.

Mary Fowler.

Jesus Christ. How did she get so good, so quick?

Cooney-Cross. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cortnee Vine. Who scored the winning penalty in the the famous penalty shootout against France?

Oh, God. That was a nail biter.

Yeah, they were. Yeah. They're kids who'll be playing for another ten years for Australia. So, like, the only other thing I suppose that would be worth mentioning is the fact that we had probably the most famous player in the world not playing for most of the tournament to avoid her getting injured. Well, she was injured to start with, and then when she sort of came back, she they sort of just kept her on as a substitute for a couple of games. But..

We should have a whinge about the problem with soccer. Because we were bringing-

The problem?

The problems-.

There are, there are two. Yeah.

You can, you can cover it. Well there's diving and everybody knows about that. The, well, diving as in if you look like you have been fouled you you hit the ground writhing and screaming and carrying on firstly to get attention and hopefully get an advantage by it, which is just cheating. Secondly, it's time wasting. Yeah. And, and time wasting in a sense that, in two senses. One is that because now in professional soccer there is a separate time keeper. It's not the referee who is who is keeping time. So you don't get an advantage in a sense of wasting time, but you get an advantage in the sense of allowing your own team members to have a rest and and get set up and so on. And the other one is the deliberate time wasting the one..

Kicking the ball away?

The kicking the ball away or picking the ball up or standing. When you, if you, if a team gets a free kick from a foul. The rules say that the opposition can't be closer than ten yards, nine and a bit metres away. So the number of times though that a player will just stand directly in front of them so that they can't take the free kick quickly. Now that can be stopped immediately, just as soon as the referee sees that, just give him a yellow card for time wasting! Two yellow cards and you're off and you can't play. And..

Well the next annoying thing is you wonder how-

They let them get away with it.

You wonder how much the game intentionally allows that stuff because it riles up the fans and you're always like villainizing the other team for doing that sort of stuff and you're glad your team does it because yeah, the diving stuff. The fact that people pretend to get injured to try and get an advantage, it seems like that was one of the things that always really pissed me off about soccer was kind of like the lack of honour. You don't play fairly like. And it seemed even in the World Cup, you could see times when Australia was playing, I think it was England, and they were intentionally tackling the crap out of Sam Kerr.

Yeah.

Fouling her. And you're just like, You guys are just trying-

He was the player we were talking about.

Yeah, you're just trying to-.

.. inch forward in the world.

And that's clearly a strategy that you've gone in where I would imagine again, I don't know, but I would imagine the coaches said, 'Look, we can afford to get a few yellow cards if you guys chase down their best players'..

And not not necessarily trying to deliberately injure her, but just put her off a game.

Yeah, that that side of things, like I understand why you would do it you want any advantage that is technically within the rules and although getting a yellow card is obviously you're breaking the rules to do that, it's you get a red card straight away. So. So they're there for a reason, right? And the people are going to be like, well, use up your chances if it's going to give us an advantage. And kicking the ball away? Just douchery like that? I never did that when playing soccer and I don't remember ever being encouraged to do that. But it seems like at the higher levels, I don't think..

I don't think any team, I don't think any coach will go out at that level and tell their players 'Every time you get the chance, waste time'. It's just so ingrained. The kicking the ball away, the that the interfering with players so they can't play on quickly, that just irritates the hell out of me. Because it is it is so unsportsmanlike.

Is that done in cricket or footy? Because I don't remember ever seeing that..

Well in football.

Where they would just throw the..

In Australian football, that's an immediate 50 metre penalty.

Yeah.

And so those who don't follow AFL football are 50 metre penalty is if somebody has got the ball a free kick or a mark and you have been seen to deliberately waste the waste time or interfere with their ability to play, they get to move 50m down the field, which is about a third of the length of the field, just under a third of the length of most fields. So it's a huge advantage to the team that you are giving away. So it almost never happens. Whereas it happens 50 times in a game in soccer. I it drives me nuts..

I wonder if that's a barrier to it growing as a big sport in Australia for spectators as well. Because I think people who are really into rugby or football and cricket and these other sports that aren't used to seeing that kind of duplicity or poor sportsmanship and arguing with the referee, you know, I'm not..

The arguing with the referee, so I grew up playing an AFL football, Australian football and rugby union and AFL football. It used to be the thing all the time where players would be arguing with the umpires and so on. The AFL in the last two years have brought in this dissent rule. That is, if you are even seen to be dissenting a decision not even arguing with the umpire, the umpire will pay a free kick or a 50 metre penalty.

'Oh fuck this guy.'.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And and so it's almost wiped it out. In rugby union, only the captain is allowed to speak to the referee and they call him or her sir or madam. It's not. There is no way that you would ever turn around and argue with a referee's decision in rugby union. You'd just be sent off.

I don't understand that either. When was the last time a soccer player bitched to the referee? And the referee was like..

In any sport..

.. Change my mind.

Did any umpire or referee in any level of any sport ever change their mind?

.. save face?

No.

And be like, 'Well, double screw you!'..

That's just frustration. And we understand that. But that sort of frustration can be shut off immediately by if a player is standing there arguing often in the face of the referee, yelling at them. Just bring out a yellow card. I don't know why they don't do it and just say, 'You shut up or you get a yellow card.' Walk away now and it would stop.

Yeah, I don't know. But I think, yeah, there's some of my biggest gripes with the sport as well. It just has this kind of, I don't know, sly, cheeky kind of vibe to it at times that seems to be just accepted. Anyway.

Yeah. Nice note to finish on.

Yeah, that's it. But yeah, I think it was really cool to see how proud everyone was of the Matildas and especially the Aussie English listeners and followers and supporters. They were all behind Australia as well. And Kel was going for Brazil originally and then switched when Brazil got knocked out, she was going for Australia. The funny thing I noticed was that when- who are we watching? We watching Colombia? Was it Colombia versus Great Britain, that were the- the final? Who was the..?

Spain.

Spain versus Great Britain. Yeah, that's right. Sorry. I remember watching that and originally being like, 'Fuck Britain!' You know, like 'Go Spain!' And Kel was supporting for Spain as well. And it was funny because Kel is like 'Your dad said, he's supporting Britain. Is that just like a standard thing here? Like any white Australians just go for Britain?' And I'm like, 'No, fuck Britain.' I'm like, No, no, not necessarily. I mean, I'm effectively all British as..

They beat Australia and played well. I just thought they would win.

But it was funny..

Spain played too well.

I noticed how much more I sort of enjoyed it when I didn't necessarily care if either team won because at the end I found myself switching. I think I was originally going for Spain with Kel, and then I was like, Spain kicked a goal and was ahead. Right?

Oh, get England! Catch up!

Yeah, I was like, 'C'mon England!' Get another goal so that it goes to penalty, or so that there's more tension.

Yeah.

And then when Spain, I think they scored another one right, and it was just the final nail.

One nil.

That- was it? I thought they got two?

No, they had one disallowed. Ah no, it was a penalty saved.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. But yeah, there was that. I was just like, 'Oh damn.' But it was really funny because I was like, I'm so much less emotional in this game.

Yeah, exactly.

I just want to see a good game. Yeah. I go to any go to any sport where you don't actually care who wins. You can be a lot more disengaged emotionally, but you can still be just as engaged in the entertainment value, but you don't care who wins. It's a different level of entertainment.

Yeah. Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed the game and yeah, we'll leave it there I guess.

Go, Tilly's!

See ya!