...as fast as a Brazilian takes a dive.

Ahh, the bandwagon. What a fun place to be. A nation of instant football fans. Still, had to better than the swimming, let alone yacht racing. Not that he was any different. Even if he had previously paid a bit more attention to the football than most of his compatriots, he couldn’t really consider himself more than a fair-weather fan.

Of course, he’d always liked socc…football. Even played it for a bit as a kid. Only as a defender, due to a lack of skill, he was reliably informed, but played nonetheless. The rules and the actual gameplay were a bit fuzzy in the memory – that was filled mainly with shinpads, funny coloured boots and a high speed ball to the stomach incident, accompanied by shouting from the sideline. If he remembered correctly, the shouting heard was “Don’t you bloody dare come off the bloody field, I’ll rip your legs off!!!”…or words to that effect.

But it had always been on the teev too late. Mangoman had watched the occasional FA Cup final, at three in the morning on a Sunday, too late for the chirren. So there were no stupid questions about remotely possible rule permutations, as there had been in the cricket, league and Aussie Rules.
Questions like “hey, dad, if the ball bounces off his helmet then hits a fielder on the left ankle without touching the ground then goes over the fence…is that a six or a four or a knock on or a pushintheback?”.
Thinking back now he considered the possibility that mangoman had taped the football earlier then watched it at that time to avoid such a situation. The thought was quickly dismissed as he remembered the technical inadequacies of his father. A video player was close to being HAL, able to tape a show while you weren't even there, and tape one while you were watching another!! "What are you doing , Daaave?". Contact with them was to be avoided. Them’s the Devil’s work, son.

A result of this was the lack of knowledge of football rules. Most weren’t that difficult to figure out, but the offside rule had him stuffed for a good while. He’d gotten a handle on the league version, but the football one didn’t make any sense. So away he went, watching more than a few games over the years, with no idea how that actually worked.

Not anymore, though. Now thanks to Google, he was onto it!

Which made the game much more exciting.

“Aww, come onnnn, bloody knock on/ forward pass!” became “Get out of it, no way was he offside! No foul! Get up you big sook!” in the blink of an eye.

Football, did have a lot going for it. Most of the tossers in Australia would never switch from rugby, Aussie Rules or V8 racing (only good racing was bikes, and he didn’t mean the Tour De Boredom), which meant that, unlike other countries, the crowds would remain mostly free of drunk wankers for a time.

That, however, would come, as evidenced by the coverage of the Aussies at the World Cup.

Also, it was shown on SBS, which left it mercifully free of ads.

Now, if only the penalty pulling South Americans could be convinced to stop rolling around on the ground holding the wrong leg…