Originally posted by: Moth3r
Warbler - get the hell out of this thread.

Originally posted by: theredbaron
... but HARDLY ANYBODY watches it on television (although perhaps they would if it was put on a commercial channel) or plays it professionally. The Australian team has some good players, who play at the highest professional level in Europe.

Originally posted by: theredbaron
The Australian people are really proud and excited that we've even qualified for the first time, well, ever, and are really getting behind our team.

Australia qualified once before, in 1974.

Originally posted by: theredbaron
Me and my friends will be getting together to watch the Socceroos take on Japan tonight, in fact.

Interestingly, even though Japan are very passionate about the game - they call it "soccer" too!

Hey, yeah, you're right, I knew all of that stuff!

I previously *thought* that it was the first time we qualified in 32 years, but when I heard this morning on TV that there had only been 18 World Cups, I got confused (thinking 18 Cups=18 years) and figured we must never have qualified.

I forgot to mention that because of the state of professional/national football in Australia, our best players move to England and other European countries (even Wales, in one instance) to play professionally in the premier leagues. Just like our actors/screenwriters/rock bands move to America to make it big. Mostly because we only have 20 million people, I think.

And yeah, the Japanese call it 'sakkaa', but that's obviously due to a heavy American influence as well. I've never heard a Japanese person even mention football (or should I say, 'futtobooru'?).