I'VE HEARD thousands of stories of football rituals and superstitions. Some people believe that if they sit in a certain seat, their team will win. Players often put their kit on in a certain order and others have lucky underpants.
My football superstition is very different. I seem to have a knack for cursing players.It’s no coincidence that Danny Vukovic got sent off in the 2008 grand final. Just minutes before the start of the game I had bought a badge with his face on it.
At the end of last season I took a fancy to Robbie Kruse. Then, he injured himself, got bashed up several times and is now struggling to make a start for the youth team.
This week, my curse struck again. The victim was the Mariners youth team.
All was going well until I made a comment about Paul O’Grady’s defending. Literally 10 seconds later, Sydney scored to make it 2-1. Shortly after, I had a brief rant on how much skill Brady Smith had. Then he got sent off. Around 85 minutes, I remarked on how the defence just wasn’t the same without Nathan Sherlock. To put the icing on the cake, Kofi Danning scored at 87 minutes.
And what a strike it was.
To be fair, the Mariners were outclassed by Sydney but I couldn’t help feeling guilty. So I ate my way through a large amount of food, most of it bad for me. As I looked up from my pizza (which by the way, was so not worth $6), I saw a Sydney youth player eating a pizza the same as mine.
I found this oddly comforting. Never before had I actually seen a footballer eating a pizza. I began to realise that footballers are people too and people are just naturally superstitious.
All these crazy pre-match rituals are just that. Superstitions. While we may find comfort in doing these things, in reality, they have no basis in fact and probably don’t matter anyway. At the end of the day, we can’t change the result of a match and to be perfectly honest, putting our right boot on before our left boot probably played no part in the outcome.
So here are my words of wisdom for the week – ditch the superstitions and just enjoy the match. Otherwise you might end up gaining a few kilos in comfort food and you’re friends will call you “that crazy superstitious football tragic”.
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"The heat probably got to our players a bit,” said Mariners’ youth development co-ordinator, Damien Brown, after the loss to Sydney.
Well, I can tell you, the heat got to all of us. Saturday was a long, hot day. For those who didn’t have a seat on the western side it was probably even longer and hotter.
So what did Mariners’ youth striker, Darko Vidovic do as soon as he was substituted?
He took his shirt off.
Let’s just say, if every man in the world looked like him, then the world would be a very nice place to live in.
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While Jade North was making headlines for his move to Incheon United…
- Sydney FC youth striker, Sean Rooney signed a short-term deal with the Newcastle Jets. He comes in for Jason Naidovski who is out for 6 weeks, possibly the whole season. Rooney scored 9 goals in 8 appearances for Sydney’s youth team.
- Mariners’ youth defender and captain Nathan Sherlock sustained a knee injury and is now out for several weeks.
- Bernie Mandic, manager of Harry Kewell, made some interesting claims. "It's not a case of where the talent is going to come from - it's where the hell are we going to get decent coaches for talent we have?" He said of the situation of youth development within Australia. "The local coaches are extremely self-delusional in their ability and the local media is self-delusional in their assessment of local coaches. The local guys are either poor at man management or poor in their knowledge. Very few have gone to Europe to learn the ropes.” Oh yes, our coaches are EXTREMELY self-delusional. Europe is where ALL the professionals are.
- Frank Farina decided he’d set the record straight on why he didn’t snap up James Brown before Gold Coast United. “Roar offered [James] the chance to play for the club's National Youth League team. But James's father believed his son deserved an A-League contract and refused the youth team deal.”
