WHAT flavour of Neapolitan ice cream vanished first in your house? It was the chocolate, wasn’t it? Without fail, it is always the chocolate and it’s true even when it isn’t.
This is because we don't remember the times when the vanilla ran out or when the strawberry was horded by your little sister. We only remember the chocolate.
Much like Neapolitan ice cream my football club comes in three distinct flavours, served parallel and presented in all the plastic-fantastic packaging a five-year-old club can muster. And, through a coincidence of space, time and this blogger's need to find an analogy, I have concluded that each of the three flavours of Neapolitan ice cream can be neatly ascribed to the teams that represent Brisbane Roar FC across the three national football competitions.
As far as I am aware (although I hope to be corrected on this by a passionate Naples native) there is no European Union cultural preservation edict governing the order of the flavours in a traditional, tri-pattern Neapolitan ice cream. My research also proved inconclusive when I discovered I had eaten three of the tubs of Neapolitan ice cream I had purchased upside-down and a further two back-to-front.
Hence, in no particular order and with a bloated stomach, I present the Neapolitan Roar FC.
Vanilla Is Filler
I never liked vanilla, hence the above slogan I coined to describe its place in the Neapolitan hierarchy. I always considered it to be the Adelaide tap water of ice cream flavours - but then again I was just a stupid kid. The true connoisseurs know how incredible good vanilla ice cream can be. It provides richness and subtlety that only a trained tongue can appreciate.
In this way Brisbane Roar's Youth Team is the vanilla of the club. It isn't the most exciting of the three Roar flavours - being played this season through Brisbane's suburban grounds before fans so far past faithful they are damn near saintly.
But if your tastebuds are tuned just right, there is a lot to be enjoyed in savouring an afternoon of Youth League football. Also remember that every dollar you spend at the canteen goes directly to the local club hosting the fixture. So be sure to buy an ice cream, or three for that matter, while you are there.
Strawberry's A Girl's Colour
I can only speak for the boys here, but it seemed to be a truth universally acknowledged in my youth that a female would be in want of a strawberry ice cream. This seemed a little harsh on the strawberry, since it amounted to nothing more than the fact that it was coloured pink. Never mind that strawberries are as red as the blood that flows from so many scraped knees in so many backyard World Cups.
Strawberry is in many respects the equal of chocolate - it just lacks chocolate's cultural cachet. Wars were fought and mighty empires fell in the quest for chocolate but I cannot think of anyone ever dying for a strawberry.
Thankfully the same can't be said for the equivalent of strawberry at our Neapolitan football club - the Brisbane Roar W-League side. This punnet of footballers (that would be the collective noun wouldn't it?) kick and throw and tussle their way through 90 minutes with as much vigour as the lads and manage to never get suspended for it.
As an added bonus, they have even won a trophy at their first attempt. It is unfortunate that just like strawberry ice cream they will never attain the pride of place that the chocolate has barely earned. After all, strawberry is apparently a girl's colour, isn't it?
The Chocolate Is Bitter Not Better
Well that leaves one flavour and one team. The A-League side was always going to be the chocolate of this ice cream sandwich. But here is the thing with chocolate - it can become so loved and so admired that the chocoholics will begin to overlook its flaws. And there is a huge flaw with the chocolate at Brisbane Roar - it is ill-disciplined.
The chocolate at Brisbane Roar has gone bad and is now tastes distinctly bitter to the palate. Danny Tiatto seems to think he has a right to mouth off at the officials five times a game. Charlie Miller takes pleasure in interrupting interviews at training and then interrupting opponents minding their own on game day. Craig Moore apparently didn't see the harm in betting on the league in which he plays. And Frank Farina appeared intent to spend the day before the big derby fine-tuning his tactics while allegedly still working off the night before.
If they were stand alone, each of these issues could be swept under the carpet, but together they paint a growing picture of ill-discipline. More disturbing is how this appears to have filtered through to the younger players in the squad. Tommy Oar's acute attack of the "Tiatto's" against Wellington Phoenix is a case in point.
It was for this reason that I was prepared to boycott matches at Suncorp Stadium until these issues were tackled by the club - preferably in the traditional Danny Tiatto style of studs-up, legs-a-flailing aggression. I truly was only going to spend my money supporting the W-League team until there was a change of culture within the first team. Little did I know the change would come all too soon.
Neapolitan But Not As You Know It
The first ingredient in the chocolate mix has now been removed - Frank Farina is no longer Brisbane Roar manager. It is undeniable that the mongrel mentality that Farina implemented spiralled out of control this season, but the cracks had been apparent in seasons prior. It is also undeniable that the usual suspects were all Farina's acquisitions - signed specifically to play this form of football.
With the inevitable appointment of a new manager the flavour of the team will begin to change. By further removing a few chocolate-specific ingredients (yes I'm talking about you Tiatto, you big cocoa bean) and keeping the core of the ice cream, this club can become something that Brisbanites can be proud of, even if the results don't always go our way.
Hence I propose that the chocolate is replaced with that most quintessential of Queensland fruits flavours - mango. Granted, nobody ever died for a mango either, but at least the flesh tends to be a rather familiar shade of bright orange. I am also pretty certain that it would go great with two M&M's somewhere in the middle.
Brisbane Roar fans would then have a new Neapolitan football club comprising the basic vanilla, the under-appreciated strawberry and the new, juicy, summer promise of mango. In fact, you could almost call them the "Neo"-politan Roar.
