Remembering Royal Shows of Long ago.

 

In my childhood, the long, long journey from the joys of one Christmas to the next was punctuated by two other events that could not be fully enjoyed unless a certain amount of money was available. These were the Annual Royal Agricultural Show in October and Guy Fawkes Night on 5 November.

My earliest memories of the Royal Show are a mixture of merry-go-round rides, Chairaplane rides, the Octopus, log chopping, Professor Wilkinson doing tricks on a motorcycle, Dodgem Cars, The Mounted Police galloping at speed with long lances to spear white markers on the grass, displays of food and farm produce in the Centenary Pavilion, bustling crowds, Sheep Dog Trials, surging crowds, strong animal smells, hot dogs and fairy floss. Free sample bags. Oh, and Sideshow Alley.

In those days, the two big days of the Show were People’s Day on Wednesday and Children’s Day on Thursday. Wednesday was a public holiday and city schools were closed for both days. My father used to used to take our family on People’s Day. I fondly remember the first year we went to the Show. It was 1948. My parents had a block of land in Mt Lawley but building materials were in short supply and you needed a government permit before you could build a house.  So, in the meantime, we all lived in a large two storey house at number 8 Aberdeen Street, quite close to Beaufort Street, along with my grandmother, an uncle, two aunties and my two older  cousins,  Maurie and Raymond. 

My parents loaded my my two sisters and me into  the family car, a blue Essex Tourer. Dad had folded back the canvas hood and the family set off from Aberdeen Street just like royalty riding down the mall in an open carriage.     At the time, my cousins had two dogs. Maurie’s dog was a Scottish terrier he had named GK after G.K. Chesterton. Raymond’s dog, Danny, was a beautiful collie dog just like Lassie. Unfortunately, when Dad drove out of the side lane he did not close the gate. The family’s high-spirited departure had excited both dogs and G.K. and Danny soon set off after the Bourke family making their royal progress along Beaufort Street towards the Barrack Street Bridge. Despite the dogs’ barking and yapping, Dad decided to keep on driving. As he drove passed the Swan Barracks he waved his right hand and yelled at the barking dogs to go back. They took his gestures as a sign of encouragement and continued their bounding and barking alongside our open vehicle.

What  started out as a royal procession quickly degenerated into a scene out of Dad and Dave Come to Town.      My father drove his family in the open car over the Barrack Street Bridge escorted by the two barking dogs. Startled onlookers in Barrack Street looked at the passing parade convinced that some rich squatter had arrived in town for the Royal Show with his family and farm dogs in tow. By the time the car reached Murray Street, the dogs found other city distractions to occupy their attention and the Bourke family continued on to the Show without their canine escorts.

As soon as the family  entered the main gates, Dad picked out a landmark where we were to gather if ever we became lost.  He pointed to the main door of the Centenary Pavilion and said, “If you ever get lost, go straight to stairway leading up to those doors and wait for your mother or me to come and get you. Do not go anywhere with anyone else.”

Babe was well aware of “Stranger Danger” long before the term became fashionable. She warned my sisters and me to be particularly wary of ladies offering  lollies or any other inducements. Mum told us that quite often, wicked men dressed up as women just to trap little boys and girls. Filled with such foreboding, my sisters and I never wandered far from Mum and Dad. The other reason we did not stray was that Mum and Dad had all the money that was so necessary to obtain full enjoyment of Sideshow Alley.
 

When I was about twelve years old I started going to  the Show on my own or with my school mates. I would save for several weeks leading up to the show. My main source of income was the tuppence refund I would get for returning empty cool drink bottles  to the Beaufort Street grocery shop and the  five shillings per week I was paid by  Aunty May, who operated the lucky Bunny Lottery Kiosk in Barrack Street. Each afternoon after school I would catch the tram into Perth and at 4-30pm I would run the day's taking and the lottery ticket butts to the Lottery Commission office next to Newspaper House in the Terrace. Aunty May told me never to travel the same way twice in a row when carrying the cash and ticket butts.

I would take great delight in counting out my money and working out how many rides, sideshows, cool drinks, hot dogs and serves of fairy floss I could afford. It always seemed like plenty, but invariably by late afternoon I would have only my bus and tram fare in my pocket while still desiring more rides, sideshows and food. At least in those days the show bags, or sample bags as they were then called, were free.
 

The main attraction at the Show was Sideshow Alley with its rides, dodgem cars, House of Horrors, Ghost Train, the  motor cycle Wheel of Death, Blum’s Boxing Troupe and various other sideshow tents. Two sideshows remained etched in Leon’s memory forever; one featuring Big Chief Little Wolf and another featuring the alluring French fan dancer, Paulette.
 

Big Chief, Little Wolf was a American Red Indian who became very popular in Australia after the war. He was a sensation at the big wrestling matches in Sydney and each year would tour several states attending their annual Shows, putting  on exhibitions, demonstrating wrestling holds and talking about his colourful life. He always wore a huge Indian feather headdress and attracted big crowds wherever he went. On one occasion, Dad took me to Reilly’s Hall in Inglewood to see Big Chief Little Wolf stage a boxing and wrestling exhibition against Paddy Boxall, a well-known state champion boxer of the 1940s. Big Chief Little Wolf was a great wrestler but he was an even better entertainer. He was doing the World Championship Wrestling hoopla and  bunkum thirty  years before it became a Television sensation.

Paulette was an exotic French lady who quite possibly was just a girl from Bayswater named Beryl making pin money at the Show. However, as Paulette, with her sexy "French" accent and exotic dancing, she had a lot of fans. Of course, her two biggest fans were the big feathery blue ones she used so cleverly to keep her naked body covered as she danced around on the small stage inside the tent. She certainly aroused young Leon’s interest in the female form and he spent a great deal of his hard earned pocket money visiting the creamy skinned Paulette, always in the hope that once – just once – she would drop one of those blasted blue fans. She never did.

Ah, yes! Some wonderful memories of  those wonderful The Royal Shows of so long ago. 

 

The usual NAPLAN results bring the usual media and political hysteria.

The latest NAPLAN results have been published. Predictably, politicians and media outlets are lamenting the "terrible" results and urging instant action to rescue Australia's failing standards in literacy and numeracy from sinking in a sea of ignorance. Two points should be made at the start.          First, the latest NAPLAN results vary very little from all other  NAPLAN results over the years since 2009. Secondly, to class teachers, these NAPLAN results may be  interesting but they are not very useful. The tests were administered in April and these result, published about five months later, in late August are ancient history.. Their classes have moved on quite a way since April.

What these  NAPLAN results do show us, yet again, is that there is a huge gap between high achieving and low achieving schools. What these NAPLAN results do show, yet again, is that NAPLAN results are determined by the location of the school on the Socio-Economic Index. In other words, schools in the leafy green suburbs do better than schools on the wrong side of the railway tracks. This is not new. It was exactly like that when David Gonski proposed in 2008 that schools should be funded more equitably. In fact Mr Gonski went further than that. He said that  schools should be funded according to their needs. It sounded great but it did not happen. In the decade after Gonski funding to private schools increased markedly in comparison to the funding of government schools. At the same time the achievement gap between high and low NAPLAN achievers grew wider.

Over all of that time the media and the politicians fretted over the yearly NAPLAN results They said  our schools are failing. They said  teachers are failing our children and they must work harder. This is akin to generals complaining that soldiers to whom they gave faulty weapons and scarce ammunition are losing the battle. If the problem is clearly the inequitable distribution of resources why do politicians and the media throw their hands but do nothing about the real cause of the achievement gap.

Dr. Pasi Sahlberg was formerly the Director of Education in Finland, one of the world's high education achievers. Dr Sahlberg is now a professor of Education at the Gonski Institute at the University of Sydney. Six Years ago Pasi Sahlberg tols us that three things needed to happen to address the  problems in Australian education.                                                                                                                         FIRST: Stop the inequitable distribution of resources to schools. Provide extra funding to schools in need.                                                                                                                                                                      Second: Make Wellness a priority in Australian education. Sahlberg said that it is difficult to perform satisfactorily at school if you are sick, tired, hungry or traumatised by physical, emotional or sexual abuse.                                                                                                                                                                            Third: Avoid Quick Fixes.

The Quick Fix is what politicians favour because they believe it tells their  electorate that they are doing something about the problem. Thirty Years ago Professor David Elkind, then Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Education at Rochester University, worried by the pressures being applied the schools, warned that politicians generally made changes in education, not primarily for the benefit of the children, but to impress their parents and obtain their votes at the next election.

The 2024 NAPLAN results have seen the politicians deliver another Quick Fix. The Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, has just announced that he has set up a review to examine early childhood education with the objective of providing quality education for al children fro birth to age five. Not only that all children will be assessed on their mathematical aptitude before entering Year One. Sounds like Minister Clare knows what needs to be done to fix our achievement gap.

Well not everyone thinks so. We shall have to wait and see what the committee sees as "quality education" for children from birth to age five. We can only hope that it does not involve formal instruction in literacy and numeracy, The President of the WA Primary Principals Association, Niel Smith described the proposed numeracy tests for children in the early years as a waste of time and money.  Government schools are under resourced and teachers and principals know where precious resources could be much better spent.

The problem is that many politicians and some parents see education as a race. They believe the sooner you start the race the better you finish. Well, for years, educators have said that education is not a race. It is a developmental process. Thirty years ago Professor  Elkind wrote “The Hurried Child”. In it he said that many problems arise because young children are involved in formal education too soon.           He said children’s education is not a race and activities should be “developmentally appropriate.” Unlike our politicians, Elkind spent a lifetime researching the subject.                                                    

In August 2012, West Australian feature writer, Cathy O’Leary, wrote an excellent article warning parents that they should resist speeding up their child’s development and instead allow their children to enjoy their childhood (Warning on smart baby toys, The West Australian, Cathy O’Leary, 28/08/2012). Ms O’Leary quoted Associate Professor Michael Nagel, from the school of Science and Education at Queensland University, who warned that parents should resist speeding up their child’s development and instead allow their children to enjoy their childhood. Professor Nagel said that parents trying to advance their child’s development with enrichment tools or programmes may be doing them more harm than good. The process could cause children undue stress and hinder important brain development that will be detrimental to later learning.
Professor Elkind’s earlier warnings were much more dire. Forcing formal education on children not developmentally ready would produce some children,” whose academic self-esteem is all but destroyed during their formative years, who develop an antipathy toward learning, and a dislike of school and will never fully realize their latent abilities and talents” He added that these disaffected children would have “an antipathy to learning and a dislike of school. This will create an enormous educational and social debt that we will have to face up to and pay, at great cost, sometime in the future.“                     That future has arrived.

NAPLAN forced the formal instruction of literacy and numeracy into Kindy and Pre Primary and maybe into Daycare. At an important time in their development, when young children should be engaged in enjoyable activities developing their creativity, their imagination, their social skills and learning about themselves and their environment, their family, their home and their school, they are being burdened with formal instructions in literacy and numeracy. We now hear of parents of Pre Primary children being advised to give their children homework to develop literacy and numeracy skills. There is talk of ” the pressure of Pre Primary”. There should never be any pressure in Pre Primary, or Kindy!

Sadly, it is not just politicians and some eager parents who are force feeding our very youngest children with educational and intellectual competencies for which many are not yet ready. State Education Departments and school administrators have been coerced into implementing the process. One sad outcome of this introduction of formal education  to the very early years is that many highly competent early childhood teachers have  resigned or taken early retirement.What they were being pressured to do was not what they signed on for a early childhood educators.

Over thirty years ago, Robert Fulghum wrote an international best seller, “All I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten” There was no mention of formal lessons in numeracy or literacy.

Hopefully, the WA Principals Association will be a beacon of reason against all those who are intent on robbing our very young children of the enjoyment of their childhood. Oh. by the way, in Finland they do not start formal education until children are seven years old.  They also enjoy an equitable distribution of education resources.It seems to work for them.                     

Joe Biden is doing great but the popular media concentrates on Trump's exhibitionism.

 Following Donald Trump being found guilty on 34 charges of false accounting and paying off a Call Girl in order to influence a Presidential election, several letters have appeared in the morning paper saying Donald Trump is a political martyr and that Joe Biden is the worst President in American history. These correspondents presented no proof to substantiate their criticism of President Biden. So far the paper has not published any letters in defence of Joe Biden.                                                        

I do not know where these correspondents obtained their information about Joe Biden’s presidency. May I suggest they and perhaps the Editor of the newspaper, widen their knowledge base by reading an article in The Guardian of May 22nd written by Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkley. 

Professor Reich is a noted author and syndicated columnist who worked in the administrations of Presidents Ford, Carter, Clinton and Obama. The gist of Reich’s article is that in covering the attention-grabbing behaviour of Donald Trump, the popular media have overlooked the achievements of the Biden administration.  

I will refer to only some of the many points Reich made. He writes that, despite public opinion polls to the contrary, the US economy is growing and the stock market is at a record high.                                    Unemployment has remained under 4% for the longest stretch in fifty years.                                    Under Biden the economy gained 15 million jobs. Under Trump it lost 2.9 million jobs.              Inflation is at 3%. Post Covid it was at 9%.                                                                                    Spending on new factories has tripled over the last three years.                                                                In 2016, Trump campaigned against the US trade deficit with China. It was US$ 350billion. In the first three years of Trump’s presidency, pre Covid, this deficit grew to US$ 379billion. Under Biden the China trade deficit has dropped US$100 billion to US$ 279 billion. The lowest it has been since 2010. Trump’s record on antitrust enforcement was abysmal. Biden has been the most activist trustbuster in half a century.                                                                                                                                                Under Trump, the number of Americans lacking health insurance rose by 3 million. Under Biden, it’s been just the opposite. Enrolment in Obamacare has surged from 12 million in 2021 to 21.3 million. 

These are just some of the facts listed by Reich. Sadly, they are largely unreported by the popular media who highlight more sensational Trump stories, often  without any facts at all. 

 Just after he was convicted on 34 charges of deceit and corruption, Trump defiantly said he would continue to fight for the American Constitution. Let us not forget that on January 6th, 2021, Trump, the self-proclaimed Patriot, mounted an attempted coup against the United States government, encouraging his followers to riot ("Fight like hell")  at the Capitol building and to violently overturn the results of the 2020 election. We all saw it unfold so terribly on television. That it happened cannot be denied. If past performance is the best indicator of future actions, I would think that no rational person would ever consider putting Trump back in the White house.

On the other hand if we look at Trump's shambolic presidency we would wonder who in their right mind would want him back. In 2016 he won the Presidential election and had a great many promise to keep. He kept very few of them and some he completely reversed.

Here is a very short list of the very long list of promises that Trump failed to deliver or of which he did the  complete opposite:-

Trump failed to combat Covid-19. 170 000 Americans died because he said he could beat Covid without a vaccine.

He failed to keep Americans healthy. Apart from advising them to drink the wildly inappropriate Hydroxychloroquine 7 million Americans lost their health insurance under Trump.

He saide he would cut taxes but make the rich pay more. He did the complete opposite. He lowered taxes for the very rich while most Americans paid increased taxes.

He said he would boost economic growth by 4%pa. Instead the economy went backwards and unemployment soared.

He said he would not cut Social Security. He cut it severely. His budgets cut billions out of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

He promised to be a "Voice" for the Workers. He was not. he stripped workers of their rights. repealed protections, rolled back Work Safety rules and did nothing about wage theft by greedy employers,

He promised to eliminate the Federal deficit. Under his presidency it increased by 60%.

He said he would hire "the best people". He didn't. He forced a record number of rational and intelligent staff from his cabinet and replaced them with underperforming "Yes" men and women.

Trump promised to "Drain the swamp." He didn't do that, either. What he did do was bring more billionaires, CEOs and lawyers into his administration than any other US President in history. he also filled Federal agencies and departments with lobbyists, lawyers and consultants who busied themselves creating new policies for the companies they previously worked for.

He promised to build a wall along the Us' southern border and that Mexico would pay for it. He didn't. Neither did Mexico.

On the international stage trump was a worrying flop. He alienated America's main allies Germany, France and the United kingdom. At the same time he almost humiliated himself and his country in his deference to Vladimir Putin at international conferences. Trump said  Putin was right to annexe Crimea. He said that he would not defend a NATO country if Putin attacked it. He also made a trip to North Korea to hold hands and curry favour with Kim Jung Un.

In recent times Trump seems to more and more communicate with repetitive short slogans or sour   criticisms. He seems unable to talk broadly about political, economic or social matters. It will  be interesting how he performs in the debates with joe Biden. will he be able to provide some substance to the frothy epithets he throws around over and over again?

Sadly, the popular media provides very few facts when it reports on Donald Trump. It hardly reports on Joe Biden all, except to say that he is old and sleepy. Interestingly, it was Donald Trump who slept through quite a bit of his recent trial.

We need a media that tells us the facts about what Trump did and didn't do. To tell us the facts about what Biden has done and is doing.

The day of  reckoning is fast approaching . If the world is plunged into chaos and despair we  will all blame the media for not presenting the facts. The sad fact is, it will be too late.

Playing the man and not the ball is not football.

Recently, Justin Longmuir,  the coach of the Fremantle Dockers in the Australian Football League (AFL), called for the umpires to provide more protection to his full forward who had been severely manhandled by the opposing full back in a game against Richmond. As some of my Blog readers live overseas and are unfamilar  with Australian Rules football, a few words of explanation are required.

Australian Rules football is a very fast, physical game played over two hours between two sides of 18 players. The grounds are oval shaped, approximately 170 metres long and 140 metres wide. Some grounds ae bigger, some grounds smaller. 

It is a team game but it also a man on man game because each player has a direct opponent.                    Full Back/Full Forward, Centre Half Back/Centre Half Forward and so on. Up until the 1970s teams only had one reserve players to replace anyone who was injured. In 1978 two reserves became available to replace injured players. Injured players, once replaced,  could not return to the game.                           

In the 1990s, the AFL introduced a four man interchange bench. Coaches could now take injured players off and have them temporarily replaced by an interchange player. The patched up injured player could be sent back into the game. As usual coaches abused the new system to their advantage. They began rotating uninjured players on the interchange bench so that they could get fresh legs on the field.  

This radically changed the nature of AFL football.  What was already a fast game became a whole lot faster because refreshed players could run in packs up and down the field all day. As a result, positional man on man contests were replaced by large packs of players around the ball. It also led to a lot more scragging and manhandling. 

In AFL football you cannot manhandle a player who does not have the ball. You can grab and tackle a player in possession of the ball. You can put your arms out to shepherd a player from the ball or from a teammate who is going for the ball. You can also deliver a hip and shoulder bump to an opponent in a contest for the ball. However, if you grab or tackle a player who is not in possession of the ball it is free kick to that player. Or it should be. There used to be one central umpire. Now there are four. They should be constantly looking for any player who is manhandling another player and awarding free kicks against that player wherever it occurs on the field. Coaches would soon change their message.

Justin Longmuir’s call for some protection for his forwards highlights the sad fact that our beloved Aussie Rules football now encourages playing the man instead of the ball. Players hold, grasp and grapple with each other before bouncedowns and boundary throw-ins. Sometimes, as in the case with Docker full forward,  Jye Amiss, players are thrown to the ground even when the ball is more than a kick away.

It was not always like this. I started going to WANFL matches with my Dad in Perth in 1947. There were plenty of really tough footballers playing in those days. But the never scragged their opponents. Why not? Because the umpire would immediately award a free kick for holding the man without the ball. There was plenty of hip and shoulder bumping and fierce tackling, but no scragging. 

Champion ruckmen of those days, like Merv McIntosh, Ray Perry, Jack Clarke, Brian "Blue" Foley and the young Graham Farmer never locked arms as they ran in to contest boundary throwins in the 1950s. Their eyes were on the ball and they used their hips and shoulders to gain position. These days, the opposing ruckmen run in more closely entwined than Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They are invariably locked together with outstretched arms over or under each other's shoulders.           

I earlier times, footballers were encouraged to play the ball and not the man. Our coaches told us that umpires would favour payers who made the ball their object. Not anymore. In the mid-1960s the game changed. Taggers became key weapons in curbing the opposition’s attacking ball getters and goal kickers. Taggers became claspers and graspers. They were  often penalised but soon  became very skilful in holding their opponents without being penalised.

In the early 2000s the introduction  of the interchange bench made everyone a midfield player. Four players on the bench could be interchanged repeatedly with players on the field. Instead of holding their specified positions, all players could now run up and down the field to assist teammates  moving the ball forward or defending opposition forward thrusts. It sometimes makes for very fast moving football as players race towards their goal, moving the ball forwards with lightning fast hand passes and accurate kicks to teammates. Sometimes, it means you have twenty or thirty players milling around in rugby like scrums and 'all in' rolling, wrestling matches. These days, we often see all 36 onfield players inside the fifty metre arc. Play is so congested and rugby like that  scragging is common. Umpires often just call  “Play on” to keep the ball moving.

These days coaches clearly instruct their players to play the man instead of the ball. The field umpires,  the four of them, often just let it happen. How often do we see players wrap their arms around their opponents, throw them to the ground and then clasp the incoming ball as the field umpire indicates, “Fair mark”. What happened to holding the man without the ball? Or putting your knee in his face?

In his response to Longmuir’s request that the laws of the game be upheld, Adam Yze, the Richmond coach, typified what all AFL coaches now say, "Our defenders try to limit the amount of access their forwards get at the ball. So, if they are manhandling then that’s the game.”  No, it’s not!

Manhandling never was part of our game. The laws of football forbid it.                                                    

Time for the umpires to lift their game and give us back our game.

  

WHAT IT IS, IS FOOTBALL!

 

WHAT IT IS, IS FOOTBALL!

Every so often on the Letters page of my local morning newspaper, some followers  of other sports, generally lovers of rugby or soccer, pen letters poking fun at our great Australian game of football, otherwise known as Aussie Rules or Footy. Sometimes pronounced Foody! Rhymes with Goody.

These writers appear to be upset, bemused, irate, iindignant, amused, perplexed or may just confused that our great game of Australian Rules Football has different rules to their game. Just imagine how they would react if the knew that Autralain Rules Football started out as Victorian Rule, because the game was born on Melbourne  half way through the 19th Century. Not only that Auystraliuan Rules football is not governed by rules but by laws. The way in which the great game s played and officiated is all set out in The Laws of Football.

The people writing disparaging letters about our game's Laws/Rules all complain that in Aussie Rules football you get a point for missing the goals. It’s called a Behind. They complain that if the ball goes through the goals, but is touched by a player on either side, or hits the goal post on the way through, then it is not a goal but a behind. Instead of six points the team only scores one point. They say that no matter how it goes through the goal posts it should be a goal.

They complain that if the  ball  hits the posts and bounces back  in to play it should be “Play on”. In the Aussie game if the ball hits the post, the   umpire stops the game, because if the ball hits the goal post it means a behind has been scored or If the ball hits the point post it is deemed to out of bounds. 

What these critics fail to understand is that Australian Rules Football is not Rugby and it is not Soccer. It is different game with different rules. And we love it.

I do not mind rugby and soccer lovers attacking our game because it shows that they are frightened of it, probably because  because it is fast, virous and more spectacular in every way. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “When they start calling me names I know that I have won the argument.” 

I have never seen any letters to the Editor from Aussie Rules fans pointing out absurdities in Soccer or Rugby. However, just for the sake of prolonging the argument I am taking a leaf out of their grumpy book to point out some anomalies in their games.

First off, the name Soccer. The round ball game is called soccer in Australia, Canada and the USA and probably in some other places, too. However, in 2005,  the Australia  Soccer Federation,   in what it thought was a great one fingered salute to the Australian Football League (AFL), changed its name to the Football Federation Australia. Then in 2020, it changed its name to Football Australia.   Fair enough. But that  organisation which seems to loathe its game being called Soccer has a national men’s team which it calls…wait for it…The Socceroos.  Maybe  it’s  time for another name  change…one way or the other. The Footeroos? The Federoos?

In Australian rules the players take postions all over the field. It is a team game but each player has direct opponent. In rugby, the two teams start in the opposite halves of the ground. Their aim is to get the ball up to the other end and score a Try, by touching the ball over the end line and by scoring a goal by kicking the ball  through the goal posts.

Seems like a good plan. However, while the rugby  team can run forward with the ball, they can only pass it backwards. What? Why? No Aussie Rules fan has ever written to a newspaper saying that this is a foolish rule. The fact is, we do not care  at all about the Rules of Rugby . But it does seem a very strange rule. Of course in Gridiron, the American high tech version of Rugby, the Quarterbacks can throw the ball as far forward as they like. Usually, with dead eyed accuracy to another player who is well forward of the ball.  You cannot do that in rugby and you definitely cannot do it in soccer.

If you score a Try you  get a free kick at goal. You not only have to kick it through the goal posts but over a cross bar which it a couple of meters above the ground. Why? What happened if the  ball goes through the posts but under the crossbar?  Well, it is no score at all. Why?

Soccer has few strange rules, too. Probably the strangest is that you cannot use your hands unless you  are the goal keeper. Seems unnatural to me. You can use your head but not your hands. In these days when concussion and its after effects are coming under increasing scrutiny, the use of the head may one day be banned. That’s if the soccer administrators use their heads.

Even stranger though, is that  if a player causes the ball to go over the side line, on purpose or accidentally, it must be returned in to the play by  a player from  the opposite team. Well, that  is not strange but how it is returned to  play is mind boggling. Just  how does this player return the ball? He throws it! He uses his hands and he throws it.  I am not  making this up. It is the rule in soccer, a game where you are not allowed to handle the ball. Why don’t they kick it  in? Or head it in?

Like rugby,  the two soccer teams occupy either half of the ground at the start of play. Their aim is to get the ball into their goal at the other end of the ground. Unlike rugby, soccer players can pass  the ball forward which is quite sensible as, otherwise, it would never get anywhere near their goal.

However, in Soccer,  the Offside Rule says that no player can be ahead of the ball. In simple terms the offside rule says, “an attacking player, when in the opposition half, must have at least two opposition players, including the goalkeeper, between him/her  and the opposition goal when a pass is being played to him/her.” For those who do not know, “The opposition half” is the half of the ground in front of  the goal net that the attacking players are trying to reach.

Even soccer lover have trouble with this rule. In fact the Offside Rule once stipulated that three opposition players must be between the attacking player and the goal. Hockey had the same rule which was amended in 1972 from  3 players to 2 from the halfway line. In 1987, hockey amended this rule to only apply within the 25 yard area. Then in 1996 they experimented with a No Offside rule. This gave more power to the attacking side, speeding  up the game and, more importantly, led to more goals being scored and making for much more exciting and dynamic game. In 1998 Hockey canned the  offside rule altogether. Hockey lovers say  this improved their game.

 So far, Soccer has been happy to stay with the two man offside rule. That is probably why soccer crowds are known for singing and chanting to keep themselves awake and amused during low scoring games. And rioting, of course. At many grounds soccer barrackers are segregated in separate areas of the ground.

Goals are still hard to score in Soccer and draws are quite common. However, the administrators have made it very easy to score goals in soccer. If the ball crosses the goal line and goes into  the net it is a goal. It does not matter if somebody touches it or it hits the posts at the side or on top of the goal. If the ball is in in the net then it is a goal. If it hits the top of the goal and bounces inside the goal line and then bounces out again …it is still a goal. In fact, even if an opposing player kicks, heads or otherwise causes the ball into the net, it is a goal.  They call it an Own Goal.

Indeed, goals are so rare in soccer, that when a player scores a goal he goes into a well rehearsed highly  choreographed routine which often involves him ripping off his shirt. Of course if a player unfortunately scores an Own Goal for the opposing side he does not dance for joy and rip his shirt off. Quite the opposite.

I do not write these lines to belittle rugby or soccer. They are both wonderful games. In fact, some of my best friends played rugby and/or soccer. Nothing wrong with that! I write merely to point out that Australian Rules fans have refrained from writing letters poking fun at soccer and rugby basically because we could not care less.  We love our Australian footy game and we love the  rules, er, pardon me, Laws that make it unique.

As somebody once said, “It’s more than a game!”