Football in Australia

To:  The Australian Media

Re: Football in Australia


Dear Australian media,

We, the undersigned, would like to protest against the media’s prejudiced coverage of football in this country for the past number of years. We feel that football has not been given the attention and respect it deserves. This can be fundamentally attributed to the lackluster role the media have played in promoting and televising the sport.

There are a number of key concerns that must immediately be addressed:

One such concern is the naming of the sport. The world governing body for football is FIFA: The Fédération Internationale de Football Association, established in 1904 (www.fifa.com). The international community has therefore officially recognised the sport as football for more than 100 years. Calling the sport football is both democratic and logical. It is democratic as the vast majority of the world embraces it as football and logical because the principal method of passing and keeping possession of the ball involves the foot (compared to AFL or rugby where possession using the hands dominates proceedings).

Classifying the sport as soccer could therefore be regarded as incorrect (as the term is an abbreviation of the true name association football) yet despite this, there still exists a number of media who refuse to recognise the sport under its proper name. Recently during a Channel 9 Sports Bulletin in Adelaide, not only did the presenter Kym Dillon refer to the sport as soccer, the background icon illustrated a Soccer Australia logo even though the national governing body for the sport is the Football Federation of Australia. This deliberate attempt to misrepresent football and its authority is nothing short of offensive for all football fans.

Not only is this occurring, but the amount of coverage received on the news is inadequate. Football is one of the country’s most popular sports in Australia (for example, the ABS in 2003 reported that it was the most popular sport participated in by boys). Regrettably, coverage and highlights of matches during sports news is minimal (this is consistently the case in Adelaide when news from A-league is more often than not the last report given and barely constitutes 30 seconds of coverage). This discrimination even happened with the 2006 FIFA World Cup. When Australia was not playing or got eliminated, the biggest and most popular sporting event in the world got overshadowed by lengthy coverage of domestic AFL news.

We call on the Australian media to be more reasonable with its selection of sports coverage and cater for the sizeable football fan base in this country. We would also like to remind the media that the promotion of football plays a fundamental role in Australian society. Football is a celebration of humanity and a unifying force for people of all ages and cultures. This could not be more significant for a multicultural nation like Australia which celebrates ethnic diversity from all corners of the globe. The 2006 World Cup also showed how football can unite a whole nation and why it deserves to be regarded as the world’s most beautiful game.

We, the undersigned, demand that the Australian media officially and unconditionally classify the sport as football at all times, give greater coverage to football matches, and give football the credit and respect it deserves as one of the most popular sports in Australia.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Football in Australia Petition to The Australian Media was created by and written by George Grevelis (georgegrevelis@hotmail.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

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