Tag: football

The Roar got their season off to a good start with a 2-0 victory over the New Zealand Knights. The match was played in front of 20,725 spectators, which was a record for a normal league match in Australian soccer. However, this record was broken soon afterwards with a crowd of 25,208 turning up to watch Sydney FC versus Melbourne Victory. That match ended 1-1 with goals from Dwight Yorke and Archie Thompson. So the new league is off to a great start, then.

Unfortunately, Karen didn’t get her hotdog (we had chips instead), but she did get some beer. Apparently it wasn’t enough beer to make the game exciting, though. :-) I’m not sure what’s wrong with her; how could it have not been exciting? ;-)

The A-League kicked off last night with Newcastle going down to Adelaide at home, and Perth losing to Central Coast at home. Those matches attracted crowds of 13000 and 11000 respectively. The Queensland Roar has their first match tomorrow afternoon when they take on the New Zealand Knights at Suncorp Stadium, and there will be a large crowd to see that game, with already over 14000 tickets sold and a large walk-up contingent expected. There’s a very good chance that there will be a larger crowd watching the Roar’s first match than there was watching the Broncos first ever match. I’ve bought tickets already and will be going to watch with my brother and Karen. (Yes, I talked her into it, and she says she’s looking forward to sampling the hotdogs and beer while explaining the off-side rule to the poor soul is who sits next to her. That’s my Karen!) On form so far, the Roar should easily dispose of the Knights. Hopefully an old teammate teammate of mine will shine tomorrow. Score a few Jonti!

One of the world’s most widely respected football coaches, Guus Hiddink, has been appointed as the new coach of the Australian national team. Hiddink, a dutchman, has twice taken teams to the World Cup semi-finals: the Netherlands in 1998 and, more remarkably, South Korea in 2002. He has now been charged with enormous task of guiding Australia into the 2006 World Cup, which means overcoming the fifth placed South American qualifier in November, assuming Australia first manages to beat the Solomon Islands in September. Hiddink’s first game as manager of Australia will be the first leg of the playoff with the Solomon Islands.

Until November, Hiddink will share his time between the club team PSV Eindhoven and the Australian national team. In last season’s European Champions League, the world’s top club competition, Hiddink was at the helm as PSV made it to the semi-finals of that competition, and so nearly overcame AC Milan to make it to the final.

In Guus Hiddink, the FFA have appointed the best man they could have. But now Hiddink faces a challenge the like of which he has never faced before. Let’s hope he can do what his predecessors could not.

The Queensland Lions have changed their name to Queensland Roar FC in a bid to avert confusion between the football team and the AFL team. I will reserve judgement on the aesthetic value of the new name. Read the press release and see the new logo here.

At long last, the world game in Australia will be called what it is called everywhere else in the world: football. The Australian Soccer Association is soon to officially announce a name change to the Football Federation of Australia. I’m not sure I like that name completely, but at least the sport will be called by its rightful name. The Socceroos brand name will be left to slowly die out, just as it should be. I’ve often wondered why Australia, and Australia alone, needs an official nickname for its national football team. Sure the French give their national side the nickname les Bleus (the Blues) and the Italians call their team gli Azzurri (the Blues ;), but these are not brand names and they are not official in any respect. I’ve always called the game football, and soon I will be able to do so officially and without having to explain myself. :)

ABC news online have beaten The World Game in announcing the launch of the A-League: the new Australian football (soccer) competition commencing next year. Brisbane will be represented by the Queensland Lions, formerly known as the Brisbane Lions and Hollandia. They have competed in the NSL before. The Australian Soccer Association (ASA) must have deemed the Lions to be more financially viable than the Brisbane Strikers. It’s going to be confusing having two national teams called the Lions in Brisbane: one an AFL team, and one a soccer team.

The Champions’ League Final was played and won by Porto overnight. I was too tired to wake up and watch it. It’s very rare that I’m too tired to watch a football match! Yesterday the first match in the 2004 State of Origin series was won by NSW. I only got to see a small part of it because I was preoccupied with a phone call. It’s only Rugby League afterall. :)

The monthly NWWT meeting took place today. I was able to report my prototype was finished. The researchers and engineers working on the LiveSpaces project seemed very interested in my service discovery protocol. Hopefully they’ll want to use it in their work. I should also look at getting it integrated with the PACE work. But the PACE group is pretty busy at the moment.

I’ve almost finished marking the second COMP4301 assignment. Six assignments left to mark, I think. No more pracs to attend! But the third and final assignment is due on Monday.

I have to start working on the paper I’m supposed to be writing with Steven Livingstone. The paper is based on his honours work, which was about bridging Jini and Twine. There’s only about two weeks left before the submission deadline.

I should also have mentioned that Sasi submitted his thesis on Monday. Good luck to him. Hope everything goes well. We’re having drinks and/or lunch next week.

This blog is boring and needs sprucing up. Hopefully there’ll be some interesting material to report soon. :)

Yesterday was a sad day for football, as Marc Vivien Foe collapsed and died in the middle of the Confederations Cup semi-final between Cameroon and Colombia. He keeled over in the 72nd minute and never regained consciousness, despite the efforts of medical staff to revive him for 45 minutes. Cameroon won the match and there is a dilemma over whether the final, between France and Cameroon will be played. Needless to say the French and Turkish players, who received news of Foe’s death before the start of their own match, were very emotional. Some of them, especially a few of the French, found it hard to play, breaking up in tears during the national anthems, as they were former club teammates of Foe. Foe was in the prime of his football career. He was on loan to Manchester City from Lyon, which is, coincidentally, the city in which he died. He had previously played for Lens and West Ham. The cause of his death is unknown, but is speculated to have been caused by an aneurysm or a heart attack. Foe was 28 and in the prime of his football career.