They should get 100%...

…the Western Sydney Wanderers, that is. The players have been embroiled in a pay dispute with the club, which has offered them only ten percent of the revenues from participation in FIFA’s pointless annual parade of continental champions’ league winners, the Club World Cup. The players have been asking for fifty percent – the same ratio that Adelaide United got when they partook of the same event in 2008.

There are a few examples of professional sporting teams being run along the lines of workers’ co-operatives. In 1890, baseball players disenchanted by team owners’ use of the reserve clause to hold down their earnings formed the Players’ League, once of three major leagues in operation that season, with franchises in Boston, New York, (the then-still independent city of) Brooklyn, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago. Players took the profits for themselves, and clubs didn’t collude to reduce players’ bargaining power.

Prior to 1905, Australian cricket tours to Britain were run by the players themselves for their own financial benefit, with the Melbourne Cricket Club getting a slice of the profits in exchange for lending its support and branding (pre-Federation Australian tourists wore the blue, red, and white of the club rather than the green and gold introduced by the Board of Control). The formation of the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket (now Cricket Australia) ensured that the profits from outbound Ashes tours would be siphoned away from the players and towards the administrators. The final blow to player sovereignty was inflicted in 1912, when six of the country’s top cricketers were left out of a touring squad bound for Britain when they demanded the right to choose their own manager for the tour.

1890 and 1905 were victories for capitalist owners and administrators over the players – the sporting equivalents of the Freikorps’ shooting of Rosa Luxemburg and Franco’s coup against the Spanish Second Republic. They helped to ensure that professional sportspeople would spend the rest of the century battling the reserve clause, the maximum wage, and other restraints on their bargaining power.

What is needed is for professional leagues to be run on the lines of the Players’ League, with players owning and managing their own franchises, and controlling one hundred percent of the profits generated by their labours.

Alternatively, players’ bargaining power can be increased by upping the number of owner-controlled franchises bidding for their services. American baseball players benefited from the existence of ‘third’ major leagues in the 1910s (the Federal League) and the 1940s (the Mexican League), in both cases either jumping ship to the new league or using its existence to get a better deal from the established leagues. A rebel league is a difficult proposition in soccer, with FIFA’s totalising control over the sport, but the original North American Soccer League showed that it can be done.

The players, not only of the Wanderers but of all the other professional sports franchises across the nation, would do well to study the examples of the Players’ League and the pre-1905 Ashes tours. They shouldn’t settle for ten percent, or even fifty percent.

Film review: Semi-Pro

Since the formation of the NBA in 1946, some decidedly medium-sized cities have been home to big-time professional basketball teams: among them Fort Wayne, Indiana; Moline, Illinois; Omaha, Nebraska; Sheboygan, Wisconsin; and Waterloo, Iowa. Flint, Michigan was not one of them, but that didn’t stop the 2008 Will Ferrell film Semi-Pro from focusing on a fictional team from the hometown of Michael Moore.

The American Basketball Association, or ABA, was a competitor to the NBA which lasted from 1967 to 1976, and which featured three-point shots (later adopted by the NBA) and a red, white, and blue ball. When it merged with the senior circuit in 1976, four of its franchises were accepted into the NBA: the Denver Nuggets, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs, and the New York-cum-New Jersey-cum-Brooklyn Nets. Semi-Pro presents a counter-factual history in which those four places were determined by the teams’ results in the league’s final season.

The opening scenes show Ferrell as Jackie Moon, a platinum-selling disco singer who has purchased, and is the captain-coach of, the Flint Tropics, a perennially bad ABA team who play in front of more cheerleaders than paying spectators. Over drinks at the fashionably multi-racial Kremlin nightclub, he learns of the ABA-NBA merger, and at a meeting of team owners he further learns that only four franchises will be accepted into the NBA for the 1976-77 season. The remainder will be dissolved; Moon asks “is that even a word?”

The protagonist convinces the other owners (the names of real-life ABA teams are displayed around the table in front of each Old Rich White Guy) to change the terms of the merger agreement to allow on-court results in the 1975-76 season to determine which four teams will make the jump. (If this had been done in real life, the Kentucky Colonels would have joined the NBA in 1976 instead of the Pacers.)

Former Boston Celtics player Ed Monix (Woody Harrelson) is recruited from the Colonels, traded, unbelievably, for a washing machine. Despite his own personal issues, he takes over as coach from Moon in a Western Bulldogs-style player revolt (Moon, however, retains the style of coach while Monix takes on the Orwellian title of ‘offensive and defensive co-ordinator’). Under Monix’s leadership, the Tropics learn some new tactics and begin to climb off the bottom of the standings.

Meanwhile, in a satire of the increasingly show-biz nature of pro sports, Moon and his team-mates get involved in a series of barmy-as-a-pot-of-whitewash matchday stunts, culminating in him ‘fighting’ a live lion. (In a case of life imitating art, the Brisbane Lions have announced plans to have a live lion on the field of play next season.) All this is rather a distraction from the plot; it is unclear whether its purpose is to critique the commercialisation of the modern NBA, or to pine for the comparatively innocent stadium atmosphere of the seventies.

The final game of the season sees the Tropics at home to the most successful of the post-ABA franchises, the Spurs; in true Hollywood fashion, the Michiganders need a win to qualify. This is where the film gets ridiculous: a Tropics player traded to the Spurs switches sides mid-match, and a concussed Moon has a conversation with his dead mother, who, mind-bogglingly, is African-American. One can probably guess the ending: the Tropics win by one point with an after-the-buzzer shot, and Moon gets a job with the NBA even if his team doesn’t.

There are many ways to interpret Semi-Pro. One possibility is that the film represents a longing for the small-city teams which once populated America’s pro sports leagues, and of which only the Green Bay Packers remain. The film, however, doesn’t focus much on Flint itself (perhaps due to it not being directed by Michael Moore), and the possibility of the Tropics being admitted into the NBA remains live until near the end. A more realistic idea is that it is a paean to simpler times, before the world of sport was taken over by commercialism and when players simply went out and played, not worrying much about tactics or fitness.

Like most imagined pasts, this supposed golden age was not what it seemed. All sports are better to watch now that their players are full-time professionals, and all are better for the tactical revolutions engendered by men like Lobanovskiy, Barassi, Gibson, and Lombardi. On the other hand, television coverage has had a negative impact on most sports, as the type of gameplay and presentation favoured by casual fans in their living rooms often differs from that appreciated by the rusted-on fan in the stands. Basketball presents good examples of this: just look at the NBA’s codes regarding players’ off-court dress and behaviour, which are designed to make the league’s predominantly African-American players more acceptable to white, middle-class America.

Semi-Pro doesn’t deviate from the usual script of Hollywood’s treatment of sports. It sheds little light on the real history of the ABA, and it valorises amateurism and tactical innocence while failing to identify What Went Wrong for professional sport in the last few decades of the twentieth century.

What would make a better sporting film? One that highlights the key problems of sport in the neoliberal age: the greater dependence on television revenue than on gate revenue, the de-proletarianisation of crowds, the trend towards taxpayer-funded all-seater stadia, the increasing tendency of the managerial state to intervene in the affairs of once-autonomous sporting organisations, and the exploitation (in the Marxist sense) of players by clubs and leagues. Semi-Pro has very little to say on the social and political aspects of professional sport.

The Australian National Football League: a counter-factual history

(This is the first in a series of [approximately] five alternate history scenarios, intended to show how various sporting leagues could have evolved differently.)

Following the success of the 1933 interstate carnival held in Sydney, the national code continued to grow in New South Wales. By the 1960s, most Sydney first grade clubs had licensed clubs and used the poker machine revenue to lure star players from the southern states, and the increasing revenue allowed the NSWANFL to build its own equivalent of Waverley Park at Homebush Bay, which it named Pemulwuy Stadium. When the idea of a national competition was first discussed, the NSWANFL was of at least an equivalent standard to the SANFL and WANFL. In the mid-1970s, top clubs from the VFL and NSWANFL hammered out plans for a national league, which began play in 1977.

The league was named the Australian National Football League; at the time, all state leagues except Victoria had the word ‘national’ in their names. The VFL’s traditional ‘big five’ (Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Geelong, and Richmond) and post-war powerhouse Hawthorn were joined by the NSWANFL’s four power clubs (East Sydney, Newtown, North Shore, and Wests) as well as up-and-coming suburban side Campbelltown. They invited Port Adelaide and Norwood from the SANFL, Mayne and Sandgate from the QANFL, and a composite Canberra side, to be known as the Rams. To better market themselves to a national audience, Newtown and Wests rebranded themselves as the Sydney Bloods and Sydney Magpies respectively.

The sixteen teams played a twenty-two round season, with two televised matches each week at Waverley Park and Pemulwuy Stadium, followed by a final four. Minor premiers East Sydney held off Port Adelaide, Geelong, and Campbelltown in a tense finals series. Soon after the Bulldogs’ grand final triumph in front of a near-capacity Pemulwuy Stadium, the ANFL announced its seventeenth team, the Newcastle Dockers, would enter the following season.

The 1980s saw the league expand further, with the Wollongong Hoppers and Tasmania Devils joining, before the increasing ease of trans-continental air travel made it possible to recruit Perth-based teams for the 1987 season. Like Adelaide and Brisbane, Perth was allotted two spots, which went to East Perth and a combined Fremantle team, known as the Sharks. To even out the competition, a Cairns-based team, the Crocodiles, was added in 1995.

Nowadays, the ANFL’s twenty-two teams play an uneven twenty-two-round fixture which allows for blockbusters and derbies such as the Port Adelaide-Norwood ‘Showdown’ and the East Perth-Fremantle ‘Derby’. The top eight teams qualify for the finals series, which is a knockout, but the minor premier retains the right of challenge (i.e. if knocked out, it plays the winner of the final in a ‘grand final’). Matches are played over twenty-five-minute quarters with two interchange and two substitutes per team, and an ‘offside’ rule introduced to stop flooding mandates that each team have two players in each fifty-metre arc and four in each half of the field at all times, leaving ten who can follow the ball around the field.

The introduction of a national league made the old interstate matches obsolete, and though a ‘state of origin’ concept was mooted early on, the abolition of the states and the rise of Australian nationalism made such an idea seem pointless. The increase in the number of foreign players, however, has led to an ‘international’ match being played every year between the all-Australian team and ‘the Rest’.

The teams are listed with their nicknames and home grounds in parentheses, and any other relevant information in brackets.

1. Carlton (the Blues; Princes Park)

2. Collingwood (the Magpies; Victoria Park)

3. Essendon (the Bombers; Melbourne Cricket Ground)

4. Geelong (the Cats; Kardinia Park)

5. Hawthorn (the Hawks; Waverley Park)

6. Richmond (the Tigers; Waverley Park)

7. Adelaide Redlegs (Norwood Oval) [formerly Norwood]

8. Port Adelaide (the Magpies; Football Park)

9. East Perth (the Royals; Subiaco Oval)

10. Fremantle (the Sharks; Fremantle Oval) [merger of East Fremantle and South Fremantle]

11. Tasmania (the Devils; North Hobart Oval and York Park, Launceston) [composite team; nickname taken from the early 2000s Tasmanian VFL team]

12. Campbelltown (the Swans; Monarch Oval, Campbelltown)

13. East Sydney (the Bulldogs; Sydney Cricket Ground)

14. North Shore (the Bombers; Gore Hill Oval, Chatswood)

15. Sydney Bloods (Pemulwuy Stadium) [formerly Newtown]

16. Sydney Magpies (Pemulwuy Stadium) [formerly Western Suburbs]

17. Newcastle (the Dockers; Newcastle No. 1 Sports Ground) [composite team; nickname inspired by the real-life Fremantle franchise]

18. Wollongong (the Hoppers; Wollongong Showground) [composite team; nickname inspired by North Albury FC]

19. Canberra (the Rams; Manuka Oval) [composite team; nickname taken from the NSW-ACT TAC Cup team]

20. Brisbane Seahawks (Brisbane Exhibition Ground) [formerly Sandgate]

21. Brisbane Tigers (Brisbane Exhibition Ground) [formerly Mayne]

22. Cairns (the Crocodiles; Cazaly’s Stadium) [composite team]

Scoring rates: a post-season update

Earlier in the year, I wrote about how the average score per team per match in the AFL was trending downwards this season, and was then sitting at its lowest point since 1968. Over the 198 matches of the home and away season, 4962 goals (at an average of 12.53 per team per match) and 4501 behinds (at an average of 11.37 per team per match) were scored. Teams averaged a score of 86.55 points per match, and 110.24 goals were kicked for every 100 behinds.

The figure of 12.53 goals per team per match is a drop of nearly one whole goal per team per match from last season’s figure of 13.5. The previous lowest since the introduction of twenty-five-minute quarters in 1994 was 13.05 in 1997; the lowest in the post-Colonial era was 13.11 in 2010. In 2000, the figure peaked at 15.18. Prior to the lengthening of quarters, one would have to go back to 1970 to find a lower rate of goals per game (12.38) than this season.

The figure of 11.37 behinds per team per match is also down from last season, when it stood at 11.78. This is also the lowest in the post-1994 era, and the lowest since 1965, when 11.38 behinds were scored per team per match.

The figure of 86.55 points per team per match represents a drop of more than one goal per team per match from 2013, when it was 92.78. The previous lowest post-1994 tally was 90.34 in 1997; the lowest in the post-Colonial era was 90.47 in 2010. The last season in which fewer points were scored per team per match than this one was 1968 (82.08), the last season in which out of bounds on the full resulted in a boundary throw-in; the introduction of free kicks the following season forced teams to centre the ball to avoid being penalised, resulting in a jump in scoring rates of over fifteen points per team per match in 1969.

The fourth statistic, the 110.24 goals per 100 behinds, is the only one mentioned which is not the lowest in the post-1994 AFL; it was only the fourth-lowest, behind 1997 (when it reached 108.5), 1994, and 2007. The rule change made in 2006, which enforced a time limit on set shots, ensures that we will probably never again see the 123.06 goals per 100 behinds figure reached in 2000.

This was a superlative season, the lowest-scoring and fourth most inaccurate of the twenty-five-minute quarter era. Part of this is due to fluctuations in weather conditions, but the downward trend in scoring rates is also due to the way the modern game is played. Teams have mastered the art of defence, applying ferocious pressure when not in possession of the ball. Conceding fewer goals, they need to score fewer goals to win.

Paul Roos and Ross Lyon are the apostles of the new model football, and it arguably reached its apotheosis in the 2013 preliminary final in which Lyon’s Dockers swarmed any Sydney player in possession, and produced a twenty-seven-minute period in which i biancorossi failed to get the ball into their offensive fifty-metre arc. With thirty-six fit bodies huddling around the ball (when they’re not coming on and off the interchange bench), modern football can degenerate into a stop-start series of rolling mauls and ball-ups, but it makes for much more tactically intelligent football than the twenty-five-goals-apiece shoot-outs fondly remembered by nostalgics who preferred the way the game was played ‘back in my day’.

Football is not unique in this regard. Soccer goes through the same cycle, from the catenaccio of Helenio Herrera’s Inter Milan to the totaalvoetbal of Rinus Michels’ Ajax, and from the tiki-taka of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona to the low-possession, reactive style of Inter and Chelsea under José Mourinho. Roos and Lyon are merely the eighteen-man code’s versions of Marcelo Bielsa, whose teams place great emphasis on retrieving the ball high up the pitch when not in possession, and then moving contested ball directly towards the goal. Bielsa has had success with this style in recent seasons at Athletic Bilbao, and is now working his magic at Olympique Marseille. (But the bielsista style affects the two codes differently: it increases scoring rates in soccer while helping to decrease them in football.)

So, congratulations to the league and the clubs for putting on such a great season of football – the best, in my opinion, since the 1990s. All eighteen clubs played to win this year (even Melbourne!) and the fact that three teams tied on points for the minor premiership demonstrates the evenness of the competition.

NRL grand final match review: South Sydney v. Canterbury-Bankstown at Sydney

It has been nineteen years since noted sporting expert Tina Turner proclaimed rugby league ‘simply the best’. South Sydney and Canterbury-Bankstown proved her right in front of the [Insert Sponsor’s Name Here] Stadium’s largest post-Olympic crowd, as they played out a bruising and entertaining encounter, the result of which broke the former’s forty-three year premiership hoodoo.

The signs that the match wouldn’t disappoint were evident from the kick-off, whereupon the head of Canterbury enforcer James Graham collided with that of his compatriot Sam Burgess, doing a number on the tough Yorkshireman’s cheekbone. The Bulldogs were jittery and error-prone in the first few minutes, and when they fumbled a sixth-minute bomb into the waiting hands of Lote Tuqiri, the Souths faithful thought that the wait was finally over, until the video showed that the fumble had been caused by a high shot by a Souths player.

The Rabbitohs only had to wait another fourteen minutes to open the scoring, when a penalty put them downfield and Alex Johnston received a crafty shove-pass on the wing. Adam Reynolds made up for the missed conversion in the twenty-seventh minute: Greg Inglis intercepted and advanced to within forty metres of the Bulldogs’ line, the fourth play-the-ball of the set of six was interfered with, and Reynolds duly followed his coach’s instructions to take the two points.

The remainder of the first half proceeded trylessly but not without incident. Josh Morris almost scored Canterbury’s first try but lost control of the ball, which was then pounced on by quick-thinking Souths defenders. Sporadic outbreaks of argy-bargy occurred, usually involving Morris, and threatened to break out into good old-fashioned fisticuffs on the half-time whistle until cooler heads prevailed.

The second half started much the same way as the first, with Souths pressuring Canterbury into making crucial errors in the vicinity of their goal. They failed to capitalise, and the match took a turn seven minutes into the half when i rossoverdi lost the ball inside their own ten. Tony Williams was the beneficiary of a perfectly-weighted grubber on the last tackle, and Trent Hodkinson’s conversion tied the scores at six points apiece.

The Rabbitohs hit back in the fifty-sixth minute, when George Burgess, back on the field after being cleaned up in the first half, received the ball from dummy-half and waltzed his way around a few Canterbury players before grounding under the posts. Two penalties in successive minutes, one for a shoulder-charge and one for interfering with the play-the-ball, gave Adam Reynolds the chance to put Souths further ahead; he fluffed the first and hit the second, bringing the scores to 14-6.

Souths had the momentum, and it was up to Graham to stop it. The feisty Lancastrian stopped the clock in the sixty-eighth minute with a hip-and-shoulder hard enough to put David Tyrrell on a stretcher, and when normal service resumed, Canterbury looked the more likely side. Twice in two minutes they forced Souths to knock on in-goal, and it was when the Bulldogs’ third consecutive set of six was arrested prematurely that the tide finally turned for Souths.

The avalanche began in the seventy-third minute, when a Canterbury smother gave Souths a second kick on the last tackle; Greg Inglis aimed for the far corner, the ball bounced over the heads of one chaser from each team before Kirisome Auva’a grounded. Five minutes later, Adam Reynolds couldn’t believe his luck when he duelled with Sam Perrett for receipt of a kick and the Bulldogs player ran into the goalpost in a slapstick fashion; by converting both of these, he helped put the Bunnies up 26-6, and we had reached the Gatorade-bucket-over-the-head moment.

The icing on the cake was provided by Inglis in the final minute, when he broke through a tired Canterbury line, went one way and then the other, and scored his team’s fifth try. Sam Burgess was given the honours but failed to convert, but it didn’t matter. For the twenty-first time, South Sydney were premiers.

Although he failed to get on the scoresheet, this was Sam Burgess’ match. The man from Dewsbury had Clive Churchill Medallist written all over him, from his first-up head clash, to the blood evident on his face for most of the match, to the tears of joy he shed at the final whistle. I was going to label him the Joel Selwood of the NRL (one of the highest compliments this Geelong supporter can give a sportsman), but my knowledge of northern English sporting history gave me an even better comparison: Bert Trautmann’s match-winning performance in the 1956 FA Cup final, when Manchester City’s German goalkeeper inspired his team to victory despite breaking his neck making a diving save.

Sam, and Souths, you were simply the best.

South Sydney 30 – Canterbury-Bankstown 6

Tries: Johnston 20’; G. Burgess 56’; Auva’a 73’; Reynolds 78’; Inglis 80’ (S. Syd.); Williams 49’ (C.-B.)

Conversions: Reynolds 3/4; S. Burgess 0/1 (S. Syd.); Hodkinson 1/1 (C.-B.)

Penalties: Reynolds 2/3 (S. Syd)

Ovens and Murray grand final match review: Albury v. Yarrawonga at Lavington

Last Sunday, your humble correspondent witnessed the deciding match of the 2014 Ovens and Murray Football League season, the sixth in succession between Albury (the Tigers, playing in black with a yellow sash) and Yarrawonga (the Pigeons, playing in navy and white hoops). The league’s two power clubs, boasting a combined six hundred and sixty-six games of AFL experience between them, played out a thriller in front of a healthy crowd in a match which showcased the best of our great game.

This season, the Tiger ranks were bolstered by the arrival of the O’hAilpin brothers, Setanta and Aisake, late of Carlton, and Brayden O’Hara, a midfielder from Central Districts. The squad, one of the finest ever assembled in country football, took home the minor premiership with sixteen wins, one loss, and one match abandoned (the season opener at home to Yarrawonga, in which young Albury player James McQuillan was airlifted to Melbourne after suffering a spinal injury, which left him a quadriplegic.) Yarrawonga finished third on the ladder, but two wins over second-placed Lavington in the qualifying and preliminary finals (of a McIntyre Final Five, if you’re playing along at home) put them into the Big Game at the End of the Season.

Before the match, as your humble correspondent enjoyed some hot chips and a can of a prominent black fizzy beverage, we were treated to a brilliant rendition of Hunters and Collectors’ ‘Holy Grail’ by local performer Jason Ivill, a song which ought to become the antipodean version of ‘Abide With Me’ and played before the grand final of every football league in the Commonwealth. Legendary Brisbane Lions forward Jonathan Brown, en route to the Brownlow, tossed the coin and we were off. Or, more precisely, Yarrawonga were off – the out-of-towners scored the first three goals of the match, two of them from the boot of our old mucker Brendan Fevola, and it was looking like they would take home their third successive premiership. The nerves of the Tigers faithful were settled, however, by a flurry of goals, one each to Dean Polo (ex-Richmond and -St. Kilda) and Andy Carey, and two to Setanta O’hAilpin. The minor premiers led at quarter time by just four points.

The Tigers’ ascendancy continued in the second term. Despite some poor clearances from defence, they out-goaled the Pigeons five to four. The highlight of the quarter for Albury was an eighteenth-minute running goal for indigenous speedster Lonnie Hampton; for Yarrawonga, it was the leaping grab and subsequent set shot conversion by Fevola in the thirtieth minute which trimmed the margin to twelve points at the half. Despite some minor outbreaks of guernsey-pulling, the match calmed down somewhat in this quarter, and that ingredient which makes country football so delicious – The Biff – would be sadly absent in the second half.

The long break came, and your humble correspondent tucked into a hot dog (our hosts having run out of chips and warm pies) and his second can of the black fizzy beverage. When the teams returned from the sheds, it was again the Pigeons who came out of the blocks firing. You-know-who scored two quick goals within nine minutes to tie the scores at nine goals seven apiece. I gialloneri could manage only behinds in response, allowing Yarrawonga to take the lead with a goal in the twenty-first minute by Jeremy O’Brien. With the Pigeons’ defence keeping the brothers from the Rebel County relatively quiet, the men from Moira Shire smelled blood in the water, but two goals from O’Hara in time on gave the locals an eight-point lead at lemon time.

What followed was a final quarter to remember. A ninth-minute Fevola shot on goal was ruled a behind by the goal umpire without benefit of score review; Albury led by fifteen. Andy Carey marked on the fifty-metre arc and played on to O’Hara in the eleventh minute; the Croweater’s goal (enlarging the margin to twenty-one points) would be Albury’s last. Tigers full-back Michael Thompson got a hand to a Fevola soccer one minute later, and Albury led by twenty despite Fevola’s rather in-your-face protestations to the goal umpire.

Two Yarrawonga goals and then a behind narrowed the margin to eight points. The ‘Big Mo’, as George H. W. Bush called it, was with them as they yet again moved the Sherrin goalwards into the waiting hands of Fevola in the twenty-seventh minute. Situated twenty minutes out and straight in front of goal, and realising that the siren could blow at any second, the former Dancing with the Stars contestant played on, taking two steps to his right and snapping around his body, somehow missing to the right by about one metre. The siren did indeed blow soon after, followed closely by the triumphal strains of ‘Oh we’re from Tigerland / A fighting fury we’re from Tigerland’.

The best defensive football is played on relatively large ovals in dry and warm conditions, and this match was a textbook demonstration of this fact. In a year in which the AFL’s average score per team per match has dropped to the lowest level since 1968 due to the expert application of pressure by defences, the O and M’s Big Two showed that they too adhere to the tenets of Roosism-Lyonism; the air was alive with the glorious sounds of pigskin being smothered and imported talent being unceremoniously thrown onto the turf. Although Fevola and Setanta O’hAilpin bagged six and four goals respectively, they would have had more if not for the efforts of the backmen who kept them quiet, Thompson and Luke Packer of Albury and Connor Hargreaves and Marcus McMillan of Yarrawonga. The latter became, at just nineteen years of age, the first player to be awarded the Did Simpson Medal in a losing side; having already represented country Victoria at under-19 level, he undoubtedly has great things ahead of him.

The flag is Albury’s nineteenth, and after two years of grand final heartbreak, the Ovens and Murray premiership cup has once again taken up residence on the side of the border where it belongs. But what next for the league, and for the Tigers? Six consecutive Albury-Yarrawonga grand finals has brought equalisation to the top of the agenda, and it seems likely that some sort of points system will soon be implemented, limiting the ability of big clubs to recruit players with AFL and state league experience. (A working group of local football identities has already drawn up a scheme, as detailed mid-season in the Border Mail.)

After the demise of the Bendigo Gold left the VFL with fifteen clubs, the Weekly Times published a non-story speculating about Albury replacing them. Of course the club denies any interest, but this club deserves to seek greener pastures, and North Ballarat have already demonstrated how a country club can make the jump. One of these Septembers, we might be hearing ‘Yellow and Black’ blaring out across the Docklands.

Albury 13.13.91 – Yarrawonga 12.12.84

Goals: S. O’hAilpin 4, O’Hara 3, Mitchell 2, Carey, Hampton, A. O’hAilpin, Polo (Alb.); Fevola 6, Pettifer 2, Ednie, Gorman, O’Brien, Seymour (Yarr.)

Best: Polo, Hampton, Packer (Alb.); Hargreaves, Fevola, Gorman (Yarr.)

AFL second semi-final match review: Geelong v. North Melbourne at Melbourne

Rumours of the death of Geelong, Mark Twain would have said if he had been a follower of o jogo australiano, have been greatly exaggerated. The men from Motor City may have become the first team since the 2007 Eagles to go out of Professor McIntyre’s famous finals format in straight sets, but they put on a stunning display of football, and came within six points of out-comebacking the comebackers.

The first sign that we were in for a good night came before the start of the match. After experimenting with having nobodies from the X-Factor sing the national anthem in the first week of the finals, the league went back to the trusty old tape-recorded Julie Anthony version. A good move by the new CEO, and hopefully he follows it up by reverting to the Ross Oakley style of Brownlow vote-reading.

North Melbourne came out of the blocks firing, scoring seven goals to Geelong’s five to lead by twelve at the first change. The score was flattering to the Cats at this stage, their first quarter having been filled with intercepted kick-outs and inside fifties aimed at no-one in particular. The second term was mostly a quiet affair, highlighted by two goals to the Shinboners, a Joel Selwood visit to the bench under the blood rule, and a bit of argy-bargy as the warring sides headed for the sheds. North, supposedly the kings of second halves (as has been noted by every so-called expert football writer on teh interwebs for the past week) carried a four-goal buffer into the long break.

The third saw more of the same; the teams traded goals three times, and Selwood was nearly impaled on the fence when Lindsay Thomas decided to continue the half-time scuffle. With three sirens now having sounded with a lead divisible by six, and neither team ever having more than two behinds than their opponents, the draw was on.

When play resumed, the Pivotonians started well. Josh Walker marked and goaled to bring the margin down to eighteen. Tom Hawkins won his physical duels with Nathan Grima the way he didn’t last week against Brian Lake. Two Jack Ziebell goals appeared to seal it for los norteños, who were now thirty-two in front. Then the Tomahawk added to his two majors from the first quarter, nailing three to put the Hoops thirteen behind.

A score review didn’t go Lincoln McCarthy’s way, and his shot on goal was deemed to have been touched. Twelve points. Then a turnover in the Kangaroos’ forward fifty was punted upfield to Hawkins, who went via Mathew Stokes to Jimmy Bartel, who marked at the goal post. His banana kick went through, and the margin was six points with two and a half minutes remaining. A tense passage of play followed. Geelong bombed the ball forward but North had numbers at the back, and only one of the latter’s many efforts to put the ball into touch was ruled deliberate. The Scott Brothers superclásico ended in victory for Brad. North’s unlikely tilt at the flag isn’t over yet, but neither is the Geelong dynasty.

Geelong 13.14.92 – North Melbourne 14.14.98

Goals: Hawkins 5, Walker 3, Bartel, Blicavs, Caddy, Duncan, Enright (Geel.); Petrie 4, Thomas 3, Ziebell 2, Black, Dal Santo, Goldstein, Harvey, Turner (N. M.)

Best: Hawkins, Selwood, Caddy (Geel.); Goldstein, Dal Santo, Gibson (N. M.)

AFL first qualifying final match review: Sydney v. Fremantle at Sydney

In last season’s preliminary final at Subiaco Oval, Fremantle gave the Swans (and us all) a footballing lesson, putting on a display of pure defensive football unrivalled since Port Adelaide’s demolition of North Adelaide in the 1989 SANFL Grand Final. If the Dockers were to upset the minor premiers at the Olympic Stadium, they would need to repeat that magnificent performance.

There was just one problem: it’s been bucketing down intermittently here in the Emerald City for the last fortnight. The rain brought the Melbourne Storm unstuck against Easts at Moore Park last Saturday night, and it threatened to do the same to the purple-clad chaps from the State of Excitement. The damp surface promised a return to the wet-weather footy of yore, as it was played by men like Matthews and Carey back in the Good Old Days before this great game of ours was basketball-ified and Etihad-ised.

It didn’t feel so much like Heritage Round as Multicultural Round when Tendai Mzungu slotted home the first of the match. Buddy Franklin and Matthew Pavlich were among the scorers as both teams went into the first break with three goals, the Swans leading by three as a result of their superior tally of behinds. Pavlich was again on the scoresheet when he finished off a coast-to-coast Fremantle play to put the visitors ahead with the first score of the second quarter. Ben McGlynn answered straight away for the Bloods, and then the match took a defensive turn.

It was twenty minutes before we witnessed the next major score. There were a few behinds from some inaccurate stabs at the sticks, but with a wet ground and two sides skilled at high pressure defensive football, the quarter was permeated with smothers, blocks, one-percenters, and general tit-for-tat. Everyone thought Buddy would break the deadlock, but Alex Silvagni mercilessly brought him down. Jarrad McVeigh found Kurt Tippett at the goal post, then Pavlich answered with a soccer-style goal with three Sydney defenders on his tail, and the home side led by five points at the half.

At the mid-point of the third stanza, i biancorossi led by three. Two more goals had been kicked: McGlynn from a free kick and Mzungu from a turnover. This quarter had the same feel about it as the second until Lewis Jetta marked and goaled, and then Adam Goodes did the same after getting underneath a bomb, and the margin stood at fifteen. Kieren Jack’s bending effort after the siren extended it to twenty-two. Franklin and Tippett had been quiet, and John Longmire’s decision to move them into the midfield turned out to be a masterstroke.

La viola knew they had to come out firing. Cameron Sutcliffe got them started, and when Pavlich grabbed a bouncing ball and swirled it in from the pocket, the comeback was on. Franklin hit back immediately with a brace of goals, and all of a sudden we had a shoot-out: four goals had been scored before the quarter had been going for three minutes. The watersiders will rue the missed opportunities of that quarter: the missed set shots, the pushes forward wasted for a lack of targets, and the brilliant Swans pressing that forced Silvagni to skew one into the stands.

The minor premiers put the icing on the cake with a polished move in the final minute. Rhyce Shaw to Franklin, back to Shaw, to Franklin again, and a punt up forward to find the waiting arms of Dan Hannebery. They matched the vanguard party of Marxism-Lyonism at their own (defensive) game, and continued to excel when the match broke apart into a shoot-out. Worthy minor premiers, and your humble correspondent fears what they can do to his Cats in two weeks’ time.

Sydney 13.15.93 – Fremantle 10.9.69

Goals: Franklin 3, McGlynn 3, Goodes, Hannebery, Jack, Jetta, Parker, Pyke, Tippett (Syd.); Pavlich 4, Mzungu 2, Fyfe, Mundy, Sutcliffe, Walters (Frem.)

Best: McGlynn, McVeigh, Hannebery (Syd.); Pavlich, Barlow, Fyfe (Frem.)

AFL second qualifying final match review: Hawthorn v. Geelong at Melbourne

The football-viewing public of the Commonwealth were on Friday night treated to another classic edition of the modern antipodean equivalent of the Celtics-Lakers rivalry. For the second time in a fortnight, Hawthorn galloped home in the second half, and booked themselves a home preliminary final.

The first quarter was the archetypal ‘game of two halves’. As the Melbourne Cricket Ground recovered from the murdering of the national anthem by some X-Factor contestant or other, it was all Geelong for the first ten to fifteen minutes. Joel Selwood bagged the first of the night after a Luke Hodge kick from defence was intercepted, and after a few minutes of back-and-forth, Jimmy Bartel put the Cats two goals up. Geelong defended solidly to neutralise Luke Breust (who failed to goal until early in the final stanza), but Hawthorn applied such forward pressure as to back the Pivotonians into a corner in their backline on two occasions. The Hawks hit back with three goals by the end of the quarter and led by nine at the first change.

Geelong quickly regained the lead after scoring the first two goals of the second quarter: the first a set shot resulting from a soaring Jimmy Bartel mark, the second the product of Tom Hawkins combining with Selwood in front of an open goal. But in true Hegelian fashion, thesis was followed by antithesis, and Hawthorn scored the next three to lead by fourteen points. Two behinds later, Jordan Murdoch goaled to put Geelong six behind with forty-one seconds left on the clock. A well-executed centre clearance allowed Josh Walker to convert a set shot to leave the teams tied at 6.5.41 apiece at the long break.

David Hale and Joel Selwood traded goals to open the third term, signalling that the second half would be as tight as the first. Minutes later, Geelong hit the front through Tom Hawkins, whose first goal of the match came via a free kick arising from his much-anticipated physical duel with Brian Lake. Geelong native Hodge reclaimed the lead when he marked and executed an exquisite checkside. Jack Gunston hit the next two, leading Bruce McAveney to treat the viewers to a dose of The Bleeding Obvious with his observation that “they need a goal, Geelong.”

They would get two thereafter, the only problem being that the Mustard Pots snagged five. Jarryd Roughead sealed the win with a set-shot snap eight minutes from time, and it was time to flick over to the Scottish lesbians on SBS2.

Geelong must now win three matches for the title, including a preliminary final at either Homebush or Subiaco Oval. They played like a third-on-the-ladder team – frustrating to watch for fans who know that this Golden Generation is capable of so much more. They played with too little aggression – Hawkins’ tussles with Lake and Steve Johnson’s cheek wound notwithstanding – and were poor when trying to clear the Sherrin away from those swarms of bodies around the ball which characterise il football moderno. The winner of the North Melbourne-Essendon elimination final awaits.

Hawthorn 15.14.104 – Geelong 10.8.68

Goals: Gunston 3, Lewis 3, Puopolo 2, Roughead 2, Breust, Hale, Hodge, Langford, Smith (Haw.); Selwood 3, Bartel 2, Blicavs, Hawkins, Johnson, Murdoch, Walker (Geel.)

Best: Mitchell, Gunston, Hill (Haw.); Selwood, Bartel, Stokes (Geel.)

AFL round 22 match review: Hawthorn v. Geelong at Melbourne

The battle for second place on this season’s AFL ladder was played out on Saturday night in front of a crowd of seventy-two thousand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The result, at least from the perspective of your humble correspondent, was disappointing; the match, however, was another exhibition of the high standard of football which has been played this season, and set the scene for the likely second leg of this encounter in the first week of the finals.

It all started so well for the Cats. After a three-goal first quarter, they led by six points at the first break. Hawthorn equalised in the fifth minute of the second term and kept having numbers at the back, but what followed was a purple patch for Geelong. First Tom Hawkins outran Brian Lake, then Jimmy Bartel converted a free kick, then Hawkins again won a duel with Lake and executed a Gaelic-style set-shot snap. Two more goals followed and Geelong led by thirty-one at the half. When the boy from Finley marked in the goal square early in the third quarter, the Pivotonians went thirty-three up.

To this point, the match had been played at a staccato rhythm. Geelong’s early lead was countered by Hawthorn, and Geelong’s second break from the pack was chased down by the brown and gold peloton. A turnover led to a length-of-the-field play resulting in David Hale’s first goal of the night; three more followed in quick succession to narrow the margin to nine points. Sam Mitchell thought he’d taken it down to three when he converted a set shot from the fifty metre arc, but an indecisive score review ensured that the goal umpire’s original ruling that the kick had been touched on the line would stand.

Hawthorn made amends straight away through Hale, and Will Langford’s post-siren goal put the Mayblooms ahead at lemon time, 9.7.61 to 9.3.57. When the teams returned for the final quarter, it really started to All Go Pete Tong for i biancoblu. Four Hawthorn goals were answered only by a Geelong behind, and the margin ballooned out to twenty-eight points. The way Geelong were being outclassed tactically brought back memories of the 110-point loss to the Swans, as they struggled to get the ball out of defence and punted it skyward to no-one in particular on the occasions that they did.

Midway through the final term, the pendulum began to swing back. Geelong kept winning the ball out of the centre, and two late goals sparked hopes of a comeback. But it was never really on, and Brad Sewell made sure of it by booting the final goal. Hawthorn triumphed by twenty-three points in the end, but what did they win? Four premiership points, another nail into the coffin of the so-called ‘Kennett Curse’, and the right to wear their oh-so-haute couture brown shorts by dint of being the ‘home’ team in the qualifying final. See you again in a fortnight, Hawks.

Hawthorn 14.10.94 – Geelong 11.5.71

Goals: Hale 3, Roughead 3, Langford 2, Breust, Cegler, Gunston, Lewis, Sewell, Shiels (Haw.); Hawkins 3, Murdoch 2, Bartel, Duncan, Motlop, Selwood, Taylor, Thurlow (Geel.)

Best: Mitchell, Langford, Gibson (Haw.); Duncan, Caddy, Stokes (Geel.)

World Cup final match review: Germany v. Argentina at Rio de Janeiro

One suspected before the tournament that a man named Mario might be the decisive factor in the later stages – it just turned out that his surname wasn’t Balotelli.

With Sami Khedira injuring his calf during the warm-up, Christoph Kramer fitted into the German starting eleven for the third meeting between the two nations in a World Cup final. The early signs were that it was going to be a repeat of 1986 rather than 1990, as Gonzalo Higuaín missed on twenty minutes before having his goal on the half hour, the result of a Lionel Messi pass and an Ezequiel Lavezzi cross, correctly disallowed. It kept getting worse for Die Mannschaft: bookings for Bastian Schweinsteiger and Benedikt Höwedes, and a forced substitution before the break as an injured Kramer was replaced by André Schürrle.

Furthermore, no matter how many defenders they had swarming around Messi, the little master still managed to find space. In the thirty-fifth minute, he reminded us of his brilliance when he wrong-footed two Germans, only for a third to be forced into booting the ball away for a corner. It was two minutes after that when the tide started to turn. Schürrle forced a save from the Argentine goalkeeper, Mesut Özil managing to make himself useful for once by ducking out of the way. The next chance was a cross from Thomas Müller which curved the wrong way for Miroslav Klose, and the first half ended with a flurry of German corners, one of which was headed into the post by a rampaging Höwedes.

And so ended a half in which there was nothing to separate the two sides. When they returned, Lavezzi – presumably injured – had been replaced by Sergio Agüero and Messi was again a threat in front of goal, finding space behind the German defence and shooting uncharacteristically wide in the forty-seventh minute. The match soon settled into its familiar rhythm: the three-time champions controlling possession (they had sixty-three percent of it, coupled with Barcelona-esque passing and pass accuracy statistics) but playing reactively rather than proactively, la albiceleste dominating the midfield and challenging for the ball high up the pitch.

The hype about 1986 versus 1990 gave way to comparisons with 1982 just before the hour mark, when Manuel Neuer battled with Higuaín for a high ball just outside the penalty area; the connection of the German keeper’s knee with the Argentine forward’s head bringing back memories of Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battiston in that year’s semi-final. It was the South Americans, however, who would ramp up the physicality. Javier Mascherano and Agüero were cautioned in consecutive minutes for challenges on Klose and Schweinsteiger respectively, while Lucas Biglia got away with seemingly worse aggressions against Philipp Lahm. There would be little more to the match until the end of regulation time, only a few substitutions, the most noteworthy being Higuaín’s removal in the seventy-eighth minute and Klose’s farewell to the tournament of which he is now the all-time greatest scorer.

For the seventh time in nineteen World Cup finals, extra time was required. Both teams traded chances early on, and substitute Fernando Gago had another in the ninety-seventh minute but failed to steer a bouncing cross under the bar. Agüero was lucky not to be sent off when his fist connected with Schweinsteiger’s face early in the second overtime period; the German needed to be treated for the resulting bleeding, but returned to spend more time lying on the turf.

But just like at Wembley in 1996, when a substitute won it in extra time for post-unification Germany’s first European Championship, so it would be for the Berlin Republic’s first world title. After a powerful run along the left flank from Schürrle was crossed into the box, Mario Götze, brought on for the aging Klose in the eighty-eighth minute, volleyed the ball into the top right-hand corner of the net after coolly chesting it onto his feet.

That, of course, wasn’t the end of it. There were four minutes of injury time, thanks firstly to Joachim Löw taking off Özil in the one hundred and twentieth minute to give Per Mertesacker some time on the pitch, and secondly to Bastian Schweinsteiger writhing around in agony after an injury time challenge on Messi. With a free kick awarded and the seconds ticking down, the man who would be named player of the tournament a few minutes later opted to roll the dice, but his effort from twenty-five metres out sailed over the bar without bothering Neuer.

Cue scenes of jubilation from the German camp, and from Angela Merkel, whose undignified barracking – so unfortunately typical of the modern politician – has marred what was otherwise a marvellous campaign. This victory was the first in nine attempts by a European nation in a World Cup staged in the Americas – combined with Spain’s win in South Africa and the increasing irrelevance of the away goals rule in European club competitions, perhaps a sign that geography is no longer destiny at this level of the game.

The last few World Cups prior to this one had been, quite frankly, rubbish. Perhaps the last good World Cup was France ’98; certainly no great ones had been staged from Italia ’90 onwards. 2002 was marred by biased refereeing; 2006 and 2010 continued the post-1990 trend of low goals-per-game tallies, stifling commercialisation, and players unable to perform at their peak after tiring club seasons. With modern schedules and playing conditions, there can probably never be another tournament quite like, say, España ‘82.

But Brazil put on the best World Cup possible under the circumstances. Unfancied teams, such as Algeria, Ghana, Costa Rica, and Australia, resisted the temptation to park the bus in front of goal and produced exciting, attacking play. The goals per game average was 2.67, equal to France ’98, and up from 2.3 in 2006 and 2.27 in 2010 (since stabilising below three in 1962, the figure has fluctuated between a high of 2.21 in 1990 and a low of 2.97 in 1970). Matches were played in a variety of weather conditions, from the driving rain of the Mexico-Cameroon group stage clash in Natal to the oppressive Fortaleza heat which turned the Netherlands-Mexico knockout match into a game of four quarters. Even the controversies were fun: the drones spying on French training sessions, Pepe’s meltdown, the laser being shone in the Russian goalkeeper’s eyes, Zúñiga’s tackle, and the FIFA associate fleeing Rio and Interpol via a side door in his hotel.

And best of all, the tournament wasn’t dominated by the same big-name players we see every week in the big European leagues. Rooney, Xavi, Balotelli, and Özil underwhelmed, Suárez positively disgraced himself, and Belgium’s star-studded line-up did little to justify its pre-tournament ‘dark horse’ tag. Instead, the limelight was stolen by the likes of Ligue 1 star James Rodríguez, Mexico’s clubless goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa, and Dutchman Wesley Sneijder, written off as an irrelevance after transferring from Internazionale to Galatasaray. Perhaps the only things which could have made this World Cup even better would have been a Brazilian triumph, and the sight of Didier Drogba steering Les Éléphants to the promised land of the knockout stages.

Germany 1 (Mario Götze 113’) – Argentina 0 (a.e.t.)

Cautions: Bastian Schweinsteiger (Ger.) 29’; Benedikt Höwedes (Ger.) 34’; Javier Mascherano (Arg.) 64’; Sergio Agüero (Arg.) 65’

Man of the match: Mario Götze (Ger.)

World Cup quarter-final match review: Brazil v. Colombia at Fortaleza

It was set to be their biggest test of the tournament so far, but the nerves of the host nation were calmed in the seventh minute, when a Neymar corner found Thiago Silva amongst a pack of players, the captain shinboning the ball into the back of the net. Although it had been billed as the clash of the two number tens – Neymar and James Rodríguez – it was David Luiz who was Brazil’s standout player. The Paris Saint-Germain centre-back had set up the first goal, fired up the crowd, inspired his team with his attacking runs, and it was no surprise that he would be the man to score Brazil’s second.

More surprising, however, was the manner in which it was scored. In the sixty-seventh minute, James was cautioned for tripping Hulk approximately twenty-five metres from goal. A few yellow shirts (los cafeteros being forced by the colour clash to play in a hauntingly Chile-esque red and blue) milled about the ball, but there was no pretence about who was going to take it. David Luiz fired straight into the top right-hand corner to score one of the all-time great set-piece World Cup goals. He topped it off with the kung-fu kick to the corner flag celebration pioneered by Dutchman Memphis Depay. At this point, the Estádio Castelão was in no doubt: a seleção was into the semi-finals.

But the home crowd were given a scare late in the match. With thirteen minutes of regulation time left on the clock, goalkeeper Júlio César hacked down substitute forward Carlos Bacca, with whom he was one-on-one in the box. The keeper was cautioned for his troubles, and James converted the ensuing penalty to give los cafeteros hope of a late comeback, and himself his sixth goal in what was a stellar freshman tournament. Although Colombia had thought they had equalised one minute before David Luiz’s goal, only for it to be disallowed for offside, they were unable to repeat the feat in the final stretch, and the home side booked their place in the semi-final at Belo Horizonte against the team they vanquished in the 2002 decider, Germany.

There were a few low points along the way for the Brazilians. Thiago Silva received his second yellow card of the tournament for charging down the Colombian goalkeeper midway through the second half; he will miss the semi-final, which presumably will allow Dani Alves to be slotted into the defence. The sight of Neymar being stretchered off in the eighty-eighth minute will no doubt send the nation into a collective panic over the next few days, but this match proved that o verde-amarelo can win without him playing at his best.

It may be that this was the match that decided the World Cup – Brazil can win this thing, and so could have Colombia. There was a powerful moment after the final whistle when David Luiz and James Rodríguez swapped shirts and embraced like gladiators. One will go forth to a semi-final showdown with Germany; the other has already spearheaded his nation to its greatest ever finish and erased the ghosts of 1994.

Brazil 2 (Thiago Silva 7’; David Luiz 69’) – Colombia 1 (James Rodríguez 80’ pen.)

Cautions: Thiago Silva (Braz.) 64’; James Rodríguez (Colo.) 67’; Mario Yepes (Colo.) 71’; Júlio César (Braz.) 78’

Man of the match: David Luiz (Braz.)

World Cup quarter-final match review: France v. Germany at Rio de Janeiro

One could have been forgiven for thinking that this was something more than a soccer match, with all the pre-match references to the 1940 And All That. What transpired was indeed a German victory, but the French were no cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

The Maracanã, sweltering in ninety percent humidity, witnessed ninety minutes of German possession against French counter-attacking, with the appropriate level of physicality from both sides, but it still somehow felt as if les bleus wouldn’t be able to equalise after Die Mannschaft went ahead in the thirteenth minute.

That first goal was headed in from a swirling Toni Kroos free kick which found Mats Hummels in a crowded penalty area. The Germans had most of the chances on goal in the first half, and some skulduggery in front of the goal by the French defenders meant that they were unlucky to have two penalty appeals turned down. The three-time world champions went into the sheds with fifty-five percent of the possession and twice as many completed passes, a reminder to the influence of Pep Guardiola’s Bayern München on this squad.

The fact that France were denied what looked like a rightful penalty soon after the break, along with the fact that only two yellow cards were brandished during the match, led one to think that the Argentine referee had left his whistle at home. Bastian Schweinsteiger certainly earned his caution, given for a spate of persistent fouling which included a shoulder charge on Mathieu Valbuena. As cariocas were also treated to some lovely tit-for-tat argy-bargy midway through the second period involving Thomas Müller and Patrice Evra. The other intriguing battle was the contest between the two sweeper-keepers (or should that be keeper-sweepers?), Hugo Lloris and Manuel Neuer. (Manuel playing for the Germans? ¿Que?)

Les bleus threw everything at the German goal: Benzema, Griezmann, Valbuena, Matuidi, and even the subbed-on Olivier Giroud. Ultimately, they were unable to break through a German defence which was at its best defending against corners. It was a well-deserved victory, and Germany will be difficult to beat in Belo Horizonte.

France 0 – Germany 1 (Mats Hummels 13’)

Cautions: Sami Khedira (Ger.) 54’; Bastian Schweinsteiger (Ger.) 80’

Man of the match: Mats Hummels (Ger.)

World Cup second round match review: Colombia v. Uruguay at Rio de Janeiro

Sixty-four years ago, Uruguay pulled off one of the greatest triumphs in the history of sport when they knocked off a cocky Brazilian outfit who had already composed a celebratory samba. The venue, the Estádio do Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro (then the national capital, now merely the chef-lieu of the eponymous state) would thus be an appropriate place for the serving-up of a second dose of poetic justice.

Colombia’s two goals came from a familiar source: James Rodríguez. The Monaco man has been one of the revelations of the tournament, and the prospect of a quarter-final battle between he and Neymar is positively mouth-watering. The first goal, in the twenty-eighth minute, came from outside the box and seemingly out of nowhere. Surrounded on four sides by sky blue shirts, he received Abel Aguilar’s header on his chest and twisted around to volley the ball in off the underside of the bar. The second, five minutes after the break, was a product of his fruitful combination with Juan Guillermo Cuadrado, as Cuadrado headed a Pablo Armero cross down to James’ boot for his fifth of the tournament. Both were, naturally, followed by those celebratory dances along the goal line which have helped to make los cafeteros one of the most enjoyable teams to watch in Brazil.

It wasn’t all one-way traffic. Around the half-hour mark, Colombia were saved by some brilliant Carlos Sánchez defending and by Edinson Cavani misfiring a free kick over the bar. The statistical indicators of Colombia’s dominance – a 64-36 possession count and a 5-1 lead in shots on target at half-time – were worn down by the end of the match as la celeste had a much better second half. A missile from Cristian Rodríguez was saved just after the hour, while an Edinson Cavani shot had the same result six minutes from the end of normal time.

But this match was all about Luis Suárez; the Uruguayan players posed with his shirt in the dressing room before the match as their feral supporters chanted his name. It takes a sick country to rally behind a knuckle-dragging sub-human thug who has bitten three opposition players in four years, and an even sicker country to make excuses for his actions and to blame it on some imagined conspiracy. This is why it was so great to see la celeste lose. Uruguay, it seems, combines the chip-on-the-shoulder mentality of the small country surrounded by larger and better neighbours, and the sense of entitlement that comes from being white in a multi-racial region of the world. For them to lose to a team who play beautiful soccer and who contain so many members of the black race that Suárez hates was thus an appropriate outcome, a modern-day maracanazo. ¡Fuerza Colombia!

Colombia 2 (James Rodríguez 28’, 50’) – Uruguay 0

Cautions: José María Giménez (Uru.) 55’; Diego Lugano (Uru.) 77’; Pablo Armero (Colo.) 78’

Man of the match: James Rodríguez (Colo.)