Let's Get Rid of The Socceroos

With times a-changin' in the world game on the local front, Phill Chadwick believes there's no room for the Socceroos in New Football.

Maybe I'm just being picky, and I certainly wouldn't want to interfere with the push to qualify for the World Cup, but I have to say that I don't like The Socceroos and I never have.

Before you line me up against a wall and shoot me as a traitor, let me explain. It is not the team that I don't like, it is just the name "Socceroos".

Now, I am happy for teams to have nicknames. Evertonians often refer to their club as the Toffees, Adelaide United are the Reds, Arsenal, naturally are the Gunners and Sydney FC are known to all as the Bling. But these are fan's names, used affectionately and informally between the fans. They are not, and would never be used for the clubs in an official capacity in the place of the proper name. And these are just clubs. National teams carry much greater gravitas.

Call me a traditionalist, or just call me old fashioned, but I don't think a silly nickname is appropriate for our senior National Football Team. Think of it this way. Would you feel comfortable to talk about an Ashes Series between the CricketRoos and England? No? Neither would I. We always say Australia and England. A football match between the Socceroos and England is just as ridiculous.

I think that calling our National Team "The Socceroos" is a symptom of a footballing version of the old Aussie cultural cringe. It was coined because we felt that we had to explain to everybody that they were soccer players, not AFL or Rugby players. I mean you couldn't expect the public to know that they were footballers, could you. That would be just confusing. Australian Football isn't played against foreigners, is it? So how could they be the Australian Football team? I suppose the thinking went something like this ... Wait a minute, the public might think it is the AFL "All-Australian" team going overseas for a holiday or something? No, it is not, they are going to play Soccer. Oh, let's just make that clear, then, lets put Soccer in the team name and there will be no more confusion.

Now that the Australian Soccer Federation has been replaced by the Football Federation of Australia. Now that it is "Football, but not as you Know It". Now that we can unselfconsciously use the correct name for our sport, surely we can quietly dispose of this embarrassing relic at the very top level of the game in this country.

The A-League has already gone a long way to overcoming this aversion to the word "football". Now, even the most extreme of AFL and NRL chauvinists are occasionally forced to use the word "football" when describing our game. Rumour has it that even that arch soccer-hater "KG" Cunningham and his abrasive side-kick Cornsey were heard to refer to the beautiful game as "football" on 5AA radio once.

Another rumour I heard recently was that an AFL club made a goodwill visit to one of our near northern neighbours. The locals heard that this visiting Australian Football team wanted to have a kick with some of the local lads. The locals produced a round ball, naturally. That is a football, isn't it? That other shaped ball is for Rugby or one of its several variants.

So this is my plea to leave the cringe behind and quietly consign "The Socceroos" to history, filed under silly juvenile name-calling. Let's finally grow up.

I long for the day when the back page of every Australian newspaper has a headline like this:

"Australia 3, Uruguay 1, World Cup Here We Come"

And the word Socceroo is nowhere to be seen, and everyone knows exactly what it means.