Canberra has produced a number of Socceroos, A-League players and currently has 4 Canberrans in the Joeys squad.
So when they announced the first Under 13 boys Australian team ever....thirty spots mind you..I felt sure with thousands of kids playing football, Coerver Coaching, and various Academy and Clinics around town surely we'd be able to get one or maybe two players into the squad.

Bring it on!
The FFA has released it's National Curriculum. See media release below.
It talks skills, Aussie psyche and how all elite teams will follow the 4-3-3 model.
Can someone please tell Pim Verbeek!
But three things caught my eye...

1.

Aussie Under 13 boys and 14 girls teams will be selected from this weeks State trials in Canberra starting Sunday.....oh and btw the fields chosen for our nation's best should suit the least talented!
Fixtures and squads below....
As part of our new place in Asia apparently we need a young girls and boys team.

The guys over at 888 are covering all the latest sports and online gaming events. And they are currently putting a bit of focus on the Down Under market: the home of Tim Cahill, Mark Viduka and, erm, Mark Bosnich. 888's sports betting Australia section features many sports options, including football.

This morning at Stamford Bridge saw a UEFA Champions League semi final between Chelsea and Barcelona. a nil all draw at the Nou Camp last week really set this game up to be a classic. And by all accounts was just that.

Shame

The shame of it all is that it will be more remembered by the absolutely disgusting display by Michael Ballack and Didier Drogba towards the referee.

Every A-League player agent must be working overtime to secure their players a more lucrative contract in Asia, Europe, America, Antartica or wherever before the August deadline.
God bless the Agents as they work hard for Australian football.... mainly to send overseas.
Brendan Santalab another who returned from Europe with high hopes of taking it to the A-League, he didn't did he, has fled the Fury before a ball was kicked.

Fox Sports have covered the Gold Coast boycott. Really this can not be allowed to stand. The financially strongest team in the A-League is threatening the viability of one of the less strong clubs. This is not good for the sport. How will the FFA respond?

"I won't be going to the game for sure, I don't think it's worth it," said Palmer.

The next time someone in Canberra tells you we've a huge junior base with 20,000 kids/registrations tell them they are dreaming, same goes for 260,000 registrations across NSW or the paltry 50,000 in Victoria.
What we have is a lot of people playing independently in their own clubs, maximum community in Canberra is Woden Valley 1800.

Recent Melbourne Victory supporters' protest

Big Story
It's an absurdly hyperbolic headline from the Roar, but their story of surveillance of fans is a little concerning, especially in the context of the long failure of the Australian football authorities to understand that heavy-handed restrictions and knuckle-headed security is not the way to grow the sport in a country with far more established sporting cultures.

The adoption of a new national football curriculum harks back to a time when there was a "mafia" of a different colour calling the shots in Australian football. Ironically, one of the most vivid depictions of that era comes from Les Murray, whose friend and colleague Johnny Warren was arguably a victim of this earlier cabal's short-sightedness.

How big is your local population your local club, your local town, your local Football Federation?
How would your local junior club, town or Federation fare if they took on a Nation.
Borroloola Cyclones. Population 600. Yes that's 600 people of which maybe half are under 20 and half of them are boys and girls.

Please forgive that awful pun.
Needless to say, the FFA's mooting of a second-tier competition has been the hot issue in Australian football over the past few days. It is a natural enough response to the draconian (and largely political) new requirements put in place by the AFC regarding places in the revamped Asian Champions League, and was bound to come onto the agenda at some point in any case.

Images via Four Four Two Australia

The Aussie boys were out in full force last night at the Australian Football Awards. Winners included Socceroo keeper Mark Schwarzer, Tim Cahill, and Kickette-fav Nikita Rukayvytsa (as the best Under 23 player.) No word on why Harry Kewell has aged 40 years or which retail outlet hates Tim Cahill.

We've fired up the media department. What have they been doing all year. Anyway Half-Time Heroes has taken up another office in Sydney and has released it's first official release.
And look who we got to launch it!
Half-Time Heroes: Australian Football Media Release
Tuesday July 28, 2009
Frank Lowy the chairman of Football Federation Australia (FFA) says that the desire that underpinned the revival of football at a local level is the same desire that motivates the World Cup bid.

by Usman Azad, Football Perth Editor
RIGHTO - just a little note to let you know about the progress of the Australian Football Fanzine.
It's been dubbed Half-Time Heroes and the first edition is planned to come out next Wednesday just in time for the start of the new season.
According to the organiser Eamonn Flanagan from the Nearpost Blog, there's 18 writers from all across Australia (including yours truly) who have agreed to contribute to the fanzine for the first editon.

Adam Griffiths is reputed to be heading to the Gold Coast.
Transfer fee: $1.4 million
Nice bit of business for Australian football, for the Gold Coast and of course his Agent.
Ned Zelic is in Canberra looking at what he describes as a largely untapped talent pool of juniors see the Offsider at www.

Thanks to Dirty Tackle to bringing this to our attention, because it's simply fabulous. Watch as Robbie Fowler attempts to decapitate his opponent and then marvel at the way the striker didn't even get a caution! Boy, Australian Football must have a whole set of different rules when it comes to cautions and red cards.

36 year old Alexandre da Silva Mariano, a.k.a. Amaral, is not one player that you would expect to be the (unofficially) most polite footballer.

Previously playing in footballing danger zones such as Italy (Parma; AC Fiorentina) and Turkey (Besiktas), representing Brazil 31 times, and winning an Olympic Bronze medal (Atlanta 1996), nobody anticipated that the former grave digger would have written a thank you note to his most recent club, Perth Glory.

Sepp Blatter the FIFA President doesn't do much for me..usually....but he wants to introduce a new rule: At any given time 6 foreigners and 5 locals can play in an EPL and other national league sides.br /br /a href="http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/blogs/halftimeorange/lay-off-the-epl-sepp-and-let-it-be-178217/"Jesse Fink from SBS /athinks he's wrong but I can't imagine there are any local fans in the World who would disagree.

Partly with the Socceroos' recent performances in mind, the mantra that a defensive posture is absolutely necessary when facing peer opposition away from home is hardening into a truism for many Australian football followers. Happily, two matches this week demonstrated quite clearly that this dreary philosophy is not universal.

The NSW Premier League is now seven rounds old, and the big story so far has been the blistering pace set by Croatian-backed club Sydney United. They have chalked up six wins out of seven, the most recent being a 6-1 demolition of a foundering APIA-Leichhardt at Edensor Park last Sunday.
Following their memorable 2006 title success, United underwhelmed in 2007 and 2008, showing only flashes of quality football, and the atmosphere at Edensor was nothing like what it used to be in NSL days.

"I think he's selling himself short, but I think it's a lifestyle decision." so says Chris Turner Hartlepool manager talking about Joel Porter's decision to play for the Gold Coast.
No Chris, you blinkered Englishman, it's about the football:
He'll play alongside Champions League player Jason Culina,
He'll play at a Stadium Hartlepool can only dream of,
His first game will be in the Bird Nest Stadium in Beijing, followed by SunCorp in the League.

Lordy, lordy. Australian football did not need this.
It has been a bad week for the reputation of Australian sportsmen in general, given the blanket coverage of the Matthew Johns "incident" in New Zealand. But the sexual antics of NRL players have been a running sore for years; the charges against Sebastian Ryall have come out of nowhere.

You just can't shut Ljubo Milicevic up.
Matthew Hall, now contributing articles to SBS's World Game website, presented the latest rant from the Jets defender to the world yesterday. No references to gay discos this time, but plenty of prolix bagging of Pim Verbeek. And again, Milicevic is getting a far more sympathetic hearing than he deserves.

A-League Clubs to strengthen?
The FFA have taken another hold on the future of football by effectively barring players from running overseas below the age of 18, in line with FIFA regulations.
Why this hasn't been in place earlier? Clearly the FFA haven't had the funds to police it.

I conducted an interview with Sean of Soccer City FC today. I spoke about Arsenal, blogging and Australian football and gave my thoughts on how the 2008/09 season went for the Gunners. I have included an excerpt below: Q. Can you give a quick assessment of the 2008-09 campaign. What went ...

The running bitchfest between Ljubo Milicevic and his employers is going beyond amusing and becoming thoroughly embarrassing for Australian football. It needs to be mediated, quick smart.
It's hard not to read a touch of cynicism into Milicevic's championing of Kaz Patafta, who has been something of a poster boy for those who choose to drone on ad nauseam about "technical players being ignored" in Australia.

We've made it!
With a fairly colourless draw against Qatar early this morning, enlivened at times by Tim Cahill and Harry Kewell, the Socceroos have qualified for their third World Cup. Congratulations to Pim Verbeek and the squad.
Of course, as many have already pointed out, there wasn't quite the sense of occasion this time; no penalty from John Aloisi or rocketing shot from Jim Mackay to stir the blood.

by Usman Azad, Football Perth Editor
PERTH Glory fans need to come out and support the club, said Glory coach Dave Mitchell yesterday.
Mitchell, speaking on local radio show Let's Talk Football , praised the work of Glory owner Tony Sage in acquring some big name players but warned that the fans needed to also support the club.

The National Football Curriculum has arrived. 5MB worth of impressive-sounding methodology, nuggets of good advice and, as I mentioned earlier, a couple of worrying little kickers, if you'll pardon the pun.
First, a couple of small quibbles. The "Identified Gaps" section contains a couple of highly questionable assertions which deserve a wider airing; the document makes much of the fact that the successive waves of European immigration have dried up, and concludes that Australian football needs an injection of new blood as a result:
The historical immigration dynamic that has underpinned football in Australia appears to be weakening.

The Newcastle soap opera continues, with Branko Culina taking a second shot at the A-League after the surprise departure of Gary van Egmond.
Culina has a considerable cheer squad within Australian football, with one of his long-term fans welcoming his return with open arms. If he can indeed get Newcastle playing football similar to that of his Sydney United and Sydney Olympic sides during the fading days of the NSL, the fans will be grateful.

Prime Minister heads to FIFA HQ to lead the Aussie World Cup bid.
Gold Coast beat Englands seventh best side, 2-1!
Perth sign Socceroo Chris Coyne.
Enjoying the off-season.

Jacob Timpano, Alex Brosque, Brandon Santalab, Michael Zullo, do those names ring a bell? No? What about Robbie Fowler? Thought you knew that name.

Fowler is the newest marquee player in the A-League and he is playing for the North Queensland Fury. I am sure everybody knows Robbie Fowler, a man with 230 goals in all competitions next to his name, a member of the PFA Team of the Year and twice PFA Young player of the year.

Forget the Ashes we've lost them, the Tour De France not a chance, as a true Aussie I've thrown my daughters bike away, chucked the cricket ball over next door, I'm now very focused on Diving, getting my daughter to practice immediately we won gold.
And great news this morn from little ol SBS all our Under 20 games live on Telly at some godly hour.

I was expecting people to sign-up for the new Australian football fanzine Half-Time Heroes from Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and co given the writers we have and their existing readers but I guess I hadn't thought too much about the overseas readers.
Bangkok, Taiwan, and London fans appeared in the first fifty subscribers.

A couple of A-League club fanzines have flared briefly before dying over the last few years, but I hope that an engaging new publication from Adelaide United fans, Because of a Pissant Town, can build up a head of steam and flourish.
The title is, of course, a reference to Aurelio Vidmar's notorious comment towards the end of last season, and Bill of The Spawning Salmon has been the chief driving force behind the mag.

Big Bob Malcolm, Scottish, has pushed Aussie Luke DeVere out of Centre-Back for Brisbane. Why? He hasn't improved the leaking Roar defence has he?
Was young Aussie Luke so poor last year when The Roar did so well.
And the embarrasingly fat Charlie Miller takes much of young Mitch Nicholls game time.

Adam Griffiths is hardly the biggest name in Australian football.
He wasn't the most high-profile star at his A-League club. He's not even the most recognisable player in his family.
But the twin brother to Joel and older brother of Ryan made headlines this month when he swapped A-League club Gold Coast United for Saudi side Al-Shabab after just one game.

Having already qualified for the 2010 World Cup, Australia has a friendly against the Netherlands this weekend. The two sides played before the last World Cup and have built up a healthy rivalry. This has been boosted by the heavy influx of Dutch coaches into Australian football. The Dutch ...

The FFA's optimism in planning for further expansion to the A-League in 2010/11 is commendable, but perhaps misplaced.
The federation's takeover of Adelaide United, with no significant new investor apparently on the horizon, is a worry on two counts. Firstly, a club that reached a continental final and secured a lucrative appearance at a FIFA event in December should not, one would think, be in such trouble.