Sing When You're Winning

There were rare scenes of joy in our house this past weekend with the unexpected breaking of a longstanding drought; a sporting team I support actually won something. Despite over 25 years regularly watching all manner of teams playing a fair few different sports, I've never ever seen any of them win anything of note.

The team in question was St George Illawarra - the Dragons. Some of you may have heard of them. Most of you will not. They won the NRL Telstra Premiership, Australia's top rugby league club championship. They are the toppermost of their particular poppermost. Look, here's a picture of them... winning things... yay!

My long wait for the Dragons' win (11 years in my case, 31 in theirs) was just one part of what could be called the Custard Curse. At its most basic this means whoever I want to win, will not. In all my years watching Sunderland, they have won only the Coca Cola Championship - twice. I won't pretend I wasn't pleased at the time, but since one needs to be relegated to win this second tier trophy it's one I'd rather never win again.

Similarly with my oldest team Hull Kingston Rovers, the rugby league team everyone in my family was born into the misery of supporting. Their last moment on top was 1984, tantalisingly out of my adult memory's reach. Thankfully I do remember sitting in the hotel bar at my aunty's wedding two years later watching Rovers lose by 1 point at Wembley in the Challenge Cup final; the moment my sporting path was set.

Of course I have experienced the distinct pleasure of watching Ricky Ponting's face contort with rage and frustration at the hands of the English Cricket Team - twice. I've also had many happy moments watching South African, Indian, Sri Lankan and Kiwi players slap the Aussies around the park a bit, especially in the past few years. That said a few weeks in summer following national sides are not enough to wipe out the pain of following the fortunes (or unfortunes) of your own useless team.

So thank you Dragons for bucking the trend. I'm more grateful than you know. However, whilst I'm at it I should apologise to the newly formed A-League team Melbourne Heart. You see, you play in red and white and well, I need a football team to support over here, and I refuse to go for Melbourne Victory and I never really cared much for Sydney FC. So, well, I figure since you need fans and I need a team well... you know... how about it? After all you're only as good as your last game right, and tonight, for one night I am a champion...

I Never Said I Was Deep

I like the world sometimes. A bit of sunshine on my face here, a little rain for the garden there, a lie-in wrapped in daggy flannel sheets, a 95th minute equaliser against Arsenal at home. Tiny things that warm my little cockles. I had another one this week when a man who was helping puppy-proof our yard spotted the Sunderland sticker on display in our car.

Despite being from Zimbabwe he was all too familiar with internecine football politics in the north east of England having lived in Newcastle for a while. We used to live just around the corner from each other. Small world and all that but the thing that made me smile most was that he lived in one of my favourite buildings in the world, Shieldfield House.

It’s hard to explain why I love Shieldfield House so much. As you can see it’s a rather typical and unassuming 1960s tower block, typical of many on Tyneside built in that period. As far as I know it's only claim to fame is the less than prestigious title of second tallest building in Newcastle. I’ve never lived there or even been inside and whilst it’s similar to a block of flats in Hull we used to live in, I’m not so nostalgically romantic about it as to project on other unsuspecting highrises.

Yet there is something that makes Shieldfield House special amongst buildings; it is magic. Magic how, you ask? Look closely at the picture. What do you see? More pertinently, what do you not see? I'll tell you what you won't see - 3D. That is because Shieldfield House is a two dimensional building. Not a reflection on the residents, but a geometrical fact. Shieldfield House has an up and a down, and a side-to-side but it is sadly lacking a front-to-back. In dimensional terms it is deficient to the tune of one. Like those shanty town facades in old western movies, it's easily to believe that a good gust of wind could see the whole thing fall flat on its face.

Now I don’t claim to know the nature of this feat of concrete conjuring, but look again for proof. Even up close and from the side, there is still no... side. Despite the fact that you can sometimes see people going about their lives inside, and even opening their windows, Shieldfield House remains as improbably flat as the Phantom Zone in Superman II.

If you're ever in the area i thoroughly recommend checking out this unlikely architectural phenomenon for yourself. That said, even when visiting it in the flesh it doesn't look any different to these photos, so if you're unlikely to ever take trip up to Shieldfield just take my word for it. As Bucks Fizz once assured us in more innocent pre-Photoshop days, the camera never lies and no amount of James Cameron-style 3D trickery will change that.

Shieldfield House, Mint Custard salutes you. I never said you were deep, but you are profoundly shallow.

Rolling Ball Gathers More Friends

This time of year is traditionally when people in Australia go a little crazy for balls of all kinds. August sees the start of the football season, with the local A-League (this year bolstered by a second Melbourne team in Melbourne Heart) and the start of the European football season - including the English Premier League and Champion's League. The first mentions of summer cricket start to be made whilst at the the oval end of the ball spectrum September is finals month for the Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL). So, in the spirit of this ball-fest I'd like to bring you up to date with our sister site, i am Ball, dedicated to the adventures of a plucky young tennis ball called Ball.

I wrote about Ball on these pages back in May when he was just setting off on his adventures. Since then there have been over 25 reported sightings of our fuzzy friend from places as far apart as Cairns and Cornwall. Each spotting has been recorded with a photo and some detail of Ball's condition and general demeanour. It's not always good (dogs seem to have a love-hate-love relationship with him, and the less said about people mounting Ball on their car bumpers the better) but it's not all bad either and is all part of the adventure of being Ball.

If you've never been please have a look and see what he's all about. This is a good place to start as you get an idea of who Ball is and what to do if you cross his path. Otherwise just have wander around i am Ball (http://whereisball.blogspot.com/) to read about his globe trotting adventures. Remember, if you see Ball say hello and take his picture. We're always hoping for more sightings from around the world, so please help do your bit to keep the word about Ball rolling.

The End of the World

Put away your vuvuzelas, stop all the clocks. The World Cup is over for four more years and real life must return. No more watching games at 4am under the doona before work, no more talk of teutonic free-flowing attack or English stutterings with Ali, the Iranian barista who has provided me with enough caffeine to help me cope with the rigours of early morning upon early morning.

I'll spare you any of my unoriginal and uninformed thoughts about the on-field action but if its OK with you I'd like to take a moment to mourn the passing of a weird and wonderful month spent watching Africa's first World Cup from wintry AFL-loving Melbourne with some off-field highlights.

A deflated orange balloon in a drain, yesterday. Aw bless.

The inability of the local press to set aside their obsession with AFL for just one month will remain with me for years to come. I'm not suggesting that Victorians should have ignored their number one pastime completely but I think that a sporting event of the magnitude of the World Cup merited better support than it was given in local rags.

Despite initially getting into the spirit with a daily eight-page pullout, the Age dropped that idea like Robert Green with a jabulani as soon as Australia departed the tournament. I'm conscious that had I been in the UK this past month I'd be sick to the hind teeth of all things football, but reducing coverage of the world's second biggest sporting event to pages 7 and 8 of the sports pages, with half of the articles sourced from press agencies is perhaps a little disrespectful of those of us who do like football.

And yet in some ways this was a blessing. Not wishing to diss the professionals but some of the journalism was a tad inappropriate. Case in point, Fairfax journo Michael Cockerill who went on a campaign of self-aggrandisement via a public feud with Australia's Harry Kewell. Overpaid sportstars don't need too much of our pity but in a week where the Socceroos were at their very lowest (after a 4-0 thrashing at the hands of Germany) I don't think we needed this kind of popinjay behaviour from people employed to send the spirit of the event back home.

Cockerill's colleague Michael Lynch carried himself rather better though even his contribution was tarnished somewhat by his coverage of Spain's victory in the final. Stories of fans marching along Madrid's Gran Via, crowd calling for Spanish match winner Andres Iniesta to be made presidente and the story of someone called Raul expressing his happiness "as passing cars honked their horns" somehow feel a little less authentic when you see "Michael Lynch, Johannesburg" in the by-line.

I suspect the Age's true feelings about the World Cup are better understood through their relentlessly negative coverage of Australia's proposed bid for the 2022 tournament. Focussing on funds paid to lobbyists, gifts offered to dignitaries' partners (as if this doesn't happen with every bid for a sporting touranment) and the idea that North Melbourne might have to play Richmond somewhere else for one weekend 12 years from now is the type of parochial behaviour that holds Australia back from being a true world player in football.

Praise be then for the true football mentalists over at SBS for their unrelenting support of what they like to call the World Game. Lest we forget the one true moment of Australian footballing insanity this world cup: an incident I like to think of as the Madness of King Foz. It's hard to imagine what was going through SBS Senior Football Analyst and former Socceroo Craig Foster's head when he made this rant against Australia's Dutch coach Pim Verbeek, ("I would have walked down after the game and sacked him...") but fuck it was funny. Sadly Foz never got quite so worked up again throughout the tournament, though it was very cute to see how nervous he and Les Murray were just prior to the Socceroos must win game against Serbia.

Ultimately though the South African World Cup will be remembered chez Custard for the daily antics of Santo Cilauro, Sam Pang and Ed Kavalee and their SBS show Cup Fever. The idea of a daily satirical look at the World Cup isn't a new one - it's sixteen years since Skinner and Baddiel's Fantasy Football League and ten since Australia shared the Dream with Roy and HG at the Sydney Olympics - but Cup Fever was a huge success none the less.

This was due in no small part to the three hosts who were an unexpected dream team. Kavalee in particluar was a revelation (I'd never heard of him before) and his giddy wide-eyed impersonation of New Zealand commentators (with Rob Sitch) and a gloriously camp recreation of German manager Joachim Low will live long in the memory. Other wonderfully naff impressions including Santo's Carlos Puyol by Santo and Sam's so-bad-it's-good Kim Jong-Il ensured that it wasn't just Ed's star that shone.

There was an unnecessary laddish element to the series (the teams's unofficial fourth member being a female Chilean fan in a tight zebra patterned singlet picked out of a South African crowd and shown as often as possible) and the show would have benefitted from more female guests (I counted two in a month) but otherwise Cup Fever was always fun to watch. Repetition makes anything funnier - even the lamest of gags, of which there were many - and the various cheap-as-chips segments (Brecia's Diary, Take on My Balls, the Rivaldo Award, Kids look at Cameras, Not Even Close) were always funny and short enough to never outstay their welcome.

It's possible Santo, Sam and Ed's Cup Fever will remain a fondly recalled memory of South Africa 2010 but I hope that TV execs around the country saw something in its style, pace, editing and just-give-it-a-go sense of fun to want to apply it (and the hosts) to something else. The refreshing lack of ego and self-importance from the hosts is something rare on Australian television, and all the better for being funny with it. Congrats to SBS and the Cup Fever team for a job well done.

And that's that. Four years to go til Brazil, when a humbled England will hopefully start with realistic expectations, a rejuvenated Australia will get past the second round and maybe people in the Australian media apart from SBS will treat this most unique of occasions with a little more respect.

Look at Me, Look at Me

So there were Mrs Custard and I, 5am in the morning wrapped up in a blanket watching the Socceroos come agonisingly close to getting through to the next round of the World Cup. In the middle of the first half I said 'you know what's been nice about this World Cup - it's meant that I haven't had to listen to Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd or anyone else in Canberra droning on and trying to make us care about the election...'

So to me it looks like a bad case of attention deficit disorder from the pollies that the first thing I heard when i turned on ABC local radion today was that the Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is mounting a leadership challenge against Rudd at 9am this morning.

I read the news today. Oh boy...

By the time you read this chances are Australia will have its first female Prime Minister. Which is ace of course, and sadly in many ways no more than Rudd deserves for losing the plot and touch with public opinion so needlessly and so drastically in such a short space of time... however I'm sure there are better ways with dealing with the fact that this week Australians care more about Tim Cahill, Harry Kewell - hell - even Brett Holman (who hell he? Australia's top goal scorer of the tournament, that's who) than our political leaders.

And if a certain flame-haired lady is reading this before her leadership challenge, remember - half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you, Julia...

Get Bent

The internet needs another piece about football right now about as much as footballers getting paid over 50,000 pounds a week need our sympathy. Still, I can’t stop myself from offering a cyber-hug to Sunderland’s Darren Bent today following his omission from England’s world cup team for the second tournament in a row.

Whilst I have a partisan interest in Bent’s fortunes as a Sunderland fan, his non-selection does seem a tad unfair. Even allowing for the fact that I possess precious little nous when it comes to selecting winning football teams and that style of play of the ensemble is a huge factor in the potency of even the best players, not even having your country’s second highest scorer on the bench seems a bit silly.

It’s also an interesting counterpoint to the idea that people who work hard and deliver the goods will be rewarded. As in any workplace, even world class athletes are at the mercy of their employers. It seems that Bent just did not fit in Mr Capello’s plans.


Football fans in the north-east have seen this kind of thing before. In the late fifties one Brian Howard Clough scored 151 goals in 274 games playing for Middlesbrough and Sunderland and yet played only twice for England. More recently (Super) Kevin Phillips was the Premier League’s top scorer in 1999-2000, becoming the only Englishman to win the European Golden Boot. In exchange he played just eight times in an England shirt, coming off the bench as a substitute in each game. I’m not suggesting there is any kind of conspiracy at hand here, but Sunderland fans might be forgiven for feeling a little paranoid from time to time.

Refreshingly Bent himself has been remarkably gracious about the whole affair, in public at least. Recognising that making any kind of a living playing the game you love is a blessing in itself is one of the reasons that Mackems have taken to Bent with the same fervour they embraced Phillips – that and that fact that we’d be shite without him. So whilst England and Mr Capello may not have recognised you Darren, and whilst it’s no consolation, I’d like to offer a tip of my red and white bobble hat and a spin of my wooden clacker rattle in gratitude for switching the Stadium of Light back on.

Special

An interesting curio about living in Australia is the way cultural and geographical isolation can distort huge mainstream overseas events and reduce them to quasi-cult viewing. Half a day’s time difference and lousy programming decisions by television companies are often enough to reduce viewing of even the most commercial of cultural phenomena to a few dedicated souls.

I’ve written before about great television shows from around the world being buried in late night schedules or woefully under-publicised. Shows like Madmen, 30 Rock and Curb Your Enthusiasm may attract worldwide column inches but here bad scheduling has reduced them to niche viewing. Despite what Channel 7 would have us believe in their recent publicity of the Lost finale, in truth the show had been hidden away on their secondary digital channel for months. Hardly the attitude for must-see-TV.

Certainly time zones play a part in Australia’s participation in worldwide events. With no local event and no live feed on terrestrial television Live 8 was reduced to a 90 minute highlights show (with adverts, naturally) whilst as tennis fans will currently tell you, the drama of any European sporting event is a little reduced when relayed the next day by breakfast news presenters.

Credit then to SBS for their continued efforts to keep Australia connected to the rest of the world despite their mediocre budget. As well as being the only station we have whose evening news truly reflects the world we live in, Australia’s multicultural broadcaster is also unique in its commitment to celebrating the global cultural events and giving us down under a chance to join in.

In the coming weeks SBS will be showing every game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup across their two channels in defiance of the richer commercial stations and their general disinterest in supporting the world game. This is no opportunistic grab for ratings; SBS has been a lone champion of football in Australia for decades, from when it was a game for sheilas, wogs and poofters and John Aloisi’s 2005 penalty was just a nice idea. In truth the majority of Australians are unlikely to stay up and watch actual games at the Mundial, especially if the Socceroos are eliminated quickly, but the fact is that without SBS they wouldn’t even have that choice. Try to imagine that happening anywhere else in the world this month.

Craig Foster and Les Murray of SBS' The World Game

Similar kudos to SBS for their magnificent coverage of this weekends 55^th Eurovision Song Contest. Growing up in Britain I had zero interest in Eurovision, probably because of the oversaturation, starting with weeks of televised auditions for a Song for Europe and the inevitable selection of something woeful to represent the UK, followed by the usual rounds of barely-disguised racism from the media, raised out of the gutter by some sarcastic levity courtesy of Terry Wogan.

In keeping with their remit, the SBS version – hosted by the gorgeously wonderful Julia Zemiro and Sam Pang - is a celebration of diversity. With no home country to barrack for the coverage is gloriously cosmopolitan, leaving lots of time to focus on terrible outfits, indoor fireworks, the SBS Eurovision Drinking Game and (hard to believe, but true) the songs.

In addition to the on-screen shenanigans (presented as a delayed telecast the night after the actual event, necessitating a huge Likely Lads-style avoidance of television, internet and wireless in the hours before) an annual highlight of the SBS coverage is their real time live chat where viewers can go online and share in a communal live bitch-fest about everything and anything they see on screen. There is something genuinely uplifting about Australians of all creeds and colours coming together to laugh at the pudgy beer belly of a balding white-clad crooner.

Notre chere Julia Zemiro. On t'aime Julia!

Whilst cyber-slagging there is the added distraction of watching the fiercely tribal and slightly bizarre online battle between Australia’s Greek and Turk communities battling for the number one spot in the unofficial SBS Australian vote (only one vote allowed every twenty seconds kids). Turkey won this year.

Government handling of issues relating to refugees, asylum seekers and the indigenous communities, immense stupidity by the people behind Hey Hey It’s Saturday and the disgusting attacks on Indian students have done great damage to Australia’s multicultural reputation in recent years. Still, whilst it would be unhelpful and dishonest to deny a racist element in Australia, it is nice to be able to report that there are also positive forces at work here.

SBS is often viewed dismissively as a kind of hippy, right on cousin of the ABC but the truth is that the national broadcaster is still more reflective of Australia’s anglo-centric past than its diverse multi-coloured future. SBS prides itself in being in and of the real world, connecting our island to everyone and everywhere else, in a two-way exchange. In an increasingly inter-connected world it’s something for the other networks to ponder long and hard over - perhapsd during the adverts for Hey Hey It’s Saturday?