We Are The Reds

I was reading a newspaper the other day and it had an article about Ronaldo (the brazilian one!) He was talking about the olympics and how his 1996 bronze medal is one of his treasures. The article also reviewed his career a little. Which took me back to my youth.
For my Ronaldo ignited my love for the game. As a kid my old man, brother and I would every Sunday morning watch the Serie A highlights show and the season he joined Inter was the year I really started getting into it. Watching videos of him now and again on youtube always takes me back to those days. His skill and movement on the ball amazed me, and the way he made some of the best defenders on tha planet at the time look like parking cones was something I would never tire of watching. My brother and I would always spend the rest of the day trying to copy his moves in the backyard, and the sense of pride I would feel after trying to do step overs for hours to finally have one work!
I think think of kids today saying often the same things I said about Ronaldo then about Messi now, and although I don't agree that he's the best ever. I think kids love for a star like that isn't something that should just be disagreed with. To them Messi is the best player they have ever seen and to them like Ronaldo was to me something very special.

I remember as a kid in the early-mid 80s having in-depth debates at school about whether Maradona was better than Pele, despite the fact we'd seen virtually nothing of the Argentine, and precisely zero of Pele in action. And most of us were more Australian Rules-based than soccer.

I always had some interest in the World Cup, but no real family heritage of the round ball, so it was something curious that I enjoyed on a good day when SBS didn't look like a snowstorm.

For me (copyright Craig Foster) it was the 1988 Bicentennial Cup, when we hosted Argentina that really got me excited.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EaqVfIl ... re=related

From there it was Socceroos games I watched, before I went to live in London in the mid-90s. I watched the EPL highlights show Monday nights on the ABC in preparation, but didn't want to choose a team until I found somewhere to live. Just happened to be North London, about 100m inside the Arsenal zone.

The advent of AUFC is what really got me watching the game properly though, and Vlad Demetriou's constant tweaking of AFL rules and laws just pushed me further and further away*. Couldn't be happier than at Hindmarsh watching the Reds though. Long may it continue.

* As a caveat, I was a mad Woodville supporter growing up, and would still be knee deep in the SANFL if they's survived, but just don't feel anything for the Eagles. Never really have.

I have the same feel for AFL myself. I went to 5 games a season in the early 2000's till the rules and idiotic Crows fans got too much for me.

I too was brought up in AFL - hard not to be when you grow up in country SA.

AFL has changed though. I long for the days of the fat forwards kicking 15 goals a game and real men playing the sport.

The game is becoming a joke with the rule changes and the drugs that 90% of the player are on.

WC06 was when I joined the party. Remember watching the Brazil game after I got word of us winning the Japan game when I was only 17. After that I was hooked. Croatia game was the most I'd ever felt watching sport, even after following the Crows to two premierships - possibly too young to enjoy at the time.

Heart still bleeds from the Italy game and followed only the Socceroos from 06 until 2008 when I jumped on the AUFC ACL bandwagon. Lined up for hours only to miss out on a ticket to the final. Have been a fan since then and now I work, I'm a member.

So only a youngster in the realm of Football.

Yeah ACL got a lot of my mates into it as well! As for the Croatia game! When Harry scored I was so excited I dropped my jagerbomb I had at the time on my wife. See was so pissed she went and bought a beer just to pour on my head.....beautiful moment!

My father took me to watch West Adelaide Hellas for the first time when I was around 8 or 9.
School holidays in January, Ampol cup on Wednesday nights.
He was the club's photographer in the early years.
He would take me up to the main stand where he would leave me with an uncle or two and then he'd go down onto the park to take the team photo with his Rolleiflex 6x6 camera, on black and white Ilford film with his Metz Flash Gun doing the "fill In ", oh, the good old days.
He would then come back up to watch the game with us.

Remember adelaide city players doing a clinic at my school in grade 1 which would of been in 92 i think?

Can remember fighting with some other kid who got to be robbie slater and who got to be robbie hooker... Irony being that hooker played for west adelaide , but we didnt know this lol we were just repeating names we heard i think

Great topic!
I played football a little bit in high school - mid-late '90s - but really didn't follow it at all, just played cos a couple of mates did (and we always wagged training to go smoke durries down by the creek anyway). This was in Brisbane where everyone was into rugby & rugby league, I remember our school kept trying to give away Strikers tickets and there were never any takers (myself included). I didn't really care about sport at all at that stage, I don't think I ever watched EPL or NSL or Socceroos on TV.
During the 2000 Olympics, when I was 18, I worked at the bar at the Gabba for the football games. The bar would close soon after half time so I could walk out onto the concourse and watch the remainder of the matches. I was just enthralled by how exciting live football actually was and how much skill was involved. Also I was stunned that there were so many traveling fans who would bother coming halfway around the world to watch their team play in Brisbane. Especially when the Brazilians came to town - I remember seeing them take up a big section on the 2nd level of the stadium, and watching as the stands actually bent a little bit when they jumped up and down. I was really taken by the noise and the colour and the level of excitement.
By the time of the quarter final match between Brazil and Cameroon I was totally hooked - Cameroon won 2-1 with a golden goal and I was supporting them all the way through to their win in the final. It's only years later that I realised I was watching Ronaldinho and Samuel Eto'o, two of my favourite players with Barca, playing against each other live in my home town.
So, after that I watched as much football as I could. I saw probably 3/4 of the 2002 WC matches, watched the English Premier League and tried to support Middlesbrough when Viduka joined (but ultimately failed to really connect with any of the English sides). When Euro 2004 was on I was living in Spring Hill and used to walk down to Queen Street mall at 4am in the middle of winter to watch the matches on a big screen in a cafe.
I started getting into the NSL around that stage too, my GF and I had plans to move to Adelaide (she's an Adelaide girl) so I'm proud to say I nailed my allegiances to AUFC from their inception, and in fact watched them live at Perry Park when they lost 4-1 to the Strikers during the finals series.
Then I moved to SA before the start of the A-League, got a Reds season ticket, started playing for a club, the Socceroos qualified for the World Cup and I broke a light fitting celebrating Aloisi's winning pen, and the rest is history...
Sorry about the essay, just realised how much I wrote!

I remember Nottingham Forest coming to Australia and me falling in love with them because I was 8 and loved Robin Hood.

The ones who really got me into football were a couple of Malaysian mates at boarding school (I was a country lad) and we stayed up to the wee hours watching Euro '88. I picked the Netherlands from the start as I digged their outfits. Turned out to be a good call.

After that it was largely a matter of waiting about for Adelaide United though I had fun playing the game in Tonga and Solomon Islands in the 90's and early 00's.

I remember Nottingham Forest coming to Australia and me falling in love with them because I was 8 and loved Robin Hood.

The ones who really got me into football were a couple of Malaysian mates at boarding school (I was a country lad) and we stayed up to the wee hours watching Euro '88. I picked the Netherlands from the start as I digged their outfits. Turned out to be a good call.

After that it was largely a matter of waiting about for Adelaide United though I had fun playing the game in Tonga and Solomon Islands in the 90's and early 00's.

I hope you can still play for Australia if you get the call up!

I hope you can still play for Australia if you get the call up!

If they are looking to internationals over locals then I'm definitely in the mix