Michael Laws= Fail

For a man that obviously hates the sport and everything it stands for - he sure likes writing about it.

 

 

It is why football � still soccer to most � is now recognised and embraced as the world�s most important game even by those New Zealanders who don�t much like it.

We all now know that, by that definition, this game�s pinnacle prize, the World Cup, is the hardest in sport to win or even come close to winning.

And we want to compete. We want it bad.

Thanks to some quirky turns in our social history, in the second half of the 19th Century we botched it when we came to some forks in the road and, unlike most other nations, chose to embrace sports which many decades later were found to be internationally irrelevant.

In these sports, primarily the rugby sports and netball, we at various times became unbeatable as a nation.

And we rejoiced in that. But then, relatively recently, the penny suddenly dropped: being an elite nation in these things was a bit too easy. We wanted to win in something harder, something in which the whole planet actually competes, and that �harder� could only be football and its World Cup.

3 days ago, after New Zealand surged and fought its way into the World Cup, our politicians began to talk about ticker-tape parades for our boys in the big cities. The idea was happily shelved after Ricki Herbert reacted with: �You have to be joking. We only remained undefeated. It�s not like we won the bloody thing.�

But the notion that we should so celebrate a New Zealand team for finishing an international tournament undefeated does tell you much about our desperate need to achieve in this race of monumental global relevance.

It�s a challenge we now love more than any other, not because it�s easy but because it�s hard.

Thankfully our players, and their coach, know this. This is not the group that trekked to Spain in 1982 as a brave and heroic bunch, sweetly and correctly buoyed by having made it.

This lot, which makes a living from football at its highest professional levels, and to whom pressures of expectation are an everyday thing, has the belief in its capacity to challenge all comers.

As a national football team, New Zealand shed its complexes a few weeks ago, ever since its best players emerged out of the World Cup undefeated. It now has a faith added to a desire, as its efforts against that mogul nation, Italy, testifies.

We too should share in that faith.

The cynics, pessimists and skeptics among us still abound of course. It�s our nature as football beasts. We have a natural instinct for wanting to cushion the impact of heartbreaks, many of us retaining the lingering supposition that we have no right to expect at this level, only to try.

But this is nonsense. International football is no longer a structure of such clearly defined tiers.

Jean Marc Bosman, by releasing the unlimited flow of players to the top professional leagues from all parts of the planet, has helped create a football world of increasing technical and cultural equity in which many things are now more probable than they were ever possible.

The United States drawing with England was never met with the kind of shock that when the USA won in Belo Horizonte sixty years ago.  The USA, like our lot, also has faith coupled with its ambition.

Bet he feels very important.

 

Its your paper Timmy, can't you sort him out?

 

^ This

 

"the media stopped being reporters and simply became fans". You put yourself in this category (albeit as an anti-fan) when you wrote that NZ lost to Vanuatu before beating Bahrain. We lost to Fiji, and the context  was that we had already won the group, and were giving some second-stringers a hit-out. ( A bit like Mr. Henry's rotation policy). A reporter without an axe to grind might have done their research. The Vanuatu loss was in 2004, and ensured we didn't qualify for the 2006 World Cup.

 

It should also be remembered that if we hadn't beaten Bahrain, they may well have gone straight to the Cup after beating Saudi Arabia. Given some of the results of the top 4 Asian teams, it might not have been pretty. Then again, they may have done well. That's the beauty of football -it's unpredictability.

 

I'm not advocating that football supplant rugby, but simply that media coverage of the game in New Zealand, and of it's players abroad reflects the standing of the game internationally, and the level of public interest (and there is more than domestic coverage allows for) in New Zealand. 

 

"I'm not in NZ to gauge the response to the WC so far - but it looks like
you might have some egg on your face Michael"

 

to which he replied

"Doubt it. Incrediblt fortunate that class doesn't matter in the game of
soccer."

 

I asked him if it was a bit like politics then

 

 

Don't you mean Whootball?

 

I suppose it might bring a few more people into the game, but not convinced Law's controversial posturing is generating jobs or wealth in Wangas.

 

poofy is  a way of acting and one of the poofiest/ mincing guys i ever met was hetro all the way (tho cd never understand what woman saw in him). I highly doubt Laws is homophobic as takes a man happy with his own masculinity to be wed to a female bodybuilder and to promote his town as the glass blowing capital of the sthrn hemisphere

 

Whether he is homophobic or not it is still a derogatory term for homosexuals.

 

poofy is a subset to gay the same way macho is to hetro. both interchange. neither have anything to do with where your instrument goes. its purely about behaviour

 

Well firstly you are assuming I'm not gay myself - tho I'm fairly sure that if I was and just not wanting to advertise it here you'd still think I don't have the right to use this word

 

Secondly a guaranteed fail doesn't mean one shouldn't argue ones point or that everyone else is right - particularly when we're talking about an audience high in young males talking about other's sexuality

 

To me and those I know (no matter what their sexual orientation) poofy doesn't mean gay. It means a type of behaviour - someone who is effete. And only a moron seriously believes all homosexuals behave in one way - the same way not everyone thinks all lesbians are dykes tho I'm sure I'm about to get a lecture about usage of that word too where the truth is that most people do think of a certain flavour of lesbian that way not necessarily using the word or thought as  a bad thing just a way of describing them

 

Why give a word such power

 

and truthfully I think comparing the word 'poofy' usually used in the context meaning someone is soft (an adjective) and the word 'nigger' usually used in the context meaning someone is african american (a noun) is fairly defensive