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FootballShoot Farken Festivus: The Airing of A-League Match Day Grievances
I was wondering how to celebrate 100 days of Shoot Farken. Surely, this alternate Australian cybermedia mash-up with a core ingredient of football deserved something to mark the occasion. And then I inadvertently came across this piece of hysterical nonsense on the scourge of anti-social behaviour at A-League matches . If a tennis kit nerd can get away with writing conclusively about ...
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Sport‘Boom Boom’ Days: Growing up with Grand Slams in Apartheid Era South Africa
Stan Wawrinka claimed his first Grand Slam title after conquering his nerves and dispatching one of the all-time tennis greats, Rafael Nadal, in the Australian Open final. Larry Schlesinger was at Rod Laver Arena to see Nadal beat that other titan of the modern game, Roger Federer, in the semi-final. It sparked some memories of his own relationship to the sport growing ...
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Football 2‘Bastards Like Them’: Forgetting and Remembering the Father Figures of Indigenous Football
In the early 1950s a young Aboriginal footballer called Charlie Perkins started to be noticed in Adelaide. John Maynard in The Aboriginal Soccer Tribe points out that “Perkins was a first grade soccer player at the age of fifteen, playing with Port Thistle.” Over the next five years his stocks improved to the point where he “was awarded the South Australian player ...
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FootballRevenge of the Football Nerd: AVB the Movie
Loved and loathed in almost equal measure, script doctor Robert McKee’s book, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Storytelling, sets out guiding principles on how to write a well-structured and dramaturgically coherent film script. It is a text that aims to bring method to the supposed madness of the scriptwriting process. Also loved and loathed in almost equal measure, Portuguese ...
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Football 1How Australia missed out on going to the 1930 World Cup
It is 10am on a Saturday and I’ve arrived with a friend at a bustling café in inner Sydney, having driven up from Melbourne the day before. Here I meet Trevor Thompson, an English expat, author of One Fantastic Goal: A Complete History of Football in Australia, and ABC journalist who has covered the game for decades. Casual as you like, he ...
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Pop Culture 2Seven Songs in the Life of a Pearl Jam Fan
Pearl Jam is about to embark on their sixth tour of Australia, and while many will be awaiting well-known tunes such as “Alive” and “Better Man”, others will be listening for the first note or two of tracks they want to hear for more personal, maybe even spiritual, reasons. In an episode of 1990s US sitcom Seinfeld, one of Elaine’s boyfriends looks ...
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Football 5A Wogball Christmas: Soccerphobia’s hold on the Australian psyche
I caught up with a friend of mine recently at a coffee shop on Bourke Street. We talked about the previous year, the ailing fortunes of our respective football teams, the lack of sun in the beginning of January and, of course, our Christmas holidays. I listened as my friend told me about his Christmas. According to him, Santa made it to ...
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Pop CultureDear Vampire Weekend, Will You Be My New Steely Dan?
A middle-aged man wistfully trying to recapture past glories, hoping to relive the electric charge of youthful adventure, manfully staring down the growing sense of his own obsolescence. A shiny red sports car for some, an affair with the office receptionist for others, but for the sad case that is the music lover, the record collector, the vinyl crate digger turned hard ...
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FootballThe Old Man, the Rooster and a morsel of pork: Melbourne Heart as Balkan parable
My cousin is a great storyteller. I don’t mean good at making up stories, he’s just a good raconteur. In a very ‘old world’ quality, he describes every detail, puts things into context and order. For that, and others have confirmed it, I am assured the events of this story actually happened. He, along with his family, lives in a small village ...
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FootballTomi Juric or Josh Kennedy: Will the Colossus of Western Sydney go to the World Cup?
Tomi Juric or Josh Kennedy? This could very well be the scenario confronting Socceroos manager Ange Postecoglou. Does he choose the veteran hero Josh Kennedy, our Saviour who once had the hair to match, whose divine head sent the Socceroos to the World Cup? Or does he choose Tomi Juric, the young Colossus of Western Sydney? With Postecoglous’s historic reluctance to play ...
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Football 1An A-League Xmas: From Bad Football in Sydney to Bad Santa at the Melbourne Derby
“You have a tactic, you concede a goal, tactic – pfff!” Helenio Herrera Bleary eyed, I absorbed the wisdom from the godfather of catennacio. I was re-reading Simon Kuper’s Football Against The Enemy, in particular his day with Helenio Herrera, while on a Sunday morning flight to Sydney from Melbourne’s Avalon airport. Later that afternoon I checked my phone. I was at ...
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Football 1Death to Pissants: Is Adelaide finally on the path to being United?
“Because of a piss-ant town this club will never win anything, until you get rid of that crap.” The now infamous words spoken by then-Adelaide United manager Aurelio Vidmar, amidst a rant following another horrendous finals defeat, have haunted the club ever since. The term ‘pissants’ has been used by Reds fans and opposition supports alike to mock the club during its ...
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FootballAnger Management: Can Muscat Tame the Beast Within?
Melbourne Victory enjoyed the dizzy, Disney-friendly days of Ange Postecoglou, gilded by the sparkling form of Marco Rojas, last year’s Johnny Warren medallist. But now with Kevin Muscat storming the sidelines, after Ange skipped town for the Socceroos, things have changed at AAMI Park. Luke Dodemaide writes. Muscat’s hands are in his pockets. As Rashid Mahazi comes off in the 71st minute, ...
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Pop Culture 1The Day I Had Pizza with Porn Star Kitten Natividad
I am no expert. I’m not a bra-fitter, plastic surgeon or professional photographer of glamour models. I don’t work in a strip club or make blue films. But now here I was. Standing in front of a woman whose breasts had helped her become among the first adult film industry Hall of Famers. She had many other talents too. I had first ...
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FootballA Scarred Socceroos Fan Reflects on the World Cup
When I am not watching football, I like to watch films. You can blame this on SBS TV’s effect on a young curious teenager. When SBS launched in 1980, not only did it bring the world of “world” football to Australian living rooms, it also brought the glorious world of cinema. Unlike the channel today, SBS really did bring the world back ...
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FootballA-League Fans in Rebellion: An Existential Guide to Football Protests
It’s not quite May 1968, but an air of protest has swept through the supporter groups belonging to the navy blue three quarters and the red and white quarter of A-League Melbourne this season. At Victory, a vanguard led by a collective of supporter groups, North Terrace, are protesting over-zealous security measures in their active area. They have sent missives on social ...
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Pop CultureMeet the World’s Sleaziest Clarinet Player (and it’s not Woody Allen)
Sometimes the internet takes you to a place you should never go. A place filled with strippers, fast cars and clarinets. And African guerrilla soldiers taunting a chimpanzee armed with a semi-automatic weapon. Welcome to the world of Ercan Ahatli – quite possibly the sleaziest man to ever blow a clarinet. Ahatli manages to combine the sartorial splendour of Pitbull with the ...
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Pop CultureThe Best Damn Wrestling Promotion on the Planet: Pro Wrestling Guerrilla
On the 24th of May 1999, approximately 11 million Americans tuned in to either WCW Monday Nitro or WWF RAW is WAR. This represented the peak of the infamous ‘Monday night wars,’ where the flagship broadcasts of Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling and Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation – the two biggest professional wrestling promotions in North America – went head to ...
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Pop Culture 1Send in the Clowns: Campbell Newman vs Insane Clown Posse
American hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse are touring Australia next month, but Queensland Premier Campbell Newman might have something to say about the self-proclaimed “wicked clowns” disgracing any stage in the Sunshine State. It is highly unlikely Newman will extend a friendly salute of the Juggalo to Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope when the duo arrive in Brisvegas for its ...
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Australian RulesMagpie Relegation Blues: Is the AFL Ready for a Second Division?
It’s a freezing Saturday afternoon in June at Trevor Barker Oval and the Zebras faithful wait for their team to run onto the field to greet the howling Port Phillip Bay wind. The side has had a solid start to the year, winning eight of its first 12 games and is confident. Confident while fully aware of its opponents for the day. ...
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Football 1What Holger Did Next
The former coach of the Australian men’s national football team, Holger Osieck, sits alone in the shabby study of his holiday chalet in the small Tyrolean town of Mayrhofen. It is mid-morning and his wife, Elisabeth, is busy getting ready for another day of skiing the heavily powdered slopes of the Austrian Alps. Holger will not ski today. Holger has not been ...
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Pop CultureThe Rock Star, The Playboy and the Revival of Japanese Pro Wrestling
Over in Japan, there’s been a legendary series of matches that have heralded a new golden age of pro wrestling. Dan Steadman takes a look. It’s hard to become a legend if you don’t have a worthy adversary – David would have been nothing without Goliath; Luke Skywalker needed Darth Vader; Batman has faced off against The Joker countless times. And so ...
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Football 2Melbourne Heart to Crowdfund John Aloisi Sacking
In a move without precedent in professional team sport, A-League football club, Melbourne Heart will be launching a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for the removal of their beleaguered manager, John Aloisi. Shoot Farken has obtained minutes and other confidential documents from a crisis meeting held at Melbourne Heart headquarters. They were found in a wheelie bin after an anonymous tip off. ...
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FootballThe Day Francesco Totti came to Melbourne Heart
In early October 2012 I received an email from Pasquale, an old acquaintance of mine. He had just opened a pizzeria on the other side of town and he invited me to check it out. A few weeks later I visited Pasquale’s pizzeria. The busy eatery hummed to the buzz of trendy locals who, while not munching approvingly on their razor thin ...
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Pop CultureA Tale of Two Bands Lost: Nirvana and the Powder Monkeys
History, as we’re often told, is written by the winners. And if you were to count the number of words expended on the 20th anniversary release of Nirvana’s In Utero album you’d have little choice but to declare Nirvana winners. They came out on top of the grunge shit-heap. Yeah, Pearl Jam are still releasing new albums; Soundgarden are out there touring; ...
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SportThe Fight Georges St-Pierre Needs to Win
This weekend, UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre faces Johny Hendricks, but his true fight might be against his reputation. Dan Steadman writes. Fight fans have always argued about who the greatest pound for pound fighter is; whether it’s boxing fans pitting Mayweather against Tyson in his prime, or even action film fans arguing if Bruce Lee was a better fighter than Jean-Claude ...
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Football 2It’s a Melbourne Heartache: A Song for Losing
The weather closed in during the second half. There was a football match to watch, between Melbourne Heart and Western Sydney Wanderers, but I had the awful feeling that everything happening on the pitch was somehow predestined. I averted my eyes from the brightly floodlit pitch and watched the swirls of rain above AAMI Park. Momentarily, I found the combination play between ...
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Football 1#FarinaOut: Social Media and the Football Manager
I could not help but smile when Frank Farina jumped on his keyboard and became a warrior last night. Fed up with the abuse he is receiving on social media, the under siege coach of Sydney FC lamented on the termites “who mostly hide behind fake names or no name – who hurl mistruths, abuse and personal insults.” The problem for Frank ...
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Pop CultureFrom VU to Lulu: Five Lou Reed ‘Random Maniac’ Moments
The obituaries have been written and the tributes have poured in for Lou Reed following his death on October 27 at the age of 71. One of the best was written by Byron Coley, one of the pioneering voices of rock criticism in the American underground and someone who, more than most, understands the huge influence Lou Reed, solo and with the ...
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FootballUli Island Discs: Uli Hesse on Bundesliga, Baseball and Oz Underground Rock
Shoot Farken Q&A: German football writer Uli Hesse. I was writing a story about the transformation of German football and what Australia could learn from it when I first came across Uli Hesse. I picked up his extraordinary book, Tor! The Story of German Football, to do a little research and got in touch with him for an interview. Uli also writes ...
