A fireside chat.
When I was in school, we used to have weekly "Singing assemblies" where we would all be crowded into the hall, words would be projected on a screen, the music teacher would man the piano and we would all be forced to sing along to about half a dozen random songs of varying age and quality. One of these songs has been running through my head for the last week. It was called "Football Crazy" and chronicles the singers lament for losig their favorite brother to the sport of Soccer.
For he's football crazy, he's football mad.
The football it has taken away the little bit of sense he had...
Why is this in my head? Because my country has gone football (soccer) crazy. From largely ignoring the sport for the last few decades, we are now 100% totally addicts. This is the usual response admittedly, when we as a nation do something to actually get noticed by the rest of the world, but hey, we take our victories where we can.
So in case you didn't know, our national team - the All Whites (yes, I know, our rugby is the All Blacks, our Soccer is the All Whites. Believe me, it gets worse, but bear with me) actually made it to the Soccer World Cup for the first time since 1982. Then they actually did well, actually scoring points in the tournament for the first time since - well, forever, apparently. Then they did it again. And actually looked like they were going to go further. Then they didn't. But we're still so proud of them that we're not actually knocking them which is another first for us. (We tend to be brutal on our teams down here)
And all the kiddies now want to play soccer, which is a big boost for that organisation. A similar thing happened when our Basketballers, the Tall Blacks did well in competition a few years back.
Yes. The Tall Blacks. I did warn you. Our Cricket team, incidentally - is the Black Caps. Our Softball, the Black Sox. Our field hockey is the Black Sticks and our Ice hockey are the Ice Blacks. We even have a Wheelchair-basketball team called the "Wheel Blacks". (And if you haven't seen a team of guys in wheelchairs performing the Haka, you haven't lived.)
Oh, and our womens teams? Netball is the Silver Ferns, Cricket is the Black Ferns, Basketball is the Tall ferns and (I believe) rugby is the Gal Blacks.
We are nothing if not unoriginal obsessed consistent.
Actually, if we don't have a womens soccer team called the "White ferns" or something, I'll be very surprised.
Normally I am about as excited about sport as I am about getting root canal (ie, not much) but even I'm catching the bug. A bit. Sort of.
(sigh) Go Team.