There I was, sitting on the couch at 2pm with the winter sun streaming through the window on a glorious Sunday afternoon.
Yes, I’m a man who moves in the rarefied circles of artists and musicians and writers, yes I’m an intellectual, yes I openly discuss the benefits of socialism and yes I drink green tea, but here I was about to watch a soccer match.
The last live sport game I watched was in 1992 when I was dragged as a newly arrived British migrant to an apparently legendary footy match as an introduction to Australian culture.
At the end of the game, I was forcibly hugged and lifted off my feet by strangers with beards and I watched grown men collapse in floods of tearful joy.
Quite frankly, it was all rather embarrassing.
Anyway, here I was again about to sip from the caveman cup of team sport — this time on a world stage as the Australian Socceroos played Türkiye in Vancouver in the opening round of the FIFA World Cup 2026.
On any other Sunday, I might have been listening to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings as a spirit-lifter after reading the morning papers.
Or I might have been reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations on Stoicism as light relief after listening to the lunchtime ABC Radio news.
But today I had made a commitment to my grandchildren to come down from Mount Olympus and join the crowd to see what the fuss was all about.
Is soccer really the beautiful game full of grace that unites the world?
Can it really lift ordinary souls on to the plain of Elysium to walk with gods and build the pride of nations?
Or is it just another infantile spectacle of adults kicking balls around and jumping like 10-year-olds after a Red Bull breakfast?
I couldn’t wait to find out.
I actually played soccer for my school team as a 10-year-old.
So I know a thing or two about the game.
I played left back, but after kicking two own goals, I was usually left back in the changing rooms.
Sunday’s game began with a lot of kicking the ball backwards.
That’s not how I remember a soccer game.
When I was young it was all about thrusting forward and barging into anyone who got in your way.
Eventually, things began to hot up when a mob of red shirts crowded the Socceroos’ goal and there was a bit of pushing and shoving.
That’s more like it, I thought.
Then one of the pushier red shirts had a go at the goal mouth, but the ball was stopped with a lightning horizontal move from the Aussie keeper.
Now that is crack tiger snake timing right there.
Give that man a true-blue medal.
Things reached boiling point when a Burundian refugee from Tanzania wearing a Socceroos shirt came from nowhere and banged the ball into the back of the Türkiye net.
I thanked God for Australia’s open door migration policy and jumped off the couch throwing green tea everywhere and I think I punched the air a little bit.
Then for the next 40 minutes red shirts with unpronounceable names and haircuts like dead animals swarmed the Aussie goalmouth, pushing and shoving and taking sneaky pot shots just like they did at Gallipoli.
When the Anzac spirit returned and fired a second blast into the Türkiye net, I just couldn’t help myself.
Bugger being an intellectual socialist, I thought, and threw a couch cushion across the room and shouted Oi Oi Oi.
For the first time in his life Desmond the snake chaser looked terrified.
Right then and there I vowed to take control of things and watch more live team sport.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.
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