Sly Sepp playing footsie with Socceroos

LockerRoom: You have to love Sepp Blatter. Sports administration is what the Mafia like to call a "legitimate business" and, as such, seems to attract many of the softer type rogues and chancers not ideally suited to the Mafia. Men who see in sports admin a handier, more lead-free life with plenty more air miles and complimentary gifts.

Italians traditionally do very well in the murky sports administration world but Sepp has overcome the handicap of his race and has made his mark. His sheer shamelessness makes him a vastly entertaining figure. Sepp has chutzpah. Sepp has a neck like a jockey's alibi in a race-fixing case.

This week Sepp was in Australia selling out his referees and the winners of this year's World Cup. Sepp apologised to Australia, telling the locals the Socceroos should have played in the World Cup quarter-final instead of Italy.

(You will remember, as if it were yesterday, that on June 26th a fidgety Spanish referee awarded Italy a penalty in the dying moments of a last 16 game. Italy's Fabio Grosso had appeared to find the nearby presence of Lucas Neill enough to make him fall over . . . Ciao, Socceroos.) Now Sepp isn't about to go on a world tour apologising for costly big-time refereeing mistakes (so don't wait in, Eoin Hand) but he knows Australia is a bit special. In such circumstances, Sepp doesn't feel at all degraded by doing a bit of lubricating Down Under. He is a pragmatist.

Football politics robbed South Africa of the right to host the World Cup last year. To make up for that mishap the 2010 competition was handed to South Africa. Right now, the projected bill for hosting the shindig stands at about 1,263,000 or $1.6billion. This is five times the original estimated cost made in 2004 when the South Africans were given the right to host the event. And nothing has been done.

A successful South African World Cup would be a wonderful thing. It is also a very unlikely thing. The decision to go back on original plans to refurbish stadiums and instead to build spanking new facilities in Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Polokwane and Mpumalanga has ratcheted up the pressure on the host nation. Jabu Moleketi, the head of the government's 2010 technical committee, has warned that if construction is not under way by January "we are in serious trouble."

No building work has started yet. South Africa is, by it's own reckoning, just two months away from serious trouble. By most other reckoning it is in serious trouble already. There are worries that when building starts there won't be sufficient cement available. There are even more serious worries that the 30-month target for completing all work is unrealistic. Sepp is going to South Africa soon, as chief subbie to gee them all up a bit.

The underlying problem is this: if the building work does start can a nation at South Africa's state of development justify such expenditure on new soccer facilities? The great sprawling townships still exist as immense scabs of poverty on the face of a new nation. The electricity system is prone to prolonged mass blackouts. Johannesburg still has no coherent public transport system.

The World Cup will come and go and leave some infrastructural legacy but the stadiums will be a waste of money, a prestige purchase of four weeks in the spotlight.

The most popular pro-soccer team in South Africa, the Kaizer Chiefs, have an average home gate of 23,000. Ticket prices are extremely low. Are 10 huge soccer facilities morally justifiable? Are they even buildable? Private sector input is virtually zero and in terms of the tourism bonanza, South Africa is still plagued by violent crime. There were 19,000 murders there in 2004, the second worst per-capita rate in the world after Colombia. Colombia gave up the 1986 World Cup.

So amidst denials that Fifa would like to switch the World Cup to Australia good old Sepp goes long haul and does his sweet talk routine.

Australia is fertile ground for soccer. So much so that the AFL blazers busy trying to stop their charges from roughing up our poor boys in Croker next Sunday must be looking askance. Australian soccer's A-League only began in August 2005. It pulled in a big sponsor (Hyundai) and the Football Federation of Australia already has a profitable rights fee deal. The FFA are smart cookies and are expected to exploit an opening in the $120million broadcast rights package given to Fox to develop a highlights package that would allow large sections of Asian Cup matches ( in which the Aussies now compete) featuring the Socceroos to be shown on free to air next year.

Samsung and Guinness are among the major companies rumoured to be interested as the FFA smoothly looks to fill out it's "sponsor portfolio". Qantas, Hyundai, Powerade, Telstra, Nike, National Australia Bank and Westfield, already contribute about $20million pa to the sport.

Why? Because in the past month 47,609 arrived at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane to see a friendly with Paraguay; 32,000 turned out to support the Australian second string team which beat Kuwait 2-0 at Aussie Stadium in Sydney to qualify for the Asian Cup; 39,730 watched Melbourne Victory beat Sydney FC at the Telstra Dome in Melbourne.

Soccer brings the numbers. It brings the numbers in the key 18-30 age demographic. It brings them because soccer brings that element which keeps the AFL just about half interested in coming to Ireland in October every now and then. International competition. The Australians evidently suffer from the same cultural cringe as we do and reckon sporting culture is only worthwhile if it is somehow validated externally.

Back in 1999 a survey found the AFL had the most attended product in Australian Sport. Two and a half million went to the game four times, the number who saw a live soccer game that year.

This year, Sweeney Sports Research's annual survey showed that 50 per cent of the Australian adult population is now interested in soccer, the sport's highest level of interest since the Sweeney Sports Report was first published 20 years ago. The report, recognised as Australia's most authoritative sports and sponsorship survey, calculates "interest" by combining participation, attendance, television viewing, radio listening and print media readership.

Soccer's rating is just four percentage points behind Australian Rules' rating, the narrowest gap ever. Ominously for the AFL, the research was conducted between October and March of last year before the World Cup sent the entire continent into a swoon. What's interesting is the AFL is doing well and its figures are near record levels. Its just that soccer is as relentless as bushfire.

And so is Sepp. He'll have noticed everything. The enthusiasm, the infrastructure, the record of hosting major world events, the backdrop, the existing stadia, the fact that his limo wasn't jacked when he was there.

Whether Sepp pounces, though, isn't the most pressing issue for those of us watching in horrified fascination. The AFL is some years down the road from us in terms of its development. With or without an Australian World Cup, the Aussie Rules game is going to be hit very hard in the next decade or so.

We can watch and learn and if the only good thing to come out of our Makey Uppy Rules Series is the chance to liaise and share experiences as indigenous sports faced with worldwide homogeneity, then it will have been enough.