east end of glasgow?

you mean like stay in westmuir street for months?

where everyone goes to the pub together (both rangers and celtic fans share pubs during the week) and no one wears colours unless its game time?

only you have mentioned religion, and you must think it is requsite to be either catholic to support Celtic or protestant to support Rangers, which is not the reality.


fyi religious problems are very common in west of Scotland, not just with old firm fans.

btw the only completely disgusting thing about perth is the heavy taxes on alcohol... Friends of mine did the trip to adelaide for rnd 1 last year and beer was apperently super cheap compared to what you get here... A pint of becks/heinikein etc.... is normally around $9 at best here, and locals at best around 7.50 damn nanny state government...

Just wait until it's game time though....if you seriously think religion has nothing to do with it you're the deluded one.

Average Glaswegian Celtic fan = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksRMKsdF2do

buddy i been to over 100 Celtic games and i refuse along with many others inside the ground to take part in singing sectarian songs or singing silly scouse songs too.

can you say the same?



clyro is a good guy, just he winding me up no end because he hates Celtic (boo hoo me), and no i dont really think he is a bigot, just a passionate Well fan (lol).

odds to win the title this year...

Sydney fc 3.30
Melbourne victory 4.00
Gold coast united 7.50
Perth glory 8.25
Melbourne heart 10.00
Wellington phoenix 11.00
Adelaide united 12.00
Central coast mariners 12.00
Brisbane roar 13.50
Newcastle jets 13.50
North queensland 23

Based on those odds at the tab i think sydney and melbourne are way to short, and heart and adelaide are pretty good value imo

Yeah WA is locked in a fight to the death with QLD over who can be the most backward and ******ed state. So far you guys are winning.

A pint at the game over here is about $5-6 iirc. Prices are probably cheaper across the board here though seeing as we don't dig money out of the ground.

Yeah had the same feeling (except I don't really know anything about Heart). Odds are better on Betfair I think.

btw are Heart actually going to have an audience? I was wondering if the soccer fanbase in Melb was already tapped out by the scum.

Chris you anywhere near Salisbury?

If you mean Salisbury the suburb of Adelaide, then no. That's in the far-North, I'm in the near-South suburbs.

Salisbury (and the far-North suburbs in general) is kind of a byword for bogans here. A female friend of mine was once punched in the face on a night out by a fat minger who followed up by yelling "YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD **** WITH SALISBURY CHICKS!"

Forgot to say I hate Rangers equal. We've agreed to chill it but this started cos I got called a hun without a bus fare so nae mare of that ken

Haha sounds like a good spot.

When I went to Oz 6 or so years ago for a year I stayed with my uncle who lives around here.

I always thought that would be an issue with the non-ethnic, plastic clubs, that there was so little room for expansion in major cities such as melbourne and sydney

Had the heart been called anti kevin muscat fc i may have changed teams lol

I know growing up in Ireland anyone ROI = Celtic, any kid from england who played soccer with us or went to school with us got called orange, ranger scum ect. That was on every school i went to (3)

@ceire

well i live i N Ireland and probably yes when i was growing up it mostly the same as you describe, does not mean we cannot change as we get older and wiser.


times are different now, when i was a kid only thing i knew was catholic v protestant, but now i have my own children there is never a mention of religion in my house (other than when i told my son the priest is full of **** and he does not have to pay attention to him in school mass if he does not want to).


only knew two lads from England as kids, they got called Peter englishman and Johnny englishman (both come from Irish familys and hate their nicknames which have stuck to this day over 20 years later)

Yeah I like to put a safe distance between myself and that area.

what's so bad about kevin muscat?

....ohhh right, it's that he's a violent c**t

Edit: Also I think there's room for expansion if you carve out a regional identity. Like in Adelaide, Port Adelaide has an identity very distinct from Adelaide proper (hence the two AFL teams). In Sydney there's West Sydney, etc. But in Melbourne they're just calling both clubs "Melbourne", which I don't get.

A large % of my friends havent changes, my parents never mentioned religion either but it still went on, your are very naive if you think it still not a big issue. Why do you think 95% of the kids in ROI support Celtic?

well you live in ROI where the situation is much different im sure, up here people have had enough of bigotry and sectarianism (at least most people i know anyway).

because your friends have not changed doesn't mean we all haven't.

no way %95 people in ROI support Celtic, that is just laughable and you know it.

Celtic, Man UTD and Lolpool all have a huge fanbases in Ireland, and noway any one team claims almost complete (%95) support, or anything close to it.


i will agree with you that for some % (how much % i dont know) of old firm fans religion is a factor, but it is not the be all and end all for quite a lot of fans.

as Raz has said he is an Atheist, so thats one, and i don't believe in any gods, so that is at least 2 people that religion plays no part in our support of a football team.

But after making Melbourne Victory "Victoria's club" it dosent leave much room for much of a market. Even if you did as was mooted for a while and have a semi-South Melbourne team involved, you havent got that much of a target market, and all of the fans of teams =/= South Melbourne are going to hate them anyway, such as the Knights.

About the Adelaide and the Port Adelaide teams, there is a reason that Port right now are struggling as badly as they are off-field, in terms of $$$$ being generated, memberships, and crowd attendences... Like WA, most footy fans had a WAFL team and the Eagles, or a WAFL team and Vic based team they had followed since the 70's. When Freo came in, all the East and South Freo fans jumped on as it was a "mixed" team so to speak, as well as lots of fans who wanted to support the underdog or were just beginning to appreciate the AFL over the local league. However, in Ports case, 90% of people hated the Magpies in the SANFL, the other 10% supported them... As such, it was pretty much surviving on just those original Magpie Port fans, which IMO was going to struggle for a supporterbase in a national comp...

Anyway, Iv just got home, and am about to writeup a mini season preview, so I might as well make that my 1000th post...

Edit, just rereading your post, Im not sure exactly how you would divide Melbourne geographically if one team is already called "Melbourne"

As such, my bit on Port and Adelaide is probably well off the mark, though as the Collingwood and Carlton NSL teams proved in the 90's, good footy team names wont make good "soccer" teams

While I take your point, 90% is definitely an overestimate, the Magpies were far and away the most popular team in the SANFL. Something like 75% is probably closer to the mark and admittedly that still isn't great.

Yeah I don't know how you would divide Melbourne. While Port Adelaide and West Sydney seem like natural breakaways, Melbourne doesn't have those regional divisions. There's Collingwood and everyone else who hates Collingwood, but Collingwood supporters don't want a soccer team because they already have an AFL team. The problem is that whatever region you select, it's already going to have AFL baggage attached to it, so everyone else will be like "**** that" and the supporters of that region will be like "meh, soccer".

so 2 clubs have Melbourne in the name, they are in good company then.

Milan, Manchester, Glasgow and Madrid.

Yes, but none of those secondary clubs was created when the main club was only getting like 20,000 crowds with no competition.

you can bet that most those "secondary" clubs were created when none them were getting +20k fans.