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The 2006 World Cup in Germany marks the moment when Australian international football will rejoin the great family of football nations on the international stage, after more than three decades on the outer. Sport and media commentators are already bracing themselves for Australia's first match against current world champions Brazil and the impact of direct media coverage of matches from Germany on SBS ratings. At the same time, many primary and secondary school teachers, aware of the popularity of this football code in our schools, are preparing different strategies for incorporating this sporting event into their daily curriculum.
THE first advice for an educator eager to incorporate this sport in their teaching of English, Media, Politics, History, SOSE or Physical Education classes is to act inclusively and invite whole class participation, bypassing the hotly contested semantic debates. The dispute over the appropriate terminology - soccer or football - is one of the most sensitive in Australian sports media, because of the specific character of Australian Rules and its broad local support base. However, some may also find it profoundly irrelevant, as the coexistence of various football codes has been one of the most exciting features of the Australian sporting scene. It is more important to understand the game's media appeal, its narratives, intertextuality and ambiguous, con- flicting discourses.
Television Programming and the World Game
Media teachers could use football's popularity as a case study for discussing the range of sports programming strategies employed by Australian television channels. SBS's (some call it Soccer Broadcasting Service) long-term association with the round ball code is, some would argue, natural, given the specific connection of this television station with a large migrant audience base. Yet SBS coverage of the national team's matches could also be seen in the context of the station's diversified approach towards its viewers, and its attempts to appeal to a broad horizon of audience expectations, from animated series to debating the Cronulla incidents on Jenny Brockie's Insight, from wuxia pian classics to an unexpected probe into an all-toowell- known territory, the coverage of the Ashes. Despite its largely marginal status, soccer has the potential to become one of the most marketable business domains in the Australian sports media.
Channels Seven and Nine have...