Football Snowball

If, a month ago, someone had told me I’d be neck deep in soccer enthusiasm, cheering on teams and actually having blown a vuvuzela (badly), I’d have wondered if they’d been held underwater too long and suffered irredeemable brain damage!

[[Spooky nutters! We're not like them are we Ursh? Let's do our two man Mexican wave!!]]

But to be fair, the soccer bug was totally unexpected! Sure we were excited for South Africa, host nation and all, Hello, but we’d decided we’d try watch SA games and if we made them - good, and if not, ah well too bad, so sad.

[Japan is our other country; we support them because a country that gives us such fine anime and manga gets it without question!]
(We choose fav teams not based on silly things like how well they play…)

We watched the second South Africa game, SA vs. Uruguay, with Ursh’s parents. It was a late night game and SA lost 3-0 (as every patriotic S-African can tell you in teary voices…) and I think her folks didn’t relish having us come tootling in at odd hours to see bits and pieces of “must see” games. (It’s hard to sleep with two women squeaking excitedly at the foot of the bed, or so I’m told) So they lent us their other TV.
And all hope of a normal life was lost.



But come on, its such fun! We peek on the net to see who’s playing when and then chose a team to support. Often by small things, like we like their attitude, or their manga, or the fact that we don’t know them but hey, they have a spunky vibe. Or we hate them because they got into the tournament through cheating (France), have bad human rights (Ghana) or pick on the teams we do like (Netherlands).

It’s glorious to watch a well played game! Those jocks sure do know how to dance about with a ball! (When they play well that is, some countries play like lost sheep… *cough cough* ENGLAND *cough cough*)

We’ve cheered the underdog, scorned near blind referees, howled joyfully when “our” team scored, screamed at the TV because they can hear us dammit and chatted away half the night, rehashing everything!

And, unlike the average wishy-washy South African fan, we are still supporting SA right to what could well be, the bitter end! (We don’t just support winners, boring! For us, we chose teams and stick with them, come win or embarrassing thrashing! It builds character don’t ya know? ^_^) < - - *feels very self righteous and shiny*

But please note two things:-
1. We’re not rabid fans! (Contrary to popular belief) We don’t know the players names (except Diego Forlan because he’s scary…) and we’d turn down tickets to a world cup game in a heartbeat! (The vuvuzela noise on our delicate ears? And no helpful commentator to tell us what’s going on? Or friendly replay for us to swear at?)


2. When the world cup is over and the TV returned we’ll be back to normal, recuperating from the Soccer Shakes happily. We most certainly won’t be watching ‘Pirates vs Swallows’ or ‘Manchester vs United’ or whatever . The world cup is awesome, the rest, meh.

Yet, for now, it’s exciting, entertaining and captivating! I mean we’re not watching all games, like this one of Australia vs. Ghana… or…Well maybe, okay more then maybe… oh dear I have to go, game to watch and all that, GO OZ!!!!