Thanks
to the Socceroos, Australia is in the grip of a full blown sporting fever. It’s
a condition more often associated with AFL grand final
week or the lead-in to the NRL final. Perhaps if we had a player in the
Wimbledon final, you might find average citizens feverish with sporting
patriotism, though it’s doubtful you’d get tens of thousands standing outside
on a winter’s night to watch them.

It’s
happened before, of course. Makybe Diva stirred something in our sporting
psyche last year when she grabbed her third Melbourne Cup. We all tuned in for
the Sydney Olympics and watched as Cathy Freeman won gold. Last year the Ashes
captivated the nation, as did Australia II in 1983 when Bondy & Co knocked
off the Yanks to win the America’s Cup. Occasional outbreaks of national
sporting pride are a part of the Australian character, but that’s not news to
anyone.

Tomorrow
morning, Sydneysiders will gather in their thousands at Belmore Park and at Customs House Square to watch the game, while Melbourne’s
Federation Square has added an extra screen to cater for the crowd.

Today,
the Adelaide Advertiser, the West Australian, and Brisbane’s Courier-Mail have all run with pics of
the Socceroos on their front pages. TheAge has an eight-page wrap-around
World Cup special, with an ad in the top right hand corner of the front page
reminding readers that the daily sports section, reporting all the non-soccer
related news, is still being published should anyone be interested in reading
it.

Last
weekend, Geoff Ogilvy
won the US Open on one of the toughest courses in the world, and he’s
struggling for attention. Joe Janiak, a Sydney taxi driver,
yesterday won the King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot in front of the Queen with
Takeover Target, a horse he bought for $1,250. It’s a rags to riches racing
story, but one that will have all but disappeared by this time tomorrow.

So
a public health warning: symptoms of soccer fever include the green and gold
discolouration of skin on the face, repetitive atonal chanting, and leaping up
and down with one’s hands in the air. Epidemiologists suggest we may not have
seen the worst of it yet, but can expect it to start abating by late next week,
or the week after that.