Sorry, I'm a lazy sod.

It's been a while since I've posted anything here. There's a few reasons for this: busy at work, post-season football hangover, general laziness. We've also had friends over from Melbourne for the Fringe & WOMADelaide. WOMAD was awesome. If you ever get the chance to see the Bedouin Jerrycan Band or Paprika Balkanicus, I suggest you take it.

Anyway, here's a short recap of some things that have happened in Australian football since my last post:

- Newcastle Jets are rubbish. Lost 2-0 away to Beijing in the ACL, with Joel and Ryan Griffiths inflicting some of the damage. Seriously, who loans their best player to a club that they're about to play?

- Central Coast are rubbish. Drew 0-0 at home to Pohang Steelers, in one of the most godawful matches I've ever had the misfortune to attempt to stream over the internet.

- The A-League based Socceroos are rubbish. Lost 0-1 to Kuwait in Canberra. I didn't watch the game but it sounds like the players and Pim Verbeek should all give each other dead legs as punishment for their sheer crapness. I don't get how they can be so bad: on an individual basis these players are all good enough to be playing at a reasonable level in Europe (maybe League 1 or Championship in England, Dutch 2nd Division, etc), and they are doing well for their clubs in the A-League. Put them all on the pitch together, though, and they have forgotten how to pass, control the ball, and carry out the basic functions expected of a professional footballer.

Very strange. Mind you, even the European-based Socceroos big boys generally play like crud against Asian opposition. If you don't believe me, merely cast your mind back to the 2007 Asian Cup....

- It looks like Scott Chipperfield is staying in Europe for another season, after all. Booo.

- Matt McKay has joined the exodus of A-League players going to China. We need to get some of that traffic coming the other way as well: more Shengqing Qus, Yuning Zhangs, Leilei Gaos in the A-League. Well, maybe not Yuning Zhang.

-Michael Petrillo has resigned as AUFC Director of Football, replaced by Michael Valkanis. I don't know whether this is a cost-saving mechanism, or piss ant politics, or what: if the former, maybe it's a good thing that the club is pulling funding from its administrative/management arms before cutting spending on players. Who knows, though. Hopefully United can get back to stability soon enough.

- The FFA has officially submitted its bid for Australia to host the 2018 or 2022 World Cup.

- An extremely wealthy Dubai-based sheik is reportedly interested in providing financial backing for Tasmania's bid for an A-League club licence. The mystery man is apparently the Saudi Arabian/Ethiopian Sheik Mohammed Hussein Ali Al Amoudi, the 43rd-richest man in the world. This guy has a net worth of $13.7 billion, and apparently once wrote a blank cheque for the Ethiopian government to build a 30,000 seat football stadium. A sugar daddy of this magnitude - he makes Clive Palmer look like small fry - would, needless to say, be brilliant for our little league. Lets hope there's something substantial to the rumours.