EYE ON LABRADOR

Eye on Labrador -

The biggest party in the world has started, but unfortunately Canada didn't get an invitation. And there's no sign the Maple Leafs will get a ticket anytime soon.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa is underway.

Not a soccer fan? Then think of it like this: the world cup is the single biggest event in the world, watched by more people than anything else on the planet. It makes the Olympics look a Sunday afternoon pick-up game. Over the next month, a good chunk of Earth's population will settle into their couches, crowd around TVs and enjoy a party of epic proportions. An estimated 1.5 billion will watch Germany's opening round match against Costa Rica. Who doesn't want to be a part of that?

As an Australian who will be cheering on his underdog nation, and as a sports fan who grew up wondering why his country wasn't good enough to make it to the main event, I'm super excited. This will be Australia's first back-to-back world cup appearance. Until 2006, Australia, like Canada, had qualified just once. The Aussies did it in 1974 and the Canadian squad made it in 1986. Neither country did anything particularly noteworthy.

So what, I've been wondering in the last few weeks, will it take for my adopted homeland to make the leap from soccer minnow to perpetual world cup participant?

Canadian soccer seems to be where the Aussies were a decade ago: wandering in the wilderness, struggling to get some of their foreign-based players interested enough to represent their country and futilely trying to organize practice matches against world-class opposition.

In the early 'nought' years, the frustrated brains trust of Australian soccer sat down to tackle those same problems head on. Eventually they decided that if the domestic game was ever going to flourish, the national team had to start qualifying for the cup. The excitement generated on the world stage, they figured, was the only way Aussie sports fans would regard soccer as anything more than a fringe sport.

So they abandoned the tradition of trying to get their European-based players to fly home for meaningless friendly matches against sub-par opposition. After all, those players were earning millions of dollars with their clubs. Why would they risk injuries, and, by enextension their contracts, to fly across the globe for a game that meant nothing and that wouldn't really give them any indication of how good or bad they were?

The strategy was set: Australia would establish a national team base in London, and Australia's games would almost exclusively be played there. The European-based Australians wouldn't have to travel for a day to represent their country and Europe's elite nations would be far more interested in practice games that were close to home.

The second phase of the plan was recruit a soccer-mad billionaire to sit as chairman of the national soccer federation. Once on board, his bright idea was to hire a superstar coach for the national squad. The plan was to get someone with the credentials and clout to end the trend of powerful European clubs blocking Australian players from representing their country. That coach, globally respected Guus Hiddink (who will lead Ivory Coast into this world cup) was recruited and quickly told the troublemaking clubs that any refusal to release the players he wanted would lead to an uncomfortable appearance before a FIFA tribunal.

It worked. The players who had previously not wanted to play for their country suddenly stopped causing trouble because the coach was someone they truly respected and who might be able to lead them to soccer's holy grail; the clubs who had been blocking the way stepped aside because they knew Hiddink was a force to be reckoned with. The team started to gel, and with more games against top-shelf competition, they improved.

At the same time, the soccer league in Australia was being dismantled, with the traditional ethnic roots to the game being cast aside in the hope of making the game more accessible to the entire nation.

Then, perfectly, came the 2006 world cup. After qualifying via a penalty shootout, the Socceroos did themselves and their nation proud, advancing through the first round of cup play before losing to eventual champions Italy via a controversial penalty call. The Aussies' never-say-die attitude and graciousness in defeat galvanized the nation.

Four years later, the transformation of soccer Down Under is complete. The domestic league, free of its tag as being accessible only to 'purist' fans with ancestral ties to Europe, is flourishing. Crowds are up, corporate sponsors are paying the bills and the new 'A' league is expanding.

On the national team front, Australia has moved into the Asian qualifying group, the billionaire has a seat on FIFA's board and the brains trust is bidding to host either the 2018 or 2022 cup. An estimated 43,000 Socceroo fans will be in South Africa to watch the cup and the eyes of the nation will be glued to their screens.

With a similar strategy, better funding and a bloody-minded determination to just "get 'er done", Canada could achieve the same results. The payoff to the game domestically would be immense and the party that is the world cup would be that much more enjoyable.

Andrew Waugh, former editor of the Labradorian, writes from Dartmouth, NS