afl can't stand that the World Cup is taking a few headlines. Shows that they are suffering some pain.
Yep....been going on for years!!
Jason Akermanis the former Brisbane Lions AFL player used to have a weekly column in the Courier Mail 'newspaper'....
And I use the term newspaper in its loosest form here. On the eve of the World Cup finals in 2006 he wrote about his thoughts on the Socceroos!
It eerily went along the lines of...."I wouldn't normally write about soccer but because of the World Cup i'm going to have a shot..."
He then went on to say that soccer would never be big in Australia and that no matter how many World Cups 'Footy' would always rule the roost...
He then totally derided the Socceroos as a non event. And ran down some of the players as nobodies....
Players like Mark Schwarzer, Mark Viduka, Tim Cahill, Marco Bresciano, Lucas Neiill and Vince Grella who were all hugely recognised on the global stage playing in two of the world's biggest sporting competitions.
It was an absolute hatchet job and this rag of a 'newspaper' actually printed it!!
I sent an email to Akermanis because they actually gave out his working email address in the Courier Mail's website. My email was scathing about his hatchet job column.
The snearing reply from Akermanis was I get paid for writing this column...what do you get??
I replied I don't get paid anything what's your point?
He then replied again with further snearing about his re-numeration.
I replied again telling him I was a millionaire who didn’t need $300 from a dip shit 'newspaper' ..
I wasn't actually a millionaire back then but I was probably close..
I never got a third reply!!