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'If I started to cry, I wouldn't stop': What I talk about when I talked about football and Australia
If I started to cry, I wouldn't stop' - a quote taken from former Australian football captain, Lucas Neill, is a snapshot in time - of the glorious, problematic, and cursed path of football in Australia (yes all those things), starting with Mark Bosnich in Sydney in 1996 and ending with Harry Kewell in Istanbul in 2009 - and many things in between. Journalist and author Matthew Hall saw the lot.
At a time when football in Australia wasn't quite so 'cool' or popular, Matthew managed to actually get paid to report on the game, beyond the hamstrings and groins, and looking - as he says - back stage.
For anyone who remembers these times, it's a terrific trip down memory lane. For those who don't, or who were not even alive at the time, read and learn!
Matthew Hall is the author of two previous books, The Away Game and Robbie Slater: The Hard Way. He produced and wrote the award-winning film adaptation of The Away Game.
He covered four FIFA World Cups while writing about football for The Guardian, the Observer, the New York Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Sun-Herald, The Australian, the Daily Telegraph, the South China Morning Post, Rolling Stone, When Saturday Comes, FourFourTwo, Inside Sport, Playboy, ESPN, The World Game, and the Saturday Paper, among others.
He has campaigned against human rights violations in sport and human trafficking through sports.
Born in Perth, Western Australia, he lives in New York City where he coaches girls' soccer teams including his daughter's Under-10 team.
227 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 22, 2019
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Matthew Hall
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There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
For the author of the Jenny Cooper series please check Matthew Hall's or M.R. Hall's profile
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 10, 2019
One of the best trends in recent years in Australian sports publishing is the emergence of an exciting wave of new Australian soccer books, presenting a vibrant and rich range of stories, histories and commentaries on football in this country. Due in no small part to Fairplay Publishing, the forgotten, the untold and the at times contentious narratives that have influenced the sport and its cultural reception are now occupying a space in our sporting literature that is never has done so before. Among the vanguard titles and authors of this most welcome push is 'If I Started to Cry, I Wouldn't Stop' by Matthew Hall.
Hall's book is a highly personal and subjective journey through approximately 20 years of soccer's progress (and regression) down under, presented through a series of vignettes appropriated or adapted from his past work as a football journalist. This has several important implications for the book and for the reader. The first is that Hall writes with an economy of prose that is most likely honed through years of writing copy for editors who were not always looking to be indulgent to long, drawn out football stories that would take paragraphs or clicks away from league, union, AFL or cricket articles. 'If I Started...' does have chapters that range across more than a couple of pages, however the brevity and accuracy of Hall's language is the key stylistic aspect of this book, and it is a welcome one.
That Hall writes (mostly) of the issues, people, clubs and politics of that era where Australia's 'Golden Generation' flourished, concurrent with the decline of 'old soccer' and the rise of 'new football' is important because it was during this era that the code reached some of its most public heights and lows, reaching farther into the Australian sporting consciousness than it probably ever has done so before. The loss against Iran in 1997, the gradual rotting away of the NSL/Soccer Australia culture, the return to the World Cup in 2006 via Uruguay and Germany, the launch of the A-League and the faltering farce of the 2018/2022 World Cup bid are all part of the larger narrative framework that Hall writes in. Through reading 'If I Started...' the big picture of Australian soccer is always there, and Hall does as good a job as more academic historical books do when discussing what happened after 1996 in Aussie football.
However where Hall really shines is that he uses the wider backdrop of historical themes and events to find particular stories, narrowly focused essays that epitomise and underline what soccer in this country (and at times overseas) means. When the author writes of the experiences of players officials, fans, he gives the reader an immediate connection to the emotional imperatives that drive the reception of football among those who love it.
An early chapter that illustrates this impressive aspect of 'If I Started...' is that written by Hall on the NSL/NPL club Sydney Croatia (a.k.a. Sydney United). Some of the political aspects of the club's support may be problematic, and Hall cites these without actually getting mired in trying to repudiate to justify them. Instead, and this is to be commended, he documents the views of those with an investment in the club and its culture and recreates its place in Australian soccer's historical and social narrative. It must also be said that the relevant chapter ('Croatia is a Country') has some prescient and informative information as to what may be transpiring with supporting Australian domestic clubs today. As a Western Sydney Wanderers fan I found some of the things that Hall wrote about in 1998 echoing in my experiences at my club in 2019.
There are plenty of other chapters I could refer the reader to, such as his writing about being in Montevideo back in 2005 during the crucially important Socceroos World Cup qualifiers against Uruguay, or his duel with one of international football's more shady characters, Peter Hargity, during the Australian 2018/2022 World Cup bid. However if I was to pick another illustration of what Hall does best, it's his portrait of Ljubo Milicevic in ''I just want to be the person I really was...'. It's very easy to write up a few paras on the brilliance of a player like David Beckham and get the reader to follow the story of success and accomplishment. It's far harder for a writer to find someone who has not done all that was expected, has faltered in the push to soccer stardom, and is instead trying to find a place and a reason for being who they think they could or should be. Milicevic's account of depression and overseas disappointment is the kind of football story that reminds the reader of what goes on beyond the floodlights and trophies of the football pitch, and that for every Mark Viduka or Timmy Cahill there have been legions of Australian soccer players who've had to battle all sorts of demons.
In summary, Matthew Hall has written an excellent book for the devotee of Australian soccer, and it should be valued not just because of its quality content but also because it represents another key text in the reconfiguration of the Australian public's reception of the round ball game.
Hall's book is a highly personal and subjective journey through approximately 20 years of soccer's progress (and regression) down under, presented through a series of vignettes appropriated or adapted from his past work as a football journalist. This has several important implications for the book and for the reader. The first is that Hall writes with an economy of prose that is most likely honed through years of writing copy for editors who were not always looking to be indulgent to long, drawn out football stories that would take paragraphs or clicks away from league, union, AFL or cricket articles. 'If I Started...' does have chapters that range across more than a couple of pages, however the brevity and accuracy of Hall's language is the key stylistic aspect of this book, and it is a welcome one.
That Hall writes (mostly) of the issues, people, clubs and politics of that era where Australia's 'Golden Generation' flourished, concurrent with the decline of 'old soccer' and the rise of 'new football' is important because it was during this era that the code reached some of its most public heights and lows, reaching farther into the Australian sporting consciousness than it probably ever has done so before. The loss against Iran in 1997, the gradual rotting away of the NSL/Soccer Australia culture, the return to the World Cup in 2006 via Uruguay and Germany, the launch of the A-League and the faltering farce of the 2018/2022 World Cup bid are all part of the larger narrative framework that Hall writes in. Through reading 'If I Started...' the big picture of Australian soccer is always there, and Hall does as good a job as more academic historical books do when discussing what happened after 1996 in Aussie football.
However where Hall really shines is that he uses the wider backdrop of historical themes and events to find particular stories, narrowly focused essays that epitomise and underline what soccer in this country (and at times overseas) means. When the author writes of the experiences of players officials, fans, he gives the reader an immediate connection to the emotional imperatives that drive the reception of football among those who love it.
An early chapter that illustrates this impressive aspect of 'If I Started...' is that written by Hall on the NSL/NPL club Sydney Croatia (a.k.a. Sydney United). Some of the political aspects of the club's support may be problematic, and Hall cites these without actually getting mired in trying to repudiate to justify them. Instead, and this is to be commended, he documents the views of those with an investment in the club and its culture and recreates its place in Australian soccer's historical and social narrative. It must also be said that the relevant chapter ('Croatia is a Country') has some prescient and informative information as to what may be transpiring with supporting Australian domestic clubs today. As a Western Sydney Wanderers fan I found some of the things that Hall wrote about in 1998 echoing in my experiences at my club in 2019.
There are plenty of other chapters I could refer the reader to, such as his writing about being in Montevideo back in 2005 during the crucially important Socceroos World Cup qualifiers against Uruguay, or his duel with one of international football's more shady characters, Peter Hargity, during the Australian 2018/2022 World Cup bid. However if I was to pick another illustration of what Hall does best, it's his portrait of Ljubo Milicevic in ''I just want to be the person I really was...'. It's very easy to write up a few paras on the brilliance of a player like David Beckham and get the reader to follow the story of success and accomplishment. It's far harder for a writer to find someone who has not done all that was expected, has faltered in the push to soccer stardom, and is instead trying to find a place and a reason for being who they think they could or should be. Milicevic's account of depression and overseas disappointment is the kind of football story that reminds the reader of what goes on beyond the floodlights and trophies of the football pitch, and that for every Mark Viduka or Timmy Cahill there have been legions of Australian soccer players who've had to battle all sorts of demons.
In summary, Matthew Hall has written an excellent book for the devotee of Australian soccer, and it should be valued not just because of its quality content but also because it represents another key text in the reconfiguration of the Australian public's reception of the round ball game.
Displaying 1 of 1 review