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Virgin Blue Magazine, 2001
Comedian Tim Ferguson explains why football is better than sex, cricket, coffee and food...
Last year I declared to a ring of people at a barbecue that I was off to the footy. A sniffling drip with a goatee and Lennon glasses asked me, "Don't you have something better to do?"
Naturally, I was confused. Something better to do that watch a game of football? As I danced on the drips head, I tried my best to think of something better than going to a game. But it became apparent that there is nothing better than footy.
In the game of sex, when someone tells you they "play for the other team" it generally means the match has been cancelled. In football, the other team is essential. And even if someone on the other team is "on the other team", the games still go on as scheduled. (Besides, any psychologist will tell you it's why half the players are there in the first place.)
Compared to sex, football's just as noisy, just as sweaty and, most importantly, you can get it any time.
Footy is better than cricket. Some of our cricketers - not mentioning any names, but You Know Who! - are starting to look like Jenny Craig "Before" shots. Football players are in better shape. They have to jog around the oval and stuff like that. And they're restricted to one punch-drunk, liver-cleansing pub crawl per week. But cricket tours guzzle more grog than a Roman orgy with a beer sponsor.
Footy is better than politics. It certainly makes better viewing and involves a better class of people. Footy stars are skinnier than most pollies too. In football, the big men fly. In Canberra, the big men can barely squeeze into their business class seats without having a coronary.
Politics was invented to make incompetent people feel useful. Although, in fairness, footy was invented to make useful people feel incompetent. But you don't have to able to play it to like it.
For you inner-city types out there, sorry, but footy is better than coffee, too. Sitting around in Paddo boudoirs sipping decaf lite soy latte and criticising other people's clothing is no substitute for scoffing a Four'n'Twenty mystery bag while criticising other people's clothing. A macchiato is nice but a footy match gets your heart pumping without side effects and you don't need your head up your bum to enjoy it!
Finally, footy is better than food. Too often you leave your 'nouvelle cuisine' restaurant feeling like you could go another five courses. But after a lava-hot pie filled with globules of fat and organ giblets of indeterminate origin believe me, you don't want any more, thank you.
Footy is a substitute for the gaping silence that would otherwise comprise male conversation. It gives men something to talk about without ever encroaching on our personal feelings. It's inane, irrelevant and undermining. But if it's better than sex, cricket, coffee and food, how bad can it be?
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