“Ah, mate.”
Feel free to read these few words in Ange Postecoglou’s voice. Even if you don’t have any great affinity with soccer, you’ll know it. One of his achievements over these past three years with Celtic, and most recently Tottenham Hotspur, has been to regularise his Australian outlook and accent on the world football stage.
Ange Postecoglou at the helm of Tottenham Hotspur.Credit: Getty Images
His Premier League press conferences have become compulsory viewing, win, lose or draw – just like Ross Lyon’s at St Kilda. Oops, here’s the trap. Now that Postecoglou is making a fleeting return trip to Melbourne with his all-but-conquering Tottenham, he and we stand to run foul of the “No Sherrin” rule.
The No Sherrin rule is not an official statute, but it is written on the hearts of Australian soccer people. It concerns the way that when international teams visit these shores, the AFL manages to insinuate some artefact of their game – most commonly a Sherrin – into the imagery and dialogue.
Not without reason, it irks soccer stalwarts (so does calling it soccer, but it’s used here to distinguish one code of football from another).
Football Australia does not have the power to outlaw this practice, but when sanctioning promotional tours such as the one Spurs and Newcastle are making this week, they strongly urge non-fraternisation. Memories of AFL non-cooperation when FA was pitching to host men’s and women’s World Cups burn still.
Ange Postecoglou celebrates the Socceroos’ victory in the 2015 Asian Cup.Credit: Brendan Esposito
But for born-and-bred Melburnian Postecoglou, this is a bind, surely?
“Mate, if you knew me …” The thing is, we do. Postecoglou is an apostle of Australian soccer, but he is also a lifetime Carlton supporter who in 2015 sat on a panel alongside Chris Judd, Ken Sheldon and others that selected Brendon Bolton as the Blues coach to succeed Mick Malthouse. It is not known whether Bolton has forgiven him.
Postecoglou admitted last week that he had not fully understood the mentality of Spurs supporters who cheered for Manchester City to defeat their own team because it made it almost impossible for London arch-rivals Arsenal to win the Premier League, and it led to a sharp exchange between him and a mouthy Spurs fan.
But he does understand the Melbourne mindset. He is now manager of Spurs and Peter Filopoulos is Football Australia’s marketing manager, but when one was manager and the other CEO of South Melbourne in the NSL all those years ago, they would often talk footy and sometimes go to the footy together, and Filopoulos later worked at Hawthorn and Richmond before taking up the FA job. There’s kind of a footy in the picture already.
Giants CEO David Matthews and coach Kevin Sheedy flank legendary Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson in a classic “No Sherrin” rule breach in 2012.
The fact is that below the parapets of the code wars, they get along well enough. Some visiting international stars express curiosity about the AFL, and the pro-Sherrin rule means that these instances are well ventilated.
And some AFL clubs study soccer. Hawthorn under Alastair Clarkson was one. If you can’t see strong elements of soccer strategy in AFL now, you’re not looking. What Hawthorn tried and failed to do in Adelaide on Sunday was, in soccer terms, park the bus.
Brendon Bolton at the end of his time at Carlton.Credit: Jason South
So amid all this Sherrin-ness, in peak Sherrin season, how’s a man to negotiate the No Sherrin rule? What to do?
“Listen, mate, I’m a winner …”
Postecoglou is a winner, that’s true, but his superpower is to make people feel good about themselves even when there is less winning than they would like.
The Socceroos under Postecoglou lost all three games at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, yet somehow came away full of optimism. In his first season in the EPL, with the blowtorch always nearby, he led Spurs three places up the table, which is hardly a quantum leap but left most fans sanguine about what comes next.
The key is in something he said a few months ago: “It is only a game and I take what I do seriously, but don’t take myself too seriously, so it keeps me sort of in check.”
So if any man could flout the No Sherrin rule without flouting its spirit, Ange Postecoglou could. What to almost anyone else would be a political football is to him there for kicks.
Spurs’ time in Melbourne is so fleeting that it is doubtful there will be time to tempt Postecoglou into a sit-down breach of the No Sherrin rule, but if perchance a couple of Carlton players and a spare guernsey appear pitchside at Spurs training on Tuesday night, and “Big Ange” is asked to join them for a moment, what should he do?
Again, imagine it in his voice: “Mate, what do you reckon?”
