Latest Posts
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FootballA is for Ange: What it really means to be champions of ASIA
A is for Ange Postecoglou and his uncompromising idealism “Australia’s first ever Asian Cup triumph,” is the type of recent phrase routinely not attributed to the Matildas’ 2010 victory. Yet five years later, Australia’s men repeat their female counterparts’ feat — Australia’s second ever Asian Cup triumph — and we finally have some major silverware to cheer about. It comes after decades ...
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Football 1How Israel became the lost tribe of Asian football
There’s some scratchy black and white archival footage on YouTube of Israel playing Iran in the 1968 Asian Cup Final. The match was played in Tehran and Iran beat defending champions Israel 2-1 to win the Asian Cup. The footage lasts for all of 42 seconds and shows Iran scoring twice and their lap of honour. Israel had won the 1964 tournament, which it also hosted, by beating South Korea ...
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Football 2How Melbourne’s newspapers ignored the Asian Cup and let down the Muslim community
A few days ago, on Australia Day, I read this letter in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper. I, too, was lucky enough to have experienced “all the fun and excitement on and off the pitch” by attending the seven Asian Cup matches played at Melbourne’s superb rectangular stadium (AAMI Park). In those two weeks I never felt prouder to be a Melburnian. It ...
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Pop CultureRyan & Scarlett: Deconstructing the Loner Fantasy Worlds of Drive and Under the Skin
Few films raised as many eyebrows in 2014 as Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. Totally uncommercial and unwilling to hold the audience’s hand, the bizarre sci-fi flick was declared a masterpiece by some and a load of boring, pretentious bullshit by others. Under the Skin presents the type of cinematic experience some cinemagoers have not encountered since Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011), ...
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FootballEXCLUSIVE: Tony Abbott’s Asian Cup Welcome
On the eve of hosting the biggest football tournament in Australia’s history, Shoot Farken has exclusively obtained Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s welcome to the 2015 Asian Cup. ...
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Pop Culture 5John, Paul, George, Ringo and … Kanye
A survey conducted in 2009 by the Institution of Engineering and Technology found that up to a quarter of the people asked had no idea who first walked on the moon. In fact, 11 of the 1009 surveyed said it was Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear! Alarmingly, only eight people were able to name Louis Armstrong as the man who took that ...
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Pop Culture 2Never mind the Bublé: 12 Songs for the 12 Days of Christmas
Christmas and popular music, oil and water. Almost every popular music artist, in every genre, under the sun (or in this case the Star of Bethlehem) has a go at it and it usually results in trite, hackneyed fare destined for the bargain bins of your slowly disappearing local record store. Remember them. However, every now and again an artist would nail ...
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FootballAn Open Christmas Letter To Mark Bosnich
Dear Mr. Bosnich, May I call you Bozza? I am writing, Bozza, to wish you a very merry Christmas and of course the happiest of happy New Year’s. I have been overseas for the past year, so have not been able to see your beaming face nor feel the goofiness overload of your contagious laugh on Fox Sports. Not to mention your ...
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Pop CultureMy Night with “Maldita” and the Bad Girls of Cholita Wrestling
PROLOGUE Geeky men of the world unite and follow me on a journey past, to a happier time of yore, where manly men were manly men, wrestling matches were wrestling matches and soap opera antics were left to Joan Collins and Linda Evans and kept OUT of the wrestling ring… sometimes. So let’s reset the chronambulator dial clock to March 29, 1987. ...
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FootballA Death in the Football Family: John Drynan’s Slice of Heaven
Watch out for the alpaca poo when you play football in the Drynan family’s idyllic backyard – especially if you play in bare feet. Four alpacas look on from behind a fence, like bemused Peruvian hipsters, as kids whirl around the slightly lopsided pitch, junior-sized metal pipe goalposts set up at either end. Kick the ball too far up one end of ...
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FootballSocceroos Haiku: Ange Postecoglou Lost in Translation
In a plush hotel room in Osaka, in a steam filled bathroom, a hand reached out and turned off the super jet powered shower. For 30 minutes Ange Postecoglou stood, mostly motionless, under the hot hydro torrent, cleansing himself of yet another Socceroos defeat; this time to the Samurai Blue. The loss was not unexpected. But it did rankle with him. The ...
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Pop CultureHow a Teenage Sharpie Girl found Rock ‘n’ Roll Salvation in the Church of the Coloured Balls
There were plenty of pop stars around in the early 1970s to keep a teenage girl entertained: dreamy Partridge Family beau David Cassidy, the clean-cut Mormon charms of Donny Osmond and even spunky Daryl Braithwaite of Australia’s very own Sherbet, to name just a few. But Denise McFarlane wasn’t interested in pop stars. At least not after she experienced her first live ...
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Football 1Fan division after derby demolition: The early evolution of Melbourne City FC
Last weekend’s Melbourne Derby, the first between Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City, had AFL media types creaming their pants over the atmosphere, Victory fans gushing like Yosemite geysers over their team’s performance and left a number of City fans in the throes of a deepening existential crisis. As I detailed in my earlier piece – “Does an insect have a heart? The ...
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Pop CultureFonzie’s 69th Birthday Bash: 11 Super Sleazy Songs for Arnold’s Jukebox
Remember the Tuscadero sandwich? The great shark jump on water skis? When a cool, leather-clad greaser singlehandedly ended segregation? All great times. The good news is that now you can help to relive those great times once more! You are invited to one of the premier bashes of 2014 as we all help Henry Winkler celebrate a major milestone. The Fonz is ...
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FootballDown, down, FIFA rankings are down: The New Socceroos Status Quo
The new FIFA rankings are out and, as usual, it’s only a slightly more reliable measure of quality than the top 40 music charts. When I started writing this piece Australia was ranked 84th. Two days or so later and the Socceroos have now dropped to 94th. The recent run of poor results by the Socceroos had already led to the almost ...
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Football 8Does an insect have a heart? The early evolution of Melbourne City FC
I am still trying to process what I experienced at Melbourne City’s first home game at AAMI Park last Sunday afternoon. Days later, as I’m typing this, the only word I can up with to describe what I saw is pupa. I wasn’t watching Melbourne Heart FC and I wasn’t watching Melbourne City FC. I was watching Melbourne Pupa FC. A pupa ...
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FootballThe Heavy Sleeper’s 2014 World Cup Diary: Complete and Unabridged
One year ago today, the Shoot Farken website was launched. To celebrate the occasion we are proud to republish The Heavy Sleeper’s 2014 World Cup Diary. During the course of the 2014 World Cup Shoot Farken published a diary by The Heavy Sleeper. Unlike most World Cup diaries, this was not written by a someone experiencing the event in the host country. ...
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FootballAnge Postecoglou and the Magic Lamp: How the Socceroos won the Asian Cup
On his final night in Doha, Ange Postecoglou suddenly remembered he had some shopping to do. His mind was still consumed by negative thoughts stemming from two uninspiring performances by the Socceroos against the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In three months time he was expected to mastermind the Socceroos to Asian Cup glory on home soil. Dark clouds formed in his ...
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Pop CultureAre We Not Entrepreneurs? We Are Devo: Welcome to DEVO-land
Times Square, NYC, became some sort of cerebrally discordant Mecca for ageing post-punk nerd types this past week as Devo performed live as part of the annual CBGB’s Music & Film Festival. It has been a tough 18 months or so for the band, losing ex-drummer Alan Myers in mid-2013 to stomach cancer and guitarist Bob Casale to heart failure in February this year. ...
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Football 1Football Songs: The Shoot Farken Top 20
Here at Shoot Farken, we travel to the beat of a different football drum. We are marking the start of the A-League season with a countdown of football songs. The criteria to make the Shoot Farken Top Twenty was simple – no World Cup songs (which was pretty easy in the end as most of them are terrible). 20. “Bin I Radi, ...
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Football 3Gombau of Thrones: King of Coaches, Saviour of Pissants?
Josep Gombau’s first season in charge of Adelaide has been a tale of controversy throughout. Despite being voted in as A-League All-Stars coach (and thus, arguably, the most popular manager in the A-League), questions continue to be asked by rival fans and the media as to whether he’s a genius or a farce. As I wrote previously, given Adelaide’s history of turmoil ...
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FootballA little anchor to childhood memories: A tribute to James Alexander Gordon
Certain memories act as anchors to your childhood. Little boats bobbing up and down in a harbour, the sea rising and falling with the tides, the anchors keeping those little boats from drifting out to the big, blue sea. BBC broadcaster James Alexander Gordon provides a little anchor to one of those ritual memories from childhood: spending Sundays at the football with ...
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Pop CultureGetting NSYNC with Justin Timberlake (even after the teen hormones have gone)
Memphis, Tennessee. It doesn’t get more legit than that, right? It’s a music mecca, a cradle and nest, a breeding ground for stars past and present. There’s the King, for one. No one can surpass hip-swivelling, soul-voiced Elvis. The legendary Aretha Franklin is another obvious (and fine) example. Johnny Cash moved to Memphis in his twenties and hit the big time. Is ...
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FootballMeet David Squires: Football Cartoon Genius (Accidental Sydney FC Fan)
England’s best performance of the 2014 World Cup wasn’t produced on the pitches in Brazil, where The Three Lions were below average to put it politely. And it certainly wasn’t produced by a player. The caveat of England’s best performer belonged to David Squires, premier grade football cartoonist. His outstanding illustrated chronicle of the tournament published on his website The Sunshine Room ...
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Australian RulesThe AFL Coach’s Guide to Better Parenting
As a first time father, I’ve noticed the older generation’s fondness for imparting old-fashioned advice on how to care for a newborn. When told such moves are out of date, they usually reply: “You turned out alright, didn’t you?” Since becoming a dad, the more paternal aspects of a football coach’s job have become a little more apparent to me. Football coaches ...
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Pop CultureThe Return of the Good Doctor (Shhh! I’m trying to watch TV here)
A friend sent me a link to a book about Doctor Who called Adventures with the Wife in Space. Basically the premise (without having read it) is that Doctor Who fan Neil Perryman got his missus to watch all of the episodes in the hope she may get into it (maybe?). Whilst that’s kinda sweet, when I watch Doctor Who all I ...
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Pop CultureThe Hills are Alive with the Sound of Schlager and Situationists
Do you ever get the feeling that today’s big pop stars could still be pop stars even if they didn’t bother making music anymore? Do pop stars still make music? If so, it seems very much secondary to whatever highly publicised drama/event they’re engaged in this week. The Situationists called these sorts of events “spectacles”. “What’s a Situationist go to do with it?” as Tina Turner once asked. Situationist theory is a Marxian critical ...
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Australian Rules 2EXCLUSIVE: The crazy match day experience ideas of AFL clubs
Port Adelaide’s approximation of a passionate ‘soccer’ crowd in their pre-game build up (sing iconic song loudly, hold scarf proudly above head) has the AFL in a lather. Yes, this is how you do it. This is how you bring the crowds back and make them stop worrying about being priced out and scheduled out. Give the home fans a feeling that ...
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FootballNotes from the Ange Underground: The Socceroos v ‘Shoddy’ Arabia
Ange Postecoglou took some notes after this morning’s match against Saudi Arabia at Craven Cottage, London. Thanks to a mole in the Australian camp, Shoot Farken can exclusively reveal the thoughts of the Socceroos manager. Ca plane pour moi, Ca plane pour moi, Ca plane pour moi, moi, moi, moi, moi, Ca plane pour moi. No matter how hard I try, I ...
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Pop CultureFantasy Dad League: Father’s Day Round
For some of us Father’s Day can be a bit awkward. Don’t get me wrong, I know some great dads; just not mine. Then there are people who have lost good dads for whom the day isn’t exactly fun either. And there’s seemingly no escape from it; it’s on the telly, on signage, brought up in social media, etc. So I’ve been ...
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