A football match is about the last place you would expect to find anything religious, let alone the big man himself, but it was the improbable match between Sydney FC v North Queensland where not only did I found God, I was actually touched by him aswell (well he signed my shirt)!
I am of course talking about the Liverpool FC legend Robbie "God" Fowler. I have to admit that I am a Reds tragic and to say that I was excited at the chance of meeting God would be a massive understatement. All of my ravings to my unRed-initiated friends made me sound like a bible basher from the midwest of the US.
The hype about the game was justified on his arrival in Sydney. Fowler is one of the greatest ever Reds players of all time (recently finishing 4th in a poll of the top 100 players) and his class has shown on and off the field already since signing with the Fury ealier this year.
The game on Saturday was very much a Fowler tribute match. Sydney FC had laid out the red carpet, put on a red double decker bus and a Beatles tribute band before the game, and there were rumblings of Liverpool's anthem "You'll never walk alone" as God walked out onto the pitch.
As for the match itself, yes God has put on a bit of weight and he is not as fast as he used to be, and the start of the Fury's season clearly shows that he has no miracles in his bag of tricks, but he still has a number of things:
1. Footballing class and pedigree;
2. Skills (as the fan sitting next to me said, "he makes the rest of the players look like Sunday league footballers with massive hangovers.....oh no wait, they are still drunk next to him");
3. Crowd pulling appeal and massive amounts of Australian based Liverpool fans; and
4. Goals Goals Goals.
The A-League, and particularly the Fury, has done very well to get hold of Fowler as the crowd figures and the excitement generated by the game simply showed. The crowd was more than double Sydney's previous other 'big game' and even tried and true rugby league, union or AFL supporters were talking about his arrival in the big city. Not since Dwight Yorke was playing for Sydney in the inaugural A-league season has the excitement been so high about a game of football.
It truly was a spectacle and it is great to have the holy man down under. Long may he stay here. And in case you needed a reminder of his class, look at the goal he scored on Saturday that sunk the Sydney sky blues.....http://
http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/archivedirs/news/2006/oct/8/N153706061008-0859.htm
http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,26068467-5000940,00.html
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