In the hot seat

On June 3, Network Ten National News Editor and member of Chatswood Baptist Church, Steve Wilson takes a trip that no journalist has made in over 30 years – following Australia in the FIFA World Cup, the world’s largest sporting event.

It is a trip I have been anticipating since John Aloisi slipped home that winning penalty against Uruguay back in November last year – and a trip that has made me the envy of my work mates.

Network Ten will be sending a team of five (two cameramen/editors, two reporters and a producer) to cover the largest sporting event in the world. I don’t think Australia truly understands just how big this event is.

Consider the Australia versus Brazil match: every country in the world enjoys watching Brazil – wherever there is a television across Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and, of course, Australia, people will be watching that game.

We are talking literally billions of people watching this one game. This is because soccer – or football, as it’s now properly called in Australia – is a religion in many of these countries.

Footballers are worshipped as gods across the world – but sadly we see they are far from immortal when even some of the very best, such as George Best and Diego Maradona, end their days in ignominy. Fans have killed themselves over the World Cup – and killed others. Colombian footballer Andres Escobar was shot dead after scoring a goal against his own team in a match with the United States in the 1994 tournament.

Players and fans cheat, murder, commit suicide, weep and display skill they could never hope to show on any other sporting arena because this is the ultimate: this is the World Cup.

And when Australia scores, I am going to scream and yell and leap in the air. And if Australia loses, I will be upset. But that will soon pass, because at the end of the day, it’s only a game (even if it’s an important one).

As a Christian, I know football will pass away like everything else on this rock (although those rah-rah boys are probably wrong, I reckon they play football in heaven).

It upsets me to see people invest so much of themselves in another false religion. But it comforts me to know that, even as my stomach might churn as I go through a range of emotions in Germany, my faith is somewhere surer – not in 11 men on a park, but in one man who was once on a cross.

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