Singo Scores an Own Goal

Well, we all celebrated the Socceroos win in last night's World Cup Qualifier in our own ways. As I've observed before, sometimes you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd stumbled in to Question Time or your favourite corporation's board room rather than Telstra Stadium at some major fixtures.

If your head is not still throbbing, and if you did manage to get more than a few hours' sleep, picture, if you will, the scene adman John Singleton painted for Virginia Trioli this morning - perhaps after a prolonged session of nudging the turps; perhaps just plain old being Singo.

TRIOLI: Not much left in the tank, I should think?
SINGO: No, I still feel on a high, Viriginia. It's the sort of game where you feel so excited by it - I was learning about the game as I told you on the programme - ignoramus Aussie on board, and I come from a league culture, a lifetime of Rugby Union, so ... I mean I was new, sitting there having the game explained to me by Philip Ruddock, and I was trying to get him to arrest all the Uruguayans as potential terrorists ...
TRIOLI: Oh, he would have liked that idea, surely?
SINGO: Well, off the record he sorta contemplated it, the first half hour.

It gets better.

SINGO: It was the happiest crowd, and the thing that was different was that, unlike league or union, there was - as you said before - 30 or 40% of people who are listening to you now, who were at the game last night, who live in this country, were not born here. Or their parents were not born here. And I think we've had so much racial vilification lately, one way or another, that last night was the most unifying thing that's happened to Australia for a long - I was going to say a coon's age, but that would have caused an uproar ... for a long, long time.

I'll spare you the bit where he started dancing around with Alan Jones and kissing Frank Lowy.