DURING the days of old soccer when the smell of souvlaki would waft around Belmore Oval and teenagers girls would spend 90 mins doing happy laps looking for future husbands, there was a word that was often used to describe the hard man archetype football player. That word was simply “kreas”; it’s the Greek word for flesh or meat.
Think of when the commentator says "That was a meaty challenge..."
You were only called kreas if you were lacking in any football skill, talent or intelligence. The English call this type of player the hard man. Simon Hill famously described the Central Coast Mariners as a team with too many bouncers and not enough DJ's.
The term kreas can also be linked to calling someone a meat head as well. So lacking in any football skill talent or intelligence the kreas only attribute is the ability to take out chunks of the opponents flesh through their so called hard challenges.
Australia has a proud history of kreas football players.
Kevin Muscat is a true kreas. Having the ability to throw stray elbows and stamp on players while they are on the ground and getting away with getting sent off in full view of referees is a talent in itself. While the Fox Sports commentary team suggested that elbowing your opponent in the head is fine as long as it looks like your jumping as well as elbowing. After all Matt Simon made the mistake of jumping with his arms to the side. He basically sent Muscat an invitation to the elbow ball.
Other famous kreas are Ross Aloisi, The Dodd brothers and Paul Wade.
Devoid of any real skill the kreas's job is to neutralise the most creative and influential member of the opposition.
So my laboured introduction comes to the meat of my story. Steve Pantelidis kreas effort on Steve Corica during the Gold Coast -Sydney FC game on Saturday night halted the blings promising start and gave the white shoe brigade an unfair kreas advantage. Kevin Muscat would have been proud seeing one of his former protégés continue on with his good work.
As a Sydney FC fan I think the evenness of this league is very frustrating. Rather than being a selling point, the fact that any team can beat any other team on any given day is making the A League predictably unpredictable.
So the kreas Pantelidis did get some of his own medicine back during the game and I'm sure some other Sydney players got his number. So pencil in the date Sunday January 17 when the two biggest egos of the A-League will meat again at the SFS.
You were only called kreas if you were lacking in any football skill, talent or intelligence. The English call this type of player the hard man. Simon Hill famously described the Central Coast Mariners as a team with too many bouncers and not enough DJ's.
The term kreas can also be linked to calling someone a meat head as well. So lacking in any football skill talent or intelligence the kreas only attribute is the ability to take out chunks of the opponents flesh through their so called hard challenges.
Australia has a proud history of kreas football players.
Kevin Muscat is a true kreas. Having the ability to throw stray elbows and stamp on players while they are on the ground and getting away with getting sent off in full view of referees is a talent in itself. While the Fox Sports commentary team suggested that elbowing your opponent in the head is fine as long as it looks like your jumping as well as elbowing. After all Matt Simon made the mistake of jumping with his arms to the side. He basically sent Muscat an invitation to the elbow ball.
Other famous kreas are Ross Aloisi, The Dodd brothers and Paul Wade.
Devoid of any real skill the kreas's job is to neutralise the most creative and influential member of the opposition.
So my laboured introduction comes to the meat of my story. Steve Pantelidis kreas effort on Steve Corica during the Gold Coast -Sydney FC game on Saturday night halted the blings promising start and gave the white shoe brigade an unfair kreas advantage. Kevin Muscat would have been proud seeing one of his former protégés continue on with his good work.
As a Sydney FC fan I think the evenness of this league is very frustrating. Rather than being a selling point, the fact that any team can beat any other team on any given day is making the A League predictably unpredictable.
So the kreas Pantelidis did get some of his own medicine back during the game and I'm sure some other Sydney players got his number. So pencil in the date Sunday January 17 when the two biggest egos of the A-League will meat again at the SFS.
'As a Sydney FC fan I think the evenness of this league is very frustrating. Rather than being a selling point, the fact that any team can beat any other team on any given day is making the A League predictably unpredictable.'
ReplyDeleteIt may be less of a selling point if you were a fan of one of the teams that got beat every week. This is why the FFA stepped into Perth and got them 3 Socceroos.
Hey John,
ReplyDeleteha good point, Perth still look a bit Rubbish to me.