Some football event or other

is apparently going to be held in Downunder. It is being shared with our friends across  "the Ditch"  I am told.
I was told all this by a clearly excited dog walker of my acquaintance just after I had waved off a visit from our friend P.... 
I do not share his enthusiasm. The dog looked bored too.
When we lived in a tiny rural community with a two teacher school (at which my parents were the teachers) Brother Cat was expected to play football simply because they needed him to have enough to get a team together. He loathed it. He was better than the local bank manager's son. B... would be described as a "nerd" now. He was so intelligent the Senior Cat did the only thing he could do B went from year 4 to year 6 in one leap and still came top of the group of about six or seven children. Brother Cat was not good at football but B... was hopeless. 
B... was so bad that Middle Cat, a GIRL!!!!, took his place. She was smaller but "about ten times more useful" I can remember one of the boys saying. She was out there in about the smallest size boots available and a guernsey that our mother had made for her. Her ball skills far exceeded those of Brother Cat. 
Middle Cat would come home battered, bruised and covered in dirt (or mud on the rare occasions it rained). Our mother would listen to the long winded description of the match and the tactics used. The Senior Cat would read something. My brother and I would sit in stony silence. We were NOT  interested. 
We still aren't  interested. I have never watched a football match in my life. My brother has only been to those he was forced to play in.  Middle Cat and the Black Cat have both played. They have both played netball and five-aside basketball. Middle Cat has played softball and hockey for the state and apparently had a "whizz-bang" tennis serve as well. 
I haven't seen her since the announcement that Downunder won "the bid" but I will be interested in her reaction. She would not let her two boys play more contact sport than was required of them at school. Now she is much too conscious of the dangers. Her knee replacements, wrist and ankle problems have arisen partly through her many sports injuries.
We see what happens to the men who play football. They are not fit old men at all. Some of them have serious problems, not the least brain injuries from head contact with each other as well as the ball.
The praises of "the game" were being sung on the television news later last night. The reporter sounded even more excited than the dog walker. 
I prowled off wondering whether, somewhere down the track, people will regret playing because of the long term injuries they do themselves.