Spireite Simon Hill and his partner Linda picture right recently returned from Australia and wore his shirt with some pride in various locations

Simon kicks off with a ground picture in the Bluetongue Stadium home of the Central Coast Mariners, who are currently top of the A League.  

It has palm trees at one end!

Simon watched them play against Melbourne Victory. The game ended with a 2-1 win to the Mariners.

And a Spireite at the other

The game itself wasn't all that good until the last 15 mins when there was 3 sending's off and 3 goals. The quality of the football is at best between League 1 and 2, but its in its infancy and one positive thing he saw was the amount of families attending games. The kids love and Football is predicted to be the biggest sport in Australia within 5 years.

Simon adds "English football in Oz is massive, everyone wanted to know about football back here, although I was constantly putting them right about calling it soccer (the worst Americanism ever), but this is understandable as they have Rugby League, Union and Aussie Rules which they all call football! They are constantly attracting Aussie footballers who have played in Europe and England, the Mariners have Tony Vidmar(Boro) and John Aloise (Pompey and Coventry) in their squad and I think that with players who have experience of playing at higher level  then their league will benefit enormously. Add to this the structure they  have in place in attracting young kids to the sport and their club then the future looks good for Aussie Football.

One strange thing happened while we was at the game. I as sitting with my Town shirt on and these 2 Aussie's walked past and started singing "There's only 1 Jamie Hewitt" and "Chesterfield na na na" i was gob smacked we are truly a world famous club"

Simon having a crafty one at Ayers Rock

Relaxing outside the Opera House and Harbour Bridge