Since being in Brisbane and finding out that the sports stadium is literally 5 minutes from the hostel we decided to watch a game of football to see just how bad the quality was, I heard it was nothin like the football in England so I wasn't expecting much. We chose a match in which former England and premiership regular emile heskey would be included. He player ironically for the Newcastle jets, whose away strip is basically the real Newcastle home strip, Copycats.

It was Saturday evening when the match was on, I wore my toon top loud and proud while there was just a massive army of orange from the Brisbane fans. We just bought the tickets on the night since we found out the capacity in the stadium is 52000 and it's not as popular a sport out here, and rightly so the attendance was just 12000.

The stadium is pretty big, and a nice one at that. It does annoy me though that despite how much I love football, I've been to as many Newcastle games as I have Brisbane roar, just the one.

The atmosphere was good considering the low attendance, walking down the steps to find our seats when the biggest cheer for the player line ups was big old emile heskey.

We picked some pretty decent seats sort of near the front at the middle of the arena, just the right distance if you wanted to hurl abuse in which case one of the lads I was with, John decided to do.

There was a section of the stadium for the Brisbane "ultras" which were basically the people who made the most noise, with a person with a microphone shouting chants and they would shout them back while another person had a set of drums that you always get at these sort of games which if them lot were not there it would have made for a really tedious atmosphere.

Match kicked off and straight away jets were on the front foot, they won a free kick after two minutes and the cross was swung in for heskey to nod in at the back post with ease but he fired it wide. Before the game he scored 5 in 8 games so he was pretty prolific over here, considering it took him about two years to score that many in England so we thought he may actually be really good in this league, we were wrong and he never really showed up in the game again. Could have been the service he was given, and most likely since the quality of football was bad, but still he should have been a lot better.

Both teams had very little skill, the strikers couldn't kick a ball straight, or were offside 90% of the time, the wingers couldn't cross so the only players that looked half decent were the defenders since they just headed or booted the ball, and the midfielders, who just played little passes to each other. About 35 minutes in the Brisbane roar were given a penalty, which they converted with ease, the only real shot they had on target during the game.

The best moment came just before half time when a jets player made a malicious foul on a brisbane player and the game was waves on, the brisbane player clearly unhappy about the decision stood toe to toe with the fouler, then a random player rushed into the back of the Brisbane player to make it look like he headbutted the fouler who dropped to the floor theatrically and then a massive brawl kicked off. A player from both teams got sent off and that was probably the highlight of the match.

The rest of the game should have been better and more open since both teams were down to 10 but it had the opposite effect and you could tell even more that the quality was poor. Terrible first touches, poor passes, ridiculous runs that would help nobody, free kicks that were wasted by doing a short pass that nearly goes out of au and bad decision making made the match frustrating to watch, all our mates said after the match felt they could probably play better and were probably right!

I have been quite critical of it but in all fairness it wasn't the best football, although plus points were the home team won, saw a goal, and saw a massive fight and a good atmosphere made it a memorable experience for me personally. Can't forget the fact that heskey was there too to make it even more awesome.

At the end of the night we went back to the hostel to sort out the sleeping arrangements for Matt. It was the weekend of the stereosonic music festival, so the whole of the hostel was fully booked, and unfortunately for Matt and a little Argentinian guy called mattias. They didn't have a room since they over booked the hostel.

The only solution was to stick two mattress beds on the laundry room floor and make them sleep there all weekend. Charging 15 dollars a night would you believe it! Even worse was the fact that the cleaners open the laundry at 6am so imagine people doing there washing early and find two guys sleeping on the floor.

Matt actually said it wasn't so bad so fair play to him but on the plus he saved a bit more money with it being half price.