The passing of Mr Football: Les Murray, Australia and the world game

For Murray, there was football, and not much else besides. His memoir is indicative of that all-consuming project, earth, liquid, mineral, a memorial less to himself as to a sweet, incessant love that never dies. By the Balls, remarked one reviewer, has little to say about Hungary other than football, and little about women – other than football.

It was a love so striking as to be blinding, perhaps indifferent to the muddying guise of sports governance. Murray's association with FIFA's ethics committee was deemed self-defeating, a wolf masquerading as a principled vegetarian.

The Saturday Paper certainly thought as much as the entire FIFA edifice seemed to be crumbling before prosecution writs and investigations from anti-corruption authorities. His response involved a reflection on that insular Australian tendency to "beat up on each other" notably "every time a stink bomb goes off in Zurich". FIFA, he explained, could be reformed from within, and rather than "barking from the outside", he was keen on fixing matters gone rotten from the inside.

When speaking to the Lowy Institute in August 2006, Murray explained that Australia's role in the World Cup had invariably improved its image globally. The World Game assimilated Terra Australis; the island continent gave in return. Australia was, at long last, at home.