STAR POWER: Australian Sports Attendances on the Rise
Australia boasts a rich and diverse sporting history, with stars littering the annals of time. From golfer Adam Scott, to tennis’ Rod Laver to cricket’s Donald Bradman, the Aussies have always been a competitive bunch, blessed with the skills to match their temperament.
They have their own brand of football of course – “Aussie rules” – but they have recently started branching out into the more traditional form of soccer as their domestic league continues to step up in quality. Having started out by luring the likes of Emile Heskey, Michael Bridges and Damien Duff across to their shores to wind-up their careers in the sunshine, the A-League has started to produce some real stars of their own lately.
The Socceroos are beginning to reap the benefits of this internal development, and some of their stars are now producing a level of football better suited to the stronger leagues in the world ““ most notably in Europe.
The real jewel in their crown right now is Panos Armenakas, who is plying his trade in Italy for Udinese after a brief spell with current English Premier League side Watford. Initially he learned his trade with Sydney Olympic after signing for them as a six year old, and such was his early promise that he was invited to spend a month training with Barcelona to gauge his development.
Certainly the 2012 A-League wasn’t a grand enough scene for a young Armenakas to ply his trade, and soon he was on his way to pastures new. Now he is playing in front of tens of thousands of loyal and adoring Udinese fans at the Stadio Friuli ““ and his skill-set dictates that he will bring this increased level of support to the national team.
Alongside the likes of Cahill, Armenakas is ensuring that interest in Australian soccer is at an all-time high, and this is something that online bookies are counting on as their industry grows at a similar rate. EuroPalace in particular cover a huge range of sports-related slots, from ‘Bullseye’ to ‘Basketball Star’ in a bid to cash in on this growing trend ““ and with their massive $500 bonus just for opening an account, business is good.
The 16-year-old, who grew up in Australia, joined Watford’s academy in 2012. The Hornets hoped he would stay with them in their youth set-up and named him as a first-year scholar in April.
EuroPalace also have a blog page that cites all manner of opinions to help you decide on betting strategy, as well as an enormous range of popular casino games such as poker, blackjack and roulette to explore if you somehow manage to exhaust their enormous selection of over 300 fruit machine-style slots.
The future looks bright for Australian sports, with enormous crowds at cricket, AFL, rugby and soccer matches ““ and with the advent of eSports, these numbers are only going to swell as we hurtle through the 21st century.