The soundtrack to our footballing lives ... and death Moment in time: the Socceroos jubilation at qualifying for the 2006 World Cup is a genuine watershed moment. What makes a sport mainstream? Is it the number of people who go to grounds to watch it? The number who play it? Is it big TV ratings and lucrative broadcast rights earnings? The intensity of conversation it generates in social settings, whether that be at the water cooler, in social media or on talkback radio? People who wouldn't have known where the 2006 World Cup was taking place knew about that moment. It's probably all of those things, but for me there are other indicators too. How has a sport's memorable moments seeped into the national consciousness? Are those standout events collective experiences, or remembered only by the devotees? Have they had a wider cultural impact, spawned a genre of literature, influenced comedy or popular drama? Have they become part of the broader narrative in a way that a corny movie like Escape to Victory (featuring Pele and Bobby Moore alongside Michael Caine and Sly Stallone as World War II prisoners) did, or books like Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, which sparked a whole new genre of "football lit." Australian soccer meets some of those criteria, but fails on other fronts. I would argue that the moment when John Aloisi's penalty struck the back of the net in the penalty shootout against Uruguay in Sydney in November 2005 was a genuine watershed moment. People who didn't care about soccer, people who never went to a game, people who wouldn't have known where the 2006 World Cup was taking place knew about that moment. The significance of the spot kick was overwhelming, but like so many of these things, it was burnt into the public consciousness by the nature of the call, particularly Craig Foster's babbling, gurgling, gutteral cry of emotion, a visceral response to 32 years of frustration and disappointment, as Aloisi's penalty beat Fabian Carini in the Uruguayan goal. It's easy to overlook the importance of television and radio broadcasters in these seminal moments. Their emotion, clarity, intelligence and wit - and occasionally their incoherence - play a critical role in developing the narrative of a sport as it is their words and voices which form the soundtrack to these great, or awful, events. They are the public conduits as the drama unfolds and if a sport has become truly mainstream, it is often their words and descriptions that are seared into the collective folk memory. For people like me, a nine-year-old in 1966 when England won the World Cup, the unforgettable call of late BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme is indelibly stamped in the memory. With England leading 3-2 in the dying moments of extra time in the Wembley final after Wolfgang Weber's 90th-minute equaliser for West Germany had forced the game into an extra 30 minutes, Geoff Hurst advanced towards the German goal. Some fans, thinking the whistle was about to blow, began spilling on to the edge of the playing area. "Some people are on the pitch," declared Wolstenholme, not altogether approvingly. They think it's all over ... It is now," he reported with restrained relish as Hurst unleashed a thunderbolt which made it 4-2 and gave the West Ham forward a World Cup final hat trick. To this day, the England striker is the only man to have achieved such a feat. Wolstenholme's immortal words were mouthed by generations of kids in school playgrounds as they enacted England's finest footballing hour, while they also provided comedian Nick Hancock with the title of his quiz show, They Think It's All Over . No one needed to be told that it was on sport. Given its lack of television exposure (bar on SBS, which for many years was perceived as a minority channel), it's been hard for such calls to become part of public lore. It's a similar story where football literature is concerned, although Andy Harper and Josh Whittington's collaboration with Johnny Warren, Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters, must surely be the best-named sports book ever. For many in Australia, it will be a call from the man touted as the nation's top football broadcaster, Simon Hill, which will be stamped in the memory: "Pumped in by Cahill, Australia have done it," he shouts, as Tim Cahill levels late in the game against Japan in Kaiserslautern in the opening match of the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Hill, a Manchester City fan and native of the northern English city, not surprisingly includes Martin Tyler's call of that remarkable denouement to the 2011-12 Premiership campaign when City beat QPR in the last seconds of the season to clinch the title as one of his favourites. Aguerooooooooo! I swear you'll never see anything like it ever again in your life!" shouts Tyler at the climactic moment. Hill also admires the succinctness of Brian Moore's, 'It's up for grabs now...' " as Michael Thomas broke through in the dying seconds of the last game of the 1988-89 season to go one on one with Bruce Grobbelaar to give Arsenal the chance to win the title at Liverpool. "Bryon Butler was also a commentary hero of mine, and his calls brought the game to life for me as a kid," says Hill, a perfect illustration of the way broadcasters can develop and broaden the appeal of their sport. My favourite calls are the three Australian goals at the 2006 World Cup, Australia v Japan, especially the Cahill double and Harry Kewell's equaliser v Croatia at the same tournament. At A-League level, it would be my call of Alessandro Del Piero's first goal for Sydney v Newcastle Jets last season. For my part, this article wouldn't be complete without paying tribute to John Motson, who, I think it was, intoned memorably in the early 1980s after a Tottenham goal, "educated football from the cultivated Spurs." Let's hope the A-League or the Socceroos give Hill, David Basheer, Mike Cockerill or Brenton Speed cause for such celebration later this season.