Australia’s former deputy prime minister said that fans in “every country pub” watched the women’s soccer team make history at the weekend — before sheepishly admitting he watched the wrong game.
Barnaby Joyce had posted a video on Facebook of himself at a rural New South Wales pub on Saturday night, with about a dozen people sitting behind him watching a soccer game on the wall-mounted TV.
“In Australia tonight, this is what’s happening,” he said to his viewers.
Photo: EPA-EFE
However, the red-faced 56-year-old came clean yesterday morning, admitting to Channel Seven TV that “I think ... we were watching the wrong game.”
“I don’t think it was the right one because when we finished the game, Australia had won 1-0 at full-time, but that’s good, we still won,” he said.
Had the gaffe-prone Joyce been watching the right match, he would have seen the Matildas defeat France 7-6 on penalties after a nail-biting 120 minutes of play, meaning they now play England’s Lionesses in tomorrow’s semi-final.
“I know — it was an incredible penalty shoot-out, but we went and had dinner because we thought they’d won one-nil at full-time,” Joyce said.
“Whatever was happening, I think it was pretty dodgy. I don’t think [the pub] had paid for their vision or something, but anyway, such is life,” he said.
Joyce, a member of Australia’s center-right National Party, is perhaps best-known for what was dubbed by social media as the “War On Terrier” — the saga involving Boo and Pistol, two Yorkshire Terriers brought to Australia by Hollywood stars Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in 2015.
In 2017, he and several other senators were disqualified from sitting in parliament due to a constitutional ban on dual citizens — he had unwittingly inherited New Zealand citizenship from his father.
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