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4:30pm Michael Lynch: In Australia, it sometimes seems we have A-League derbies for nearly everything. And if not a derby, then a rivalry match, or a fixture is deemed to be for some cup or trophy or other.
Whenever Wellington plays Perth Glory it is, for example, known as the Distance Derby.
Fair enough in one way, I suppose, given the enormous travelling involved, but really, what has ''derby'' got to do with it save for providing a memorable alliterative suffix to the word distance?
This mania sometimes knows no bounds: when Adelaide, now under the tika-taka direction of Josep Gombau, met Brisbane recently it was being dubbed the ''possession derby'' - presumably because the Roar, too, have historically had a commitment to keeping the ball.
But surely the genuine derbies can only really be about local rivalries, teams from the same town, city or, at a pinch, region, taking each other on.
In that sense we probably have only three in this country. The oldest is the F3 derby, between two of the A-League's original eight member clubs, Central Coast Mariners and Newcastle Jets, so called because of the road that links them.
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