Advertisement

COMMENT: Let Johnston work with Aust soccer

Jul 27, 2015
Craig Johnston in his playing days.

Craig Johnston in his playing days.

Craig Johnston wants to help Australian soccer but we can’t or won’t make that a reality?

Extraordinary.

Even if we couldn’t learn a few things from a player who worked fanatically to make himself good enough to be an integral part of a club that dominated the game, we could surely draw inspiration from him.

In the third part of our interview with Johnston, he says he’s been ignored by Australian soccer.

“Can I say it any clearer? Do I have to beg and say, ‘please, please, please, FFA (Football Federation Australia), can I share my experience with kids?” Because I’ve actually done that and still nobody comes back to you and still people ignore you,” he told me.

In sport, skills improve with practice. In soccer, your job is made harder without the use of your hands while competition is fiercer with more participants around the world. Great players are made as well as born.

A well-meaning parent can tell kids that less time on FIFA’s video game and more time practicing ball skills will increase their chances of success. But if that parent’s career highlight was winning the second division of a Sunday league 20 years ago, the advice won’t carry the weight it would coming from a decorated ex-player like Johnston.

And it’s not just Johnston who we should be looking to. Most former players have ideas or experience they can pass on. It wouldn’t matter if we were the best soccer nation in the world. There is no limit on knowledge and ex-players can provide plenty. Use them.

In previous columns I’ve written that the people running the game in Australia these days have done a fine job in many areas and are a big improvement on those who went before them. But engaging past players remains something they could do better. Harry Kewell’s recent appointment as Under 21 coach at English Premier League club Watford is a sign that our former stars will attract global interest. We can’t afford to ignore those who want to be a part of our system.

As Johnston’s remarkable CV shows, he’s also a thinker and an innovator. Perhaps not every idea he has is a winner but that doesn’t matter. Good management should be able to make use of the best of what he offers.

While talking to Johnston, it was impossible not to be impressed by the passion in his voice. He still wants to make a contribution and he wants to make it in Australia, a country he regretted choosing not to represent in internationals.

We should be grateful he feels that way because Craig Johnston doesn’t owe us a thing. When he was the only Aussie at the highest level, it showed a generation of our kids that making it overseas was possible. In the 1990s, the decade after his career peaked, the trickle of Australian players heading to Europe became a flood. Many of them would wear the green and gold with distinction.

The Liverpool great is in his mid 50s now and the game has undoubtedly changed. But individual skill, what he worked on with such discipline, is still a player’s most valuable attribute. If you had a kid with potential and Johnston offered to help him or her, you’d probably jump at the chance. Our sport’s governors should do the same.

Interviewer Paul Marcuccitti is InDaily’s soccer columnist. He is a co-presenter of 5RTI’s Soccer on 531 program which can be heard from 11am on Saturdays.

Local News Matters
Advertisement
Copyright © 2024 InDaily.
All rights reserved.