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Well, nothing much I need to add that already hasn’t been written about Adelaide’s thumping over two legs at the hands of Gamba Osaka in the Asian Champions League final. As I wrote a week ago even before a ball had been kicked in anger, “We have much, much more to learn from Japanese football.”
Chris Paraskevas, a young Australian football writer, has penned an interesting piece about it for the football website Goal.com.
One observation in particular interested me, apropos of Football Federation Australia chief executive Ben Buckley’s press release issued after the game, “Buckley seems to have taken nothing from Adelaide’s run, which – if treated correctly – could signify one of the most important moments of the history of the domestic came: when Australia, as a football nation, realised its conspicuous fallibility… it is time to acknowledge the fact that Australian football – and not Adelaide United – was exposed across 180 minutes.”
Since writing my book 15 Days in June: When Australia Became a Football Nation I’ve had a few arguments with people who have read the book about the validity of the title.
Is Australia a football nation after all?
I thought we were at the time, I still think we are, just not a very realised one.
Chris says in his story that Adelaide “deserve credit for their application and tenacity” for their Asian Champions League run; but application and tenacity are qualities Australian football has had in spades since the 1960s, if not earlier.
We could do with less application and tenacity and more invention and skill, in my opinion. The stuff I was writing about a fortnight ago. Until such time as we can match the Japanese in technique, we will go on falling short when it matters most.
All the same, the FFA was right to heap praise on Adelaide in the wake of their achievement in reaching the final (“Adelaide United is the pride of football in Australia”,et al) but, like Chris says, they need to take some lessons from it, and starting making changes now; especially in light of the fact that FFA chairman Frank Lowy is assiduously trying to position Australia as Asia’s football superpower in his concerted bid to snaffle the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
In the circumstances of a terrible beating we’ve been handed a great opportunity to grow.
This week was notable for another hard luck story, that of Socceroos defender and Queensland Roar captain Craig Moore.
After being diagnosed with testicular cancer, the tough-as-nails 32-year-old withdrew from the Australia squad to face Bahrain next week and underwent an operation in a Brisbane hospital to remove a tumour in his left testicle.
My family has had some personal experience of this horrible disease; my uncle Peter Crimmins, the Hawthorn rover, captain and club legend of the 1960s and 1970s, died from testicular cancer in 1976, aged just 28.
Despite having searing pain in his groin, Peter played on with the help of pain-killing injections for almost an entire season in 1974 before being diagnosed with the disease and having chemotherapy. By then it was too late to save his life, but it was a mark of Peter’s courage that he went on playing for a time in 1975 after his cancer treatment. He was shattered when he was left out of John Kennedy’s grand final side that year.
Times have changed.
Early detection is vital and clubs are much more cognisant of their responsibilities to their players’ physical and mental wellbeing.
Not a lot of things in life are more important football, but living itself is one of them.
All Australian football fans wish Moorey and his young family a speedy recovery.
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