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Why do most Socceroos come from one State?

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Roar Rookie
16th June, 2009
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Spanner new author
Roar Rookie
16th June, 2009
121
2509 Reads

Whilst we continually debate the quality of our coaching and our next crop of Socceroos, it’s interesting to analyse which State the current crop of Socceroos call home.

If we look at the players who have been included in the first six World Cup qualifiers during the final qualifying period, it makes for interesting reading.

The reasoning behind the positive outcome from the first six games was simply that these were the games in which Pim Verbeek chose his best available team, with the following games involving some experimental players due to yellow card issues and fatigue.

Sure, there are injuries and suspensions that affects the outcome of every team, but even considering this, the result changes very little.

Viduka, Emerton and Moore are three that would have seen more action if not for injury.

The analysis of the following six games against Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Qatar, Japan, Uzbekistan and Qatar provide these findings

[State Starting line% Team incl. subs %]
NSW 43 65% 55 65%
VIC 12 18% 14 17%
WA 4 6% 6 7%
ACT 5 8% 5 6%
QLD 2 3% 4 5%
Total 66 100% 84 100%

NSW provided 43 of the starting eleven over the six games resulting in 65 per cent of the team. NSW also had a maximum of eight out of the starting line-up and eleven and out of the entire team including subs.

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We find 83 per cent of the starting eleven coming from NSW and Victoria combined.

Is there a message in this data? Has this been a result of the grass roots football set up in each State? Is football a viable option other than AFL, rugby league and rugby in States other than NSW? Why has Queensland so little to offer to footballers, when they easily represent the largest percentage of Olympians every four years?

To end up with such an unbalanced team, it appears that we have not had a level breeding ground from a State perspective.

There is a chance that this is a generational situation, but if we look to the crop of Under 23 players coming through, there is still a large contingent of New South Welshmen coming through.

Although this new crop appears to have stronger opposition, compared with today. The Under 23’s last game consisted of six NSW players and three Victorians.

This is hardly a convincing story to suggest that the other States are doing their part to provide the best Socceroos team in the future.

Imagine the quality of the team if we could harness the sporting potential around the country?

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