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Valencia's Ruben Baraja, left, tries to shoot past Ajax's goalkeeper Joey Didulica. AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
Yesterday, Wednesday the 12th of October, passed without much notice for most of those within Australian football circles except at one little club.
Situated on an unpaved road a few kilometers outside of Geelong, the North Geelong Warriors were coming to terms with the retirement of one of their greatest sons, and possibly the most successful player Australian football has ever produced, Joey Didulica.
With three European domestic titles at three different clubs (Ajax, Austria Wien and AZ Alkmaar), two UEFA Champions League campaigns and four international caps (including making the squad for the 2006 World Cup), Didulica’s record makes for impressive reading.
The reason you may not have heard much about his retirement however is because Didulica never played for Australia, instead he opted to represent his family’s homeland Croatia.
These days 33 is still a relatively young age for any player to retire, but for a goalkeeper it’s almost unheard of. Unfortunately though a litany of serious injuries forced the end of one of the most dramatic careers you could hope to come across. Along with the titles and international caps came some gruesome facial injuries, amnesia, a courageous battle against depression and even a lawsuit.
Yet what I’ll always remember about Didulica’s 15-year career is how, even after so many disheartening setbacks, he nearly made what was deemed an impossible recovery from injury a reality.
“A cervical disk was touching on my spinal chord,” Didulica explained to me when we met at a gym in provincial Victoria earlier this year.
“So in order to play again, in order to have a normal life I had to have the disks taken out.”
However Didulica is underselling the story. When a doctor in the Netherlands finally diagnosed the correct problem after years of discomfort less then 12 months ago, he not only told Didulica he would never play again, but that it was a small miracle he was still alive. Even the softest of car accidents or a strikers legs colliding with him at the wrong angle could have knocked the disk into his spinal chord and killed him.
So the AZ Alkmaar goalkeeper travelled to Australia to have surgery and begin the long process of recovery.
When I met up with him in June, Didulica was in the middle of a grueling training regime in Geelong. I watched as at one point during a gym session the goalkeeper collapsed on the floor in exhaustion. Afterwards as I chatted with Didulica I was struck by his optimism and hope for the future.
A few weeks after that meeting he was back on the training ground with A-League club Melbourne Heart, a remarkable development.
However somewhere between Didulica’s return to the Netherlands and yesterday things went awry with retirement becoming the best option.
So in the end Didulica ends his playing career with little fanfare. Football can be cruel like that.
The life of an Australian playing abroad for all but the luckiest few can be extraordinarily challenging.
As you read this Central Coast youngster James Holland waits for his debut at AZ Alkmaar almost two years after he signed for the club, while a newlywed Adrian Madaschi sits in Melbourne with his wife waiting to find out what his playing future has in store for him.
It doesn’t matter how talented or determined a player might be, fortune still plays a massive part in how a career will play out. But that is, as Matt Hall called it in his excellent documentary on European based Socceroos, “the away game” for you.
In the end all you have left is whether you always pushed yourself to seize every opportunity placed in front of you. If nothing else, Joey Didulica can include this as one of his many achievements.
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