A lot can happen in a month. Having returned from a trip to the UK and Europe, I find that Melbourne Victory and Adelaide United sacked their coaches, Brisbane and Sydney threatened a royal rumble in the players tunnel, and Craig Foster and Robbie Slater butted heads about the appointment of Jim Magilton.
Of course, I couldn’t have gone to England without immersing myself in some football and to that end I managed to take in a few games, none of which were EPL matches. One game stood out for me, for a variety of reasons. As a life-long Sheffield Wednesday fan (and for a brief time, triallist and player), I was keen to see the famous old club in action.
My chance came on Boxing Day when the Owls were away to Walsall, a small club with a tenuous Australian link (at least one former Socceroos has played there).
The Banks Stadium is an 11,500 capacity ground, small, compact, with the touchline a mere metre from the advertising hoardings. There were more Wednesday fans in the ground than Saddlers supporters, and the post Xmas atmosphere was boisterous. But the football was awful.
It pains me to say so, given my allegiances but this was a dreadful game, yet from what I saw in my time in England, typical of the English lower leagues (and I’m being generous there). At no point in the game did the notion of passing and possession enter the collective mindset of the players. It was, to quote the loud fan I stood next to, a case of “get f***ing ball in box!” (said with a thick, broad Yorkshire accent).
It was fast, physical football with the main battle being between Walsall’s central defenders and livewire Owls striker Ryan Lowe. At no time did either midfield manage to wrest control of the aerial battle; the main function of the eight players occupying the centre was to make tackles and get the ball to wide players for crosses into the box.
It occurred to me watching this match that young Australian players looking to make a name for themselves overseas might want to think twice before heading to the battlegrounds of the English leagues. No doubt they would get a swift education into the toughness and mental attitude required to survive in professional football. But I doubt they would get much of a chance to improve their skills or technique as players.
The quality of football in the A-League far outstrips League One and a lot of the Championship. There is no current A-League club that would not have dispatched either Walsall or Wednesday on this day, and bear in mind that Wednesday were in second place heading into the game.
The English style was never more evident than in the final minutes of the game. With the Owls 1-0 up, they received a free kick just inside their own half. Three players congregated around the ball and the opportunity to play the ball short, keep possession and switch the play to the opposite flank was evident even to the army of fans chanting about their upcoming promotion.
Walsall retreated into their own third, despite the scoreline, anticipating the long ball. They were not mistaken. Wednesday defender Reda Johnson, a Benin international, knocked a long ball down the touchline, the Owls lost the battle for possession, and 30 seconds later Walsall scored with one of their first shots of the game.
Worse was to come for the Owls, when the Saddlers netted a winner in the fourth minute of injury time. It seemed that the phrase “they can’t score without the ball” had not been uttered on the Owls bench.
This is not intended to play into the debate between the comments of Foster and Slater over the appointment of British coaches.
Matthew Hall’s wonderful book “The Away Game” chronicled the lives of quite a few Aussies who were hardly household names, living out their football adventures in lower league football in the UK. You couldn’t put a value on the experience of living the life of a pro footballer, no doubt about that.
However, the evolution of the A-League and the collective coaching knowledge of the likes of Ange Postecoglou, Graeme Arnold, Garry Van Egmond et al is now providing young talented Australians with an education that they will not receive in the school of hard knocks that constitutes the English lower leagues.
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