Tuesdays with Holger Osieck

I remember reading a very moving and inspirational bestselling book by Mitch Albom titled ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’.

It’s a true story about newspaper sports columnist Mitch Albom and the time spent with his critically ill 78-year-old former sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz.

Mitch is a very successful sports columnist and writer from Detroit and after seeing Morrie on TV on the Nightline show, Albom decided to call Schwartz and reminisce.

Morrie was dying and Mitch hadn’t seen him since attending his college classes 16 years earlier.

Albom had great memories of his college professor and the influence he had been on his writings and his life, so he decided to travel to Massachusetts to visit Schwartz.

The initial reunion was so successful and heart-warming for Albom that they decided to make it a weekly event on Tuesdays and hence the title of the novel.

Schwartz’s and Albom’s fourteen weeks of conversations touch on life, death, acceptance, communication, being oneself, sport, love, values, openness, and happiness.

During this time, as Morrie’s life slipped away, Albom’s personality and view of life changes.

Schwartz’s stories and life lessons once again inspire him and remind him of what really is important and meaningful in his life.

Reflecting on this book, life, sport and the coincidental Tuesday meetings with Holger and the Socceroos during the month of June, mixed feelings emerge and provide some thoughts and comparisons, even as tenuous as the links to Albom’s experiences may seem to outsiders.

Let’s face it, despite the efforts of many talented, passionate and dedicated football administrators, officials, players and fans, ‘old soccer’ had left itself wide open to criticism and was dying a slow and inevitable death.

Like Morrie, the game of ‘soccer’ in its National Soccer League format in Australia was on its last legs.

But as Morrie says in the book :Accept who you are; and revel in it”, and “The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

The Australian government commissioned David Crawford to do a major review of Australian football – or soccer as it was known then.

Crawford didn’t particularly have an axe to grind either way; we just wanted to know what was going on and why the true potential and growth of the game had once again failed to materialise.

Independent it may have been but Crawford’s findings were still unflattering.

Criticism wasn’t confined to the NSL; there wasn’t a compliment to found anywhere. As Crawford wrote, “the current structure of football in Australia is ineffective, does not work and needs changing.”

The formation of the Football Federation of Australia and the A-League was the first major step in bringing the game of football back to life and learning from our old mistakes to make the most of the situation, or had they?

Qualification for the FIFA World Cup Finals of 2006 in Germany was also a tremendous boost for the FFA, football in general and the nascent A-League national football competition.

Despite the early gains and after an initial expansion of A-League clubs and another qualification for the FIFA World Cup Finals held in South Africa in 2010, the degenerative cancer seemed to have returned.

The new franchise club from Townsville, the Northern Fury and the Gold Coast United football club led by Clive Palmer started to bleed internally.

The Fury withdrew from the A-League for financial reasons and Palmer threatened legal action against the FFA and would have been content to bring down the A-League and the FFA with it.

Other A-League club owners like Tinkler and Sage started making accusations and demands against the FFA.

But the recovery by the FFA since then has been truly inspirational for this football fan. Enter the West Sydney Wanderers to the A-League, Alessandro Del Piero, Shinji Ono and Emile Heskey and other great footballers.

The FFA has also recently unveiled a new television rights and media deal that includes free-to-air coverage in prime time.

Maybe another quote from Morrie might be appropriate here, “It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more, even in failure.”

The Socceroos performances in this last round of qualification for Brazil hadn’t been instilling any confidence in us die-hard supporters either.

The game and the result against Japan in Saitama has changed that and lifted Australia’s optimism once again.

Let’s not fool ourselves, qualifying for Brazil will be a tremendous boost for the game in Australia and not getting there will be a severe blow to the FFA.

There are still a couple more Tuesdays with Holger and really looking forward to the Socceroo’s games against Jordan and Iraq.

Let’s see what these Tuesday meetings will do for us and what confidence boost and inspiration Holger can provide for Australian football to go on to bigger and better things.