After winning every trophy on offer in
1968, Hakoah Eastern Suburbs (later known as Sydney City) continued to have a
great deal of success in the 1970s and I felt that I could not have joined a
better club. It was sponsored by Sydney’s Jewish community and well run by
people who were or would become some of the most successful businessmen in
Australia such as club president Frank Lowy, Tibor Kalman, Andrew Lederer and
Ernie Frisch. These people deserved respect because they put their time and
often their own money, into the game.
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| (L to R) Hakoah team managers Andrew Lederer & Tibor Kalman, coach Charlie Fleming & player Dennis Yaager in 1971 |
Somewhat similar to St George, Hakoah was synonymous with expansive attractive football and winning in style. In my view, the Hakoah team in the 1970/71 era was one the best Australian club sides of all time and they won two successive premierships with a tremendously strong lineup containing many international players such as captain Allan Marnoch, John Watkiss, Ray Baartz, Dave Keddie, Robby Fekete, Danny Walsh, Dennis Yaager and goalkeeper Frank Haffey. They also won the NSW State Cup in 1971, although grand final wins were strangely elusive. The home ground of Hakoah in this period was Wentworth Park at Glebe, having one of the best playing surfaces in Sydney. The Sydney Sports Ground was also used for some of Hakoah’s home matches, an excellent soccer venue that was demolished in 1987 to make way for the larger Sydney Football Stadium.
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| 1970 premiers Hakoah at the Sydney Sports Ground (L to R) A. Marnoch, F. Haffey, R. Baartz, J. Watkiss, D. Yaager, W. Rutherford, R. Fekete, D. Walsh, D. Keddie, W. Edwards, J. Davey |
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| Hakoah's John Watkiss & Allan Marnoch pressure South Sydney Croatia keeper Ron Corry |
In 1970 the Hakoah team was coached by Mick Jones, who amongst other experience, had worked as a coach for the English FA and held a full FA coaching certificate. The side combined rock-solid defence with elegance and lethal attack. Leading the attack was Ray Baartz who had the ability to run past defenders at will before unleashing a cannonball shot while Dave Keddie was the classic goal poacher inside the penalty box, both players topping the goalscoring charts with tallies of 25 goals and 19 goals respectively. There were some heavy scores against opponents including 7-1 (Auburn), 6-0 (Canterbury) and 6-1 (Sydney Prague).
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| Hakoah's Ray Baartz runs through the APIA defence |
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| Dave Keddie (L) on the cover of the Hakoah Star magazine |
A sidelight to the 1971 season was the decision by Hakoah to import a group of five Brazilian players, inspired by Brazil’s victory in the 1970 World Cup. Such an influx caused some disquiet amongst the rest of the playing group and wasn’t an immediate success, although given time to adjust three of the group in Agenor Muniz, Hilton Silva and Luis De Melo proved themselves to be talented players with Agenor eventually going on to play for Australia. However, the first game of the 1971 season against the Greek-sponsored Canterbury side at Arlington Oval wasn’t auspicious for the Brazilian contingent. One of them (Lopez) didn’t play that day and unwisely decided to position himself next to the Canterbury goal to take some photographs. It wasn’t long into the match before the Canterbury goalkeeper Demopolous backed up to take a goal kick and deliberately or otherwise trod on the prone Lopez, thereby causing a scuffle. The situation quickly got out of hand when a number of excitable Canterbury supporters incited their mates to invade the pitch and chased the Brazilian across the ground in an act of revenge. The ensuing melee saw some 200 to 300 people force the entire Hakoah team and support staff into the dressing rooms, the eyewitness account from inside the rooms revealing that the bolted heavy entry door groaned precariously inwards under the weight of the rioters. It took the police quite some time to restore order and it fortunately remained the only match abandoned due to a pitch invasion in my time with the club.
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| Agenor Muniz playing for Hakoah |
Even though Hakoah continued to be successful in subsequent seasons, the club never quite reached the same high standard of play as it did in the 1968 to 1971 era. After that there was a succession of coaches combined with a substantial turnover of players that didn’t always appear to be an ideal fit. Bobby Collins (ex-Leeds United) arrived as coach in late 1971 and was gone by mid-1972, replaced by David McLaren (ex-Wolverhampton Wanderers, ex-Malaysia Director of Coaching). Having experienced the coaching methods at St George Budapest, I often wondered what a modern manager coach like Frank Arok might have brought to Hakoah. Yet the records show that Hakoah were premiers again in 1973 and 1974, also winning the Ampol Cup in 1973. It was the same era in which Hakoah played a friendly match against Cruzeiro of Brazil at the Sydney Sports Ground, bolstered by guest players Peter Osgood (Chelsea & England) and Anthony Antoniadis (Panathinaikos & Greece). In summing up the 1974 premiership, the headline in Soccer World said “Not A Vintage Hakoah Despite Fifth Title”. It didn’t help that Ray Baartz’s career had been sadly cut short by the infamous Uruguayan karate chop in a match for the Socceroos during that year but coach McLaren wrote in the club magazine Hakoah Star that ”the Watkiss-Marnoch (defensive) partnership has been outstanding”.
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| Official program Hakoah v Cruzeiro |
I’d started playing in Hakoah’s third grade team (under 18) in 1970 as the youngest player at the age of 14. It was probably Hakoah’s strongest ever third grade side and we won the premiership comfortably by several points, scoring 69 goals in 22 matches while conceding only 13 goals. We even managed to beat the first team on more than one occasion in training matches. The club at that time had made a concerted effort to develop young local talent and manager Tibor Kalman took a particularly keen interest. Hakoah was very progressive and in 1972 they sent three 18 year old players (Murray Barnes, Kevin Mullen & Graham Brown) to England for several months of experience with Leeds United, at that stage enjoying considerable success under manager Don Revie. The same year Frank Lowy announced plans for full time professionalism at Hakoah although the scheme never came to full fruition.
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| Murray Barnes soars on the cover of Hakoah Star |
Yet it became disappointing how Hakoah’s youth development policy was gradually abandoned and the strategy reverted to buying established senior players instead. It might have seemed a practical short term solution to the coaches and managers who were under pressure to win from week to week but it disillusioned many young Australian players who had their potential stifled. This didn’t just apply to Hakoah but was prevalent throughout the game to a greater or lesser degree. Part of the problem was that it was too easy for Australian clubs to bring in lower tier senior players from elsewhere, leading Mike Renwick in Soccer World (October 1974) to warn: “planeloads of imports will keep arriving and the sad old merry-go-round of our declining soccer will continue for yet another year”.
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| Dennis Yaager (L) was a locally produced Hakoah player who also played for Australia |
Visiting famous FIFA coach Dettmar Cramer had been aware of the problem with too many imported players and he suggested a different approach when he addressed the NSW Soccer Federation AGM in late 1971: “In Australia in the very near future you will find out the time is ripe to develop your own local products to professional level. If not this year then next year perhaps but you should do something about this. Start maybe with a limit of two foreigners per club and later a limit of one. Find a way to develop local products…as far as natural ability is concerned, the Australian boy is as good as the European…we are apt to look towards foreigners and from the beginning they have more respect than the locals. After a while you will find out that they may not be better at all”. Cramer cited Italy as an example, explaining that they closed the doors to every foreign import in 1963 and the recovery, in tandem with intensive development, was such that they were runners-up in the 1970 World Cup.
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| FIFA coach Dettmar Cramer |
Regardless of the obstacles, I was reserve goalkeeper for Hakoah in the 1974 Grand Final that ended in a 4-2 victory to St George. It was with mixed feelings that I watched my old friend Johnny Warren score the superb fourth goal to put the game beyond reach in what would prove to be his last match before retiring. I was subsequently selected in the team for the playoff for third place in the Rothmans Cup at the Sydney Sportsground against Western Suburbs. It was a 2-0 Hakoah win and exciting as a 19 year old goalkeeper to be playing behind the likes of Allan Marnoch, John Watkiss and Jim McKay, the latter being the scorer of the all-important goal against South Korea to qualify Australia for the 1974 World Cup. I can remember driving 250km from a University project in country NSW to be at the ground and not really expecting to play before a smiling Tibor Kalman told me I was in the side and to “show us how it is done”.
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| Hakoah president Frank Lowy with the 1974 premiership trophy |
The year 1975 started badly when I fractured my ankle in a reserves team trial match at Penrith. Ten weeks later I’d only been back at training for a few days and was barely half fit when my opportunity came. A horror stretch of results had put Hakoah second last on the ladder and there was much unrest within the club. The untimely death of long time manager Tibor Kalman at age 46 added to the confusion. There was also the pressure of completing the new Hakoah Club premises in Hall Street Bondi, much larger and more opulent than the original building in Roscoe Street facing Bondi Beach. It was ultimately decided to inject some younger blood into the team including new captain Greg Lynch, Steve O’Connor, Kevin Mullen and myself. In the words of the Daily Telegraph, I came into the Hakoah first team “after a succession of goalkeepers failed to satisfy coach David McLaren”.
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| Hakoah coach David McLaren |
My premiership debut was at Hurstville Oval against St George, then top of the table and the team I’d supported as a youngster, coached by none other than Johnny Warren. We even went into camp at Bondi a few days before the match, such was the desire to defeat the team who were often our closest rivals. To some critics it was an upset when Hakoah won 3-2 in a tense hard fought encounter on a very wet pitch. At least two Hakoah board members hugged me as I left the field at the end. David Jack writing in The Sun quoted Hakoah coach David McLaren who said: “Farley has done tremendously well since he came into the first team. When he had his big test against St George at Hurstville he produced the best display from any Hakoah goalkeeper this year”.
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| I'm pictured here taking a high cross for Hakoah against Western Suburbs in 1975 |
A couple of weeks later we played at Lambert Park against APIA Leichardt who by then had taken first place on the ladder. Hakoah won 1-0 and Lance Robinson’s headline in the Daily Telelgraph proclaimed “Hakoah find Top Goalie at Last”. He wrote: “Hakoah’s 19 year old substitute goalkeeper jolted soccer giant Apia-Leichardt’s premiership ambitions yesterday at Lambert Park. Farley’s brilliant anticipation and safe hands highlighted Hakoah’s 1-0 win against Apia-Leichardt. Yesterday’s superb display ensures him a permanent spot in the Hakoah lineup”.
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This is a save I made in the Hakoah v St George match at Wentworth Park in 1975
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By the end of the 1975 season, I’d played in the concluding 11 matches for 9 wins and received the Player of the Month award at the end. I thought that it had gone well, especially considering that I’d returned from injury and was juggling training with the need to catch up on lost time at university. The team had re-found its mojo with the introduction of younger players and we finished fifth, only missing the top four playoffs by a whisker and a huge improvement on second last where we started. It was conceivable that we could have won the premiership if that level of performance had been extended over the entire season. Yet evidently it wasn’t good enough because the club saw fit to sign another older keeper from interstate for a large transfer fee who at the time was in the national team squad. The first I knew about it was when I read it in the newspaper, a real slap in the face. The abrupt mid-season departure of Hakoah greats Allan Marnoch and John Watkiss had also been a shock. This cursory treatment of even the best players in Australian soccer in those days caused Mike Renwick to write in Soccer World that he was disappointed by how we allowed “our stars to fade out in almost total indifference”. Way too few of Australia’s top players were properly celebrated and they usually weren’t retained within the sport at a high level as coaches or ambassadors of the game.
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| The new Hakoah club in Hall Street Bondi officially opened on 30 November 1975 |
I was unsure whether to continue the next season when I received a late call from Hakoah because they needed me to play in the Ampol Cup semi-final in early 1976. After only a couple of training sessions, I lined up against APIA at Wentworth Park and it looked like being a tough day because our goal was under heavy fire for the first 15 minutes and we could have been down 0-2, yet we went on to win 5-0. The match report in Soccer World said: “The super Hakoah footballing machine moved into top gear and crushed not a lowly team but APIA, the premiers…it looked (at first) like the other side would score, Terry Butler’s half volley and Ken Wilson’s close in header both being acrobatically flicked away by a superb Farley”. David Jack in The Sun wrote: “Hakoah slotted in replacements for Clarke, Barnes and Muniz and appeared to strengthen rather than weaken their side…Alan Farley made two fine saves from Terry Butler and Roy McCormack which might have changed the whole course of the match…Undoubtedly, this 1976 Hakoah has the capacity to become one of Sydney’s greatest teams of the past decade”. I wasn’t given the opportunity to play in the final against Wests, a game we lost after leading 1-0 and really should have won. Despite winning the Rothman’s Cup later in the season, it was an unsettled year with another change of coach and we ended in third place in the premiership. George Keith (ex-APIA) had taken over as coach from David McLaren at the start of 1976 but was gone by mid-season, replaced by Gerry Chaldi (ex-Hapoel Petah Tikvah & ex-Hakoah 1963).
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| Goalkeeper sculpture by Ron Jubb in the Hakoah club foyer |
Of greatest importance was the move initiated by Alex Pongrass of St George and Frank Lowy of Hakoah to form Australia’s first National League. It grew from the first meeting held with various clubs from around Australia in April 1975 and eventually ended in agreement to kick off what was at first known as the Philip’s League (National Soccer League) in 1977. Interest in Australian soccer had been heightened by playing in the 1974 World Cup but attendances at club matches in 1974-75 had paradoxically fallen. The introduction of the NSL was an attempt to improve Australian soccer across the board.
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| An official NSL match program from 1977 |
The year 1977 marked the start of my eighth season with Hakoah and I was still only 21 years old. Out of the fifty or so players at the club when I first joined in 1970, only two now remained in Murray Barnes and myself, making us the joint longest serving players. There had been six very different first team coaches over the eight seasons along with numerous assistant coaches, some of whom never had extensive or high level coaching backgrounds at a time when specific qualifications weren’t required. It was a significant rate of attrition and even the trusty back room staff of Peter Van Ryn (masseur) and Jock McCrory (gear steward) had gone. Veteran Scottish defender Eddie Thomson (ex-Hearts& Aberdeen) joined Hakoah that season to replace former team captain Greg Lynch, signaling the loss of yet another of the few remaining Hakoah local products. Eddie Thomson in the years ahead would become coach of Hakoah before taking over from Frank Arok as coach of the Socceroos.
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| Hakoah 1977 inaugural national league winners (L to R) Back row G. Chaldi, K. Mullen, A. Farley, S. O'Connor, M. Barnes, T. Clarke, G. Honeyman, T. Smith. Front row B. Lutton, H. Mowbray, A. Muniz, J. Stevenson, J. Watson, A. Robertson, H. Silva (absent: E. Thomson) |
I played in all nine of Hakoah’s pre-season matches against all comers including the Socceroos squad, Adelaide City, and the two Brisbane national league clubs. After the Adelaide match, the Australian Jewish Times reported: “In spite of the problems apparent, there were several bright aspects to the game, such as good performances by Alec Roberson and goalie Alan Farley”. My pen portrait in the Queensland Soccer Federation program for the games in Brisbane said “Goalkeeper Alan Farley has come up through the club’s junior ranks and is one of the most promising players in Sydney”. The result overall was nine wins and no goals conceded, including winning the Rosso Antico Cup against the likes of Marconi and Western Suburbs. Yet when it came to the first game of the NSL season, I was once again dropped without a word of discussion and it wasn’t good man management to say the least.
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| Joe Watson with the ball for Hakoah in the pre-season match against Adelaide City 1977 |
The Philip’s League (NSL) setup provided an initial blast of excitement and the travelling to interstate matches added to atmosphere for the players. There was a genuine buzz at Hakoah’s first official national league match played in front of a large crowd against Fitzroy at Middle Park in Melbourne, ending in a 3-1 Hakoah win. However, it soon became evident that the average playing standard in the NSL wasn’t much different to the better contests in the old NSW first division and the crowds were often of similar size. A disadvantage for the fans was that they couldn’t watch their team every week. Network TEN’s TV coverage wasn’t live and consisted of a weekly highlights program called ‘Top Soccer’, at one stage threatened with the axe unless costs were cut although ratings were reasonable.
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| NSL action from Hakoah v Adelaide City (stripes) in Sydney 1977 |
Each club in the NSL only fielded two teams (firsts and reserves) and the reserves competition was disjointed because those sides didn’t travel interstate. I was selected to play in the Hakoah reserves team at the Sydney Sportsground in our first home game of the season and it was a poor display from the opening minutes with our goal constantly being threatened. The only mistake the opposition made was to try to walk the ball into the net and I became increasingly determined it wasn’t going to happen. Somehow it was still 0-0 at half time when former Hakoah coach David McLaren (ex-Wolverhampton Wanderers goalkeeper) came into the dressing room and pointed at me, declaring ‘this goalkeeper is a one man team’ such was the lop-sided balance of play. Each player must take responsibility for his own performance and no player is immune from the occasional poor match but it was alarming that Hakoah had fielded such an under-prepared team. I was glad that I wasn’t required to play in the second half. David McLaren went on to coach South Melbourne in the national league in 1978, having asked during 1977 whether I had an interest in joining that club but leaving Sydney wasn't an option for me at that time.
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| I'm at Hakoah pre-season training in Brisbane 1977 |
I eventually came back into the Hakoah first team against Adelaide City with a 6-1 victory and played in the next several matches with a reasonable run of results. In that time we’d risen from mid-table to contesting top place in the league, reducing the gap to only two points. On its day this Hakoah team could dominate any other in the competition but didn’t always play to its full potential. Possibly what pulled the side through on those off days was the improved level of fitness thanks to new conditioning coach Gerry Lissing from the University of NSW where I’d been studying. Ultimately another team selection and man management issue arose and I decided to leave the club. The headline in the Sunday Telegraph read: “Top Goalie’s Shock Move”. There was no point in being there if I was likely to be warming the reserves bench in the future when my form and match statistics actually justified a place in the team. I opted to concentrate on my university studies instead and a subsequent monetary offer by Hakoah didn’t address what I saw as the fundamental issue: maximizing and not wasting the potential of young Australian players. A very prominent figure in Australian soccer later commented to me that it just wasn’t worth the effort in the environment that then existed in the local game, especially given that full time professionalism had yet to arrive. Frank Arok (ex-Socceroos & St George coach) summed up the situation nicely when he said: “Ours (soccer) is basically a game of confidence. Confidence in your own ability and in the people who are your leaders, as well as confidence in the society to appreciate your contribution”. All three factors must be in place, not just one or two.
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| I'm on the left playing for Hakoah against Adelaide City in the NSL 1977 |
I nevertheless had some great experiences playing for Hakoah and my last game for the club was a 4-3 victory against top of the table Western Suburbs at the Sydney Sportsground. The photograph below comes from that game and was published in the Sun-Herald newspaper. Despite some hiccups Hakoah won the inaugural NSL champions title that year in 1977 and when the club controversially withdrew from the national league in 1987, it remained the most successful club in Australian soccer history. The Hakoah name changed to Sydney City in 1978 with a view to expanding the fan base but the club became increasingly frustrated by the lack of vision for the future of the game and could not justify further investment in light of falling attendances. It proved that winning silverware alone would not yield overall success in Australian soccer. The ultimate irony is that the Australia Cup won by Hakoah in 1968 was found in the rubble when the Hakoah club in Hall Street Bondi was demolished in 2011 to make way for apartments.
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| This Sun-Herald photo had the caption "Alan Farley makes a superb save" from the Hakoah v Wests NSL match 1977. Also in the frame are Peter Wilson (Wests No.5) and Murray Barnes (Hakoah No.7) |
What benefited young Australian players in the 1980s was the increasing globalization of soccer which resulted in overseas clubs opening their doors to foreigners including Australians, thereby putting more polish on the end product. An important stepping stone in this period was the formation of the Australian Under 17 team (Joeys) and the Australian Under 20 team (Young Socceroos) which gave young players excellent experience and put their names into the global marketplace. Yet when Frank Arok stepped down as Socceroos coach in 1990, he noted some crucial issues in a White Paper that he submitted to the Australian Soccer Federation on modernizing Australian soccer. Arok observed that talented young players weren’t receiving the high quality training and soccer education required to reach their potential. He went on to say that the knowledge of coaches working in Australia and the quality of training was unacceptable and not up to European standards, including the National League. Arok also recommended that the National League clubs should be restricted to only two foreign players who’d have to be of first class pedigree. It’s not known what action if any was taken by the ASF but it reinforced the advice of Dettmar Cramer nearly twenty years earlier.
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| Frank Arok biography |
In the late 1990s I had business dealings with Andrew Lederer, the former team manager (and vice president) of Hakoah and later the Socceroos. He invited me to meet with him at his office in Westfield Towers in Sydney and we spent much longer talking about soccer than business. It was good to catch up with him to remember the great days of Hakoah and the Socceroos. Former Hakoah president Frank Lowy went on to be appointed as Chairman of Football Federation Australia (FFA) in 2003, remaining in the role until November 2015. He oversaw the introduction of the fully professional ‘A-League’ in 2005 that broadened the appeal of Australian club soccer across the country and he was instrumental in improving the business model by bringing a great deal more money into the game. The Socceroos also qualified for three successive World Cups during his time, including Australia’s best international result to date in reaching the second round (round of sixteen) in 2006 that notably coincided with the peak number of Australians playing at a high level for overseas clubs. These achievements have been extremely beneficial but not all of the past problems have been solved.
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| Hakoah was 'Team of the Month' with Ray Baartz on the cover of Australian Soccer Monthly in June 1970 |
From the perspective of developing Australian players in the present day, the signs are disturbing that the Australian Under 17 team has failed to qualify for the last three World Cups and the Australian Under 20 team has not qualified for the last two World Cups. As a comparison, the best World Cup result previously achieved by the Under 17 side was second in 1999 (losing on penalties to Brazil in the final) while the Under 20 side was fourth in 1993 (the year Australia was host). And for good measure, the senior Socceroos’ results at the 2014 World Cup were the worst out of Australia’s four World Cup appearances to date with three straight defeats while the campaign to qualify for the 2018 World Cup has so far been the least successful since Australia joined the Asian Football confederation in 2006, mitigated only partially by an Asian Cup triumph in 2015. Additionally, the Australian soccer players union (PFA) confirmed in 2017 that the number of Australians playing in the top five European league competitions has declined by 80 percent in the last ten years. The A-League still allows a conspicuous proportion of imported players and they aren’t always of first class pedigree, noting that A-League teams will be permitted five imported players in 2018/19. Despite the victory of Western Sydney Wanderers in the Asian Champions League in 2014, A-League clubs have frequently struggled in matches against overseas clubs (winning only 33% of ACL games from 2007 to 2017) and the overseas clubs have often been better resourced. On top of all that is a serious governance dispute in mid-2017 between FIFA and FFA as well as between FFA and the A-League. Whatever the outcome, the imperative is that it’s in the best interests of Australian soccer from top to bottom and the fundamental issue remains that Australian soccer will not have sustainable success unless it can consistently produce its own high quality players. There is still some serious work to be done.
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| Original sticker for the Socceroos World Cup qualifiers in 1973 |
