Canberra Short Shorts

Kaz Patafta, Shaun Ontong, Ben Williams, Steve O'Connor, AIS, Youth League lots of Canberra football news here.


Kaz Patafta meets Les Murray Sunday 5pm. Canberra and Melbourne Victory's Kaz Patafta will be on SBS The World Game on Sunday around 5pm. Sir Les will interview Kaz.

Kaz Patafta and Shaun Ontong. Mates in Asia.
In the week when Nikolai Topor-Stanley is named in his first Socceroos squad, Kaz Patafta and Shaun Ontong were playing in Australia's most successful Asian Champions League night..ever.

Kaz came on for Victory in their 2-0 win over Chunnam (Korean Cup winners) and Shaun was on the bench in Pohang City, Korea as Adelaide United won 2-0.

The lads who used to do extra training together running up Black Mountain are reaping the rewards now.

Referee Ben Williams
What did you do on Wednesday. Get stuck on The Tuggers Parkway, struggle to park in Civic, bunked school, late home from the office.

Ben Williams was in Iran refereeing Sepahan in their 2-0 defeat to Syrian side Al Ittihad

Steve O'Connor
How fast do you have to be to play International Football. Well Steve say's 3.25 seconds over 20 metres is to slow. Test yourself today!!

Brett Emerton was around 2.7 secs at age 15. The Gympie flyer James Downey at Perth Glory is similarly quick.

Australian Institute of Sport
It's beeen along time since we've had four players in an AIS side from Canberra. Kofi Danning, Sam Munro, Dane Milovanovic and Ivan Pavlak are all playing in an AIS side that is joint top of the VPL after 3 games.

And you can imagine they have had to take a bit of physical stuff over the last couple of years from other teams not used to losing to kids.

"It's been so bad, sometimes I want to get my kit on and get out there. But the lads have learnt and this year they are starting to give it back just a little. They are looking after themselves better. In one game last year we had three guys off with blood injuries at the same time," said AIS Coach Steve O'Connor

Youth League..first ray of light for Canberra football?
The FFA are interested in Canberra making up the 8th team in the Youth League next year. In conjunction with the Wellington Phoenix or as a stand alone team it's too early to say.

Finances would be the only thing stopping us. Time to get our thinking hats on Canberrans.

With the Youth League offering $5,000 a season the four Canberrans in the current AIS squad would probably prefer to stay in a Canberra Youth side then head off to one of the other seven Australian Youth teams.