The Weekender: Football into Asia: What impact on Canberra?

The Weekender is 450-700 words every Saturday on Australian and/or Canberra Football in it's broadest sense. Anyone can write the article. Feel free to contact me with a suggestion.

This week I look at Australia's move into Asia and particularly to assess the impact on Canberra.

And I'm off to the Canberra 20/20 Summit today. And I'm taking my football so everyone knows what I want to talk about:)

Read the Weekender here.

Football into Asia: What impact on Canberra?

On January 1, 2006 Australian Football joined the Asia Football Confederation.

The impact for football in this country has been significant.

The Socceroos now play meaningful games to qualify for the World Cup; the Matildas missed out on Olympic qualification for the first time. Club sides like Sydney FC and Adelaide United travel regularly to play in Indonesia, Japan, Korea and China to play in the Asia Champions League (ACL). Perth Glory, Melbourne Victory and Central Coast Mariners have all toured Asian countries since 2006.

More Asian sponsors, like Samsung, are appearing on A-League club shirts.

More than 1200 Urawa Reds fans travelled to watch an ACL game in Sydney. Local Asian communities can be seen supporting Asian teams in ACL.

But you could be forgiven for thinking that this move has had no impact on Canberra. Canberra, as the Guardian reported this week, is one of the few Capital cities in the World without a professional football team.

Even in Canberra the move to Asia has been felt.

Canberra’s two current Socceroos, Carl Valeri and Nikolai Topor-Stanley, cross the globe to China, Jordan, Thailand, North Korea and elsewhere on a regular basis these days.

Some wag suggested Topor-Stanley moved to Perth Glory so he wouldn’t have to travel for ACL games!

Matildas and Young Matildas stars Caitlin Munoz, Lydia Williams, Grace McGrath-Gill, and Amy Chapman are all becoming familiar with Asia. Lydia Williams spent two months in China; firstly playing for the Matildas in the World Cup, then joining her Under 19 team mates for the Asian Cup immediately after.

Chris Bush, Australia under 17, is one of four local boys to represent The Joeys in Japan last year. Chris has just returned from Singapore and the Lion’s Cup. Next stop Uzbekistan in October.

Danny Macor and Trent Flanigan represented Australia in the KL World 5’s in February. Macor would have, I imagine, got the shock of his life to answer the phone in his Singapore hotel to find it was a football writer from Canberra wanting to know how the Futsalroos were going to do Brazil in a few hours time.

They lost 7-0, no surprise there, but 310 million people watched the game across Asia.

ANU stalwart Rod Lynes recently did a phone interview for Nearpost radio giving his impressions of Melbourne Victory play in Bangkok and the Socceroos v China in Kunming. Rod was at both games.

Referees Ben Wilson, Ben Williams and Allyson Flynn blow their whistle across the continent. From Iran to Japan, often in midweek.

Woden Valley under 15 girls side stopped in China for a game two years ago, this year it’s Japan as they head to Denmark for the Dane Cup.

ACTAS boys recently spent ten days playing and training in China.

Andy Munoz, Weston Creek State League One Coach, headed to China to watch his daughter in the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

The Asian pebble has been tossed

While Canberra may not yet have a professional team which travels and plays in Asia. Football Federation Australia’s 2006 move into the AFC is rippling, slowly, across the city.

More and more individuals, and occasionally a team, are saying to their friends, ‘I can’t come to the school play, the party or birthday celebration because I’m off to Asia for football’!

No longer do Canberrans go to Asia to see Bali, to stopover on their way to Europe. Now our young people are going to Asia to train, to play football.

Where will we be in twenty years?

At the moment it is unstructured, unplanned. Individuals and individual clubs building a pathway, a future, a tradition.

A youth team, a women’s team, a Futsal national team, an A-league team. All will come to Canberra in time. All will head to Asia. A Futsal team from Canberra may well play in an Asia League before 2008 is out.

And slowly our club sides, adults and juniors will also look north. Cheaper than Europe, it’s closer too. Our young people mix easily with people from many different cultures. And Asian sides will come here as well. Not just for the Kanga Cup as they already do.

The benefits of Australia moving into Asia may not be immediately apparent, but when you dig deeper there are many Canberrans, learning new routes, making friends with our Northern neighbours.

For our city, our future, this has to be a good thing.
We’ve only just begun.