Fan of the Week – Adam Howard
First football memory is a tough one. I spent the first 12 years of my life in a small country town in South Australia called Wallaroo and there was absolutely no football. The only football I would see was on the news when they would give the score round ups. When I moved up to Adelaide and went to CBC my friends were from many different backgrounds many of who loved football. So my clearest early football memory would’ve been playing in the school yard pretending to be Papin, Gullit, Boban etc. The Serie A was huge at my school then.
Favourite football memory would have to be the 2006 World Cup game against Japan. To watch it in Japan with one half of the room going for Australia and the other half of the room going for Japan (Japanese, Kiwis, Brits, etc) was a great experience. The drama of that match and tension in the room heading into the final moments was huge. Obviously drank a few beverages during the game and got called over to another place where they were filming the reactions. Managed to get on TV but probably not the best performance.Adelaide United. Although I’ve lived abroad ever since they’ve existed so have only seen them live three times (Hiroshima, Adelaide, Osaka)
Wow another tough one. There are so many great things happening with the game but there are also things I believe hold the game back from really taking off. The game in Australia seems to be run by marketing people more than passionate football people with business nous. I’d like to see more autonomy given to clubs especially in regards to control over their revenue stream. It’s time FFA took a step back in their governance.
Do I think this would be risk free? Not at all. In fact it in may ways would be riskier. I just think we can learn more from the organic growth of the game than artificial/controlled growth. I also think greater autonomy would allow teams to create their own club culture. A lot of the fans demand things from the clubs without realising in many cases the clubs hands are bound.
I’m also in regular contact with Damian Davies and we swap info or actually he confirms or corrects my info.
As the site has grown more and more footballers and their families have approached me and let me know how they are doing. I’ve also had fans of the site let me know of players. I’m blessed that there is a real interest from so many and a willingness to be open and help.
I’d say obscure in a football sense it would be Myanmar and the Philippines.
Yeah there’s always good prospects coming through. Most who are at the age for the senior team are known at least to the FFA. In fact they are getting better in this regard.
I think young players with a lot of potential would be Panos Armenakas (Watford FC) who has big wraps on him from the likes of Craig Foster and coaches at Barca.
There’s George Mells at Southampton who was earmarked by the Chelsea academy as the player to watch for Southampton this year.
Catania’s Paul Katsetis is another kid who is rated highly in Greece and Italy. He’s just coming back from injury but hopefully he can go on to bigger things in the future.
There’s so many players including those who are still up in the air with who they will play for so I won’t name them as well as guys like Bailey Wright that haven’t been called up yet but are being monitored.
Yeah been blown away from the early support we’ve gotten. Now we need to build on that with quality content. I think we’ve done exceptionally well in getting the fantastic team together that we have.
The idea came from wanting to expand OS Aussies and I had been approached in the past to merge OS with other projects but being a control freak it was hard to let go. However, good sense told me that if I wanted to expand my coverage I couldn’t do it alone so that’s when I approached Jason (Ganter) and Ahmed (Yussuf) about teaming up. I really enjoyed the dealings I had with them in the past and knew they were as passionate as me about offering a new type of coverage.
The site will incorporate everything from the Matildas and Socceroos down to grassroots in every state. We want to offer something for everyone and I don’t mean a token article here and there but to make Football Central the first stop for every football fan. We encourage all contributors to write with sincerity, honesty and passion all within a professional framework. We believe that people want quality articles from real football people minus any overriding agenda. So hopefully this is what the team can deliver.
This may come across as a wishy-washy answer but there are a lot of positives and negatives. I think the coverage of the game is great now we have a complicit broadcaster and also increased participation will lead to increased acceptance in the mainstream. Of course, the Roos are in the mainstream but you have to get the local game there too.
There’s a lot of politicking and egos in the game but at the same time there are a lot of good people with good intentions too. I think we need to weed out those who are putting their own self-interests first and get the right people who actually live for seeing the game dominate the Australian sporting landscape in the right jobs.
We are heading in the right direction though and I’m sure we’re not so far away from football finally showing it’s true potential in Australia.
Your guess is as good as mine. If we maintain the status quo then I don’t have the greatest of confidence. Obviously we would hope for a kind draw but leaving that aside, I think we should look at now as “still having 9 months” rather than “only having 9 months” to get things in order. The worst thing would be to get humiliated by every opponent.
