Fan of the Week – Shaun Mooney
We sat down with the Shaun Mooney and spoke all things football, including some questions about Leopold Method.
A-League Team…
Western Sydney Wanderers
Other football teams
AC Milan
First Football memory ?
1986 World Cup. Diego Maradona and the Danish Dynamite.
Favourite Football memory ?
16th November 2005. Being at the stadium as we qualified for the World Cup. Not a bad way to spend your birthday.
Best/Worst A-League moment ?
The 2011 Grand Final between Brisbane Roar and Central Coast Mariners, where Roar came back from 0-2 down in the extra time to equal the game and win on penalties. Worst moment would have to be the period where clubs likes North Queensland Fury and Gold Coast United folded.
If you could recruit one A-League player from another club who would it be?
Fahid Ben Kalfallah
If you could make ONE change to the A-League what would It be ?
Expanding the size of the competition which will happen in the next media rights deal.
Where would you locate the 11th A-League team and why?
Sutherland looks most likely the next option and it’s hard to argue against this decision. To extract more money out of the next media rights deal, FFA needs teams to come from large capital cities.
How do you rate the recent performance of the Socceroos ?
I’m probably not the best person to make a judgement on the performance of the team. I’ll leave that stuff to the analysts and experts. From a fan’s perspective, of course I want things to be better.
Which opposition would you choose to play the Socceroos and where would you play the match ?
Argentina at Homebush. But I’m being selfish here.
Where will the Socceroos be ranked in four years time ?
Your guess is as good as mine. Hopefully we’re not in 3 digit territory by then.
Favourite Current player and why ?
Andreas Iniesta. I can watch him all day. His touch, vision and passing is sublime.
Favourite player of all time ?
Brian Laudrup
Your ALL TIME XI (with a catch) You must have seen them play live.
1993 AC Milan team (which I did see live when they came out here to play the Socceroos). Brian Laudrup did play for Milan, but only for 9 games unfortunately, but I would have him in that team but under these rules I can’t. I would replace the keeper Sebastiano Rossi with Peter Schmeichel because he’s the best keeper I’ve ever seen. Maradona would have to fit in there in the 10, you can’t leave him out. There’s some pretty good players in this team: Baresi, Maldini, Costacurta, Boban, Desailly, Donadoni, Papin and Savicevic.
What made you start Leopold Method:
Like most new media births they start off being a selfish endeavour with a point to prove. It all started with a Twitter debate with some mainstream journalists on how football is covered in this country. Myself, Kate Cohen and Tim Palmer (and others that joined the conversation) argued that the Australian football community needed more in-depth match analysis and also more focus on grassroots issues. We were told that the Australian football community was not ready for this type of long-form analysis and that no one really cared about the tiers below A-League level.
So we decided to collaborate and see if we could prove them wrong. It took about a month from the conception to the launch, and the response from the outset was a little bit overwhelming. We knew there was a market out there, but did not expect to get that type of traction so soon.
What is the main thing you and the team want to achieve from Leopold Method?
There’s probably 3 main objectives: improve the quality of our work, develop a sustainable model that remunerates all of our contributors and developing a pipeline of talented contributors.
With the first edition of Leopold Method now available to buy, what is next for your talented team?
We’ve expanded our team from 4 to 12 contributors over the last 2 years. On top of the website and the Quarterly Print Edition, we have also launched a 1-hour radio show on 2SER. So over the short and medium term, our focus is on making sure all of these components work and we are always improving.
How important is quality football coverage in Australia to you and the team at LM
I would say quality is much more important than the quantity. But I would add to that it is important to provide a point of difference. There are a lot of media and blog sites out there all chasing the same eyeballs. People can only can consume so much, so the challenge is to break through the clutter and be relevant to your target audience. I wouldn’t profess to be an expert on media, and would be loathe to pass this on as advice. It is, however, the approach I take when deciding what is the right content for our market – hopefully it works.
How can we get our hands on the first edition of LM, and where else can we find LM coverage.
You can purchase Leopold Method Quarterly Edition on our site www.leopoldmethod.com.au. We are also on the radio every Sunday afternoon on 2SER 107.3 FM between 5:00 – 6:00pm.
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