Feature

Football’s Pacific solution

While Australian football makes the most of its presence in the powerful Asian Football Confederation, it has an opportunity to be a major player in the development of Oceania Football Confederation member countries like Fiji.

Les Fiji

Les on the pitch at ANZ Stadium, Suva. Source: Supplied

Recently in Sydney, Fiji’s Under-20 team lost 2-1 to its Colombian equivalent in a warm-up game for the . Fiji  - with Frank Farina acting as technical adviser, by the way - will be in New Zealand for that event as the first team from that country to ever participate in a FIFA world tournament.

It was a mark of Fiji’s progress as a football nation, a small but not insignificant country in the South Pacific, population 858,000. Australia should have taken note. After all, Fiji is a neighbour with whom we have some football history, including a World Cup qualifier in 1988 in Nadi, which I attended and which we lost.

On a recent visit to Fiji I had a chance to meet with some stakeholders in Fiji football, including the Fijian Sports Commission and Fiji Airways* which has an interest in promoting football in that country. It is the funder and promoter of an upcoming game in Suva between Wellington Phoenix and the Fijian national team on 27 June.

On the trip I was driven to wonder what Australia is doing to promote football in Fiji and in the South Pacific region generally. How active are we in the region and are we doing enough? Is it in our interest to give a leg up to football in the Pacific?

Australia left the Oceania Football Confederation in 2005 and joined Asia. Fine. But for all that we are still part of the region, geographically tied to Oceania. And we have, I believe, remaining and residual responsibilities to help football grow in the region.

Of course an Australian contribution to football in Fiji is not new. In 1976 Johnny Warren spent six months in Fiji coaching the country’s national team and its various youth teams. Other Pacific nations variously had Australian national coaches in the past. Another Australian, Jim Selby, was the Oceania Football Confederation’s technical director for four years until 2009.

Currently the Australian government and Football Federation Australia (FFA) jointly fund a program called Just Play, which contributed $4 million to sports development, including football, in the Pacific. The program includes technical elements.

But I believe our involvement could be greater and more hands on.

In February I also met with the secretary general of the New Caledonian Football Federation, Nicolas Guillemard, who confessed to having no relationship with FFA. Yet this is the country that produced a player like World Cup winner Christian Karembeu, who represented France and played for Real Madrid.

Most young players in New Caledonia, which is a ‘French collectivity’, naturally gravitate towards France. But why not Australia? Basically, I suspect, because Australia is not interested in harnessing and developing their football talent.

Yet, as we saw with Karembeu and now Fiji's Roy Krishna, there is real talent in the Pacific.

What is most needed is good coaches and good coaching. Australia could be more active in sending coaching emissaries to the region on a regular basis. We now have a quality coach education set-up with the UEFA coaching courses. In my view each year a small number of scholarships to these courses could be awarded to Fijians, for example.

Fiji’s national team is currently in dire straits because it doesn’t play any games. Its FIFA ranking is so low, 196, that nobody wants to play against it. Its last official game was against Papua New Guinea in June 2012, nearly three years ago. Not sure what coach Jean Carlos Buzzetti does with his time.

We could improve on this too by inviting the Fiji national team to Australia to play games, if not against the Socceroos, some other selection. The Fijians desperately need game time.

For all that, football is popular in Fiji, especially with the Indian community, which makes up 35 per cent of the population. The day I arrived in Nadi the country was in elation over its rugby sevens team having just qualified for the Rio Olympic Games. Yet the taxi drivers who gathered outside the airport terminal talked about nothing but football.

The government in Fiji gives generous funding support to football. Cleverly it doesn’t give funds to the local football association but allocates its funding directly. It pays the salary of the national coach, all the youth national coaches, covers the international travel costs of all Fiji’s national teams and funds elite youth development programs.

For all its inactivity, Fiji’s national team has a splendid home in the new 25,000 capacity ANZ Stadium in Suva, a far cry from the rather pedestrian suburban ground in Nadi, where Australia lost 1-0 in a World Cup qualifier in 1988.

Australian football has grown a lot since that time but, sadly, football in Fiji has not. Australian football now has the credibility and kudos to give valuable help to Fiji. Fiji needs better development coaching and an active national team, which is strong relative to the country’s size.

Australia can help and should.

* Les Murray’s travel to Fiji was covered by Fiji Airways.


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5 min read
Published 20 May 2015 9:40am
Updated 20 May 2015 12:35pm
By Les Murray

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