Johnston wants back in fold
By Paul Mulvey in London
September 27, 2005
AFTER a 20-year stand-off, Craig Johnston is ready to play his long-awaited major role in Australian football.
Golden era ... Johnston is Australia's greatest football export.
Johnston's induction into the Hall of Champions last week marked a healing in his relationship with the administrators, and he feels the time is right to return to the fold.
With a European Cup and FA Cup winner's medals, five English league championships, two League Cup winner's medals and three Charity Shields, Johnston has won more major prizes than every other Australian player put together.
Yet he had been overlooked for an official honour because he never played for his country ö the biggest regret of his life.
"I've been ignored for 20 years but now it's heartening to get some recognition," Johnston said.
"Since I left home as a 15 year old, I've always been a very proud Australian.
"I always wanted to do my part for Australian soccer.
"But I could never find the people I could trust to work with, but now's the time."
Johnston, 45, is impressed with Football Federation Australia chief executive John O'Neill and chairman Frank Lowy, and he says every change they have made is good for the game in Australia.
Johnston has had talks with O'Neill and Lowy, who signed him as a 15 year old to Sydney club Hakoah, and he is awaiting their response to his offer of help. "I really liked what I saw of them and respect them as businessmen, they are clearly good operators," he said.
"I've told them I've always had an overriding desire to put back into the game especially at a youth development level, and because of their involvement, the time is right for me to do something really big and powerful in Australia.
"There's been this disconnect, the cynics accused me of being disloyal, unpatriotic and that hurts. The biggest regret I have in my professional playing career is not playing for Australia.
"I firmly believe I could do far more now for youth development than I ever could as a player."
The disconnect dates back to Johnston's bold move as a 15 year old to invite himself to trial with English club Middlesbrough in 1975.
Johnston's parents sold their house in Newcastle, New South Wales, to finance his trip, but he was stuck in the north-east of England after Boro manager Jack Charlton called the mop-haired teenager "the worst player I have ever seen".
A severe groin injury rendered him helpless and in hospital, so he turned to the Australian Soccer Federation asking for an airfare home.
"It was the lowest point of my life and I needed help," Johnston said.
"When I called the Australian Soccer Federation, they totally ignored me. They said 'no, don't know who you are, can't help you' and hung up on me.
"Two years later, I made the first team at Middlesbrough and the same administrators rang me and said 'we'll fly you home for the next match'.
"You can guess what I said to them. So it goes back a long way.
"I am a very proud Australian but I was young and headstrong and I reacted badly to the fact the administrators had discarded me."
Johnston was also cornered by both Middlesbrough and Liverpool, who made it clear that he would probably not have a first-team place if he went to play for Australia.
"As far as I was concerned, every weekend I played for Middlesbrough and Liverpool, I was representing Australia," Johnston said.
"Aussie fans would travel to Anfield to see me play and I would light up with pride."
Most of the two years between Charlton's blunt buttessment and Johnston's selection as Middlesbrough's youngest player in history was spent in the Boro car park, hiding from Charlton, kicking a ball against walls, around garbage cans and at targets.
For up to six hours a day, seven days a week, the "mad man" in the car park worked on his skills while living with Boro great Graeme Souness, who convinced his teammates to pay Johnston for washing their cars and cleaning their boots.
When Charlton moved to Sheffield Wednesday, Johnston's hours of solo practice paid off as John Neill took over as Boro manager and gave the teenager his break at the age of 17.
He was then signed in 1980 by Liverpool, where Johnston said he was "the worst player in the world's best team".
Which was still good enough to score the winning goal in the 1986 FA Cup final and to be a crucial midfield cog in Liverpool's golden era.
A prolific inventor and designer since his last league game in 1988, Johnston has applied the drills through which he put himself in the car park to create the FIFA-endorsed Supaskills training program.
He wants to spend five months a year in Australia, coaching youth and running Supaskills, which operates a global ratings standard similar to a golf handicap.
But he also wants a role with the national team in its perennial struggle to reach the World Cup finals.
"The new structure looks good," Johnston said. "One day I would like to get involved from top to bottom."
Mark Lawrenson, Daily Post, Sep 27 2005Another thread descends into a witless slanging match with no actual relevance what so ever. The number of threads that start off as a promising discussion but rapidly descend into useless...
Which pretty much sums up the depth of his experience in most levels of football as player, coach, administrator and inventor.
He enjoyed huge success when he invented the Predator boot for adidas, and its successor, the Pig, which earned him a place in the final four of the 2004 British Designer of the Year award.
But, let down by investors, he has emerged from a year of bankruptcy, and he is philosophical about the experience.
"Sport, business and life are pretty much the same in the way that you have your ups and your downs," he said.
"I'd like to think my experience can benefit Australian youngsters whatever their dreams."
AAP
