About Me

Updated on: 16 May 2008

I’m A Footballing Convert

I moved to Australia from China when I was about five and grew up in sports mad Melbourne. I followed AFL and I thought that football was boring and unbearable to watch due to the lack of scoring compared to AFL. I moved to Sydney during high school and only became interested in the game through playing the old Championship Manager series. This was combined with a weekly dose of English Premiership highlights that SBS use to run on Monday nights. I’ve been obsessed ever since.

I’m pretty sure I started off playing as goalkeeper. This is probably because I was pretty good with my hands due to my AFL and basketball background although it was probably mainly due to my lack of feet co-ordination.

Footballing Memories

First live games I went to see were at the old NSL out at Parramatta stadium. You could literally count the number of people in the stadium. We had no clue who the players were so we just made up names for them according to which European player they resembled. Ahmad Elrich was only a kid when I saw him in those games but he clearly a cut above the rest. I’m still hoping he kicks on and finds a place to settle down with his football.

First decent game I watched live was the Olyroos against New Zealand in a qualifier for the Olympics, again at Parramatta stadium. It was actually kind of weird being amongst a crowd of people at a football game, we got use to having the stadium to ourselves. It was a pretty uninspired affair until Nick Carle came on and completely charged the game with his daring play, taking on players and trying through balls that no one else would. He has been a favourite of mine ever since.

There are all sorts of other footballing memories that come to mind: being amongst the Iraqi fans when Australia played them in a friendly, Viduka’s bicycle kick goal against Fiji when I was in the toilet and of course, the most famous memory of all, Aloisi’s penalty kick against Uruguay.

West Ham Til I Die

In terms of the clubs I follow, I guess I support Sydney FC by default. I have a soft spot for Melbourne cause I still have fond memories of growing up there. When I first started following football, I supported Leeds. This was more or less by default cause it was the only club I knew anything about because Kewell and Viduka were playing for the Yorkshire club back then.

I am now a bona fide West Ham fan. I’m not going to pretend that I supported West Ham from the start, or try and justify switching allegiances. I guess the only thing I can say is that I didn’t jump ship when Leeds went downhill. They were still Premiership contenders back then and West Ham were a middle table club. I guess as punishment for breaking the unwritten law of never changing the club you support, West Ham were relegated a few seasons after I started supporting them. For two seasons, I rarely got to watch my team play.

Why did I start supporting West Ham? One player, Paolo Di Canio. The fascist Italian very much did things his own way. From getting teammates to flip the ball up to him at set-pieces so he could try and volley it in to repeatedly doing the chip penalty, you could expect anything from the Italian and he would still find a way to surprise you.

Whats Happening Now?

I’m living in Sydney, I get down to several A-league games every season and I’ve been to all the Australian games played here for the last few years.

I’m lucky in that I have a genuine ‘football family’. It might be just a group of people who play every Sunday but it’s a great way to keep in touch with people that you probably would have otherwise lost contact with. That is people who use to go to school with, work with or friends of friends. We’re even had a few randoms that have turned up that have really become core members of the group.

If you guys ever get sick of reading and talking about the game, perhaps it is time to go out there and enjoy the beautiful game. We play our games on Sundays from about 4.30pm. You can find us at Henley Park, Enfield (which is just down the road from Burwood) in Sydney. I’m called the angry old name because you’ll constantly be hearing my voice, shouting at you to keep the ball on the ground, spread it out to the wings or carry the ball forward. For those interested in coming to play with some footballing tragics, just leave a message in the comments.

I recent became a columist for the Green & Gold Army so look out for my work on that site as well as this blog.