Mark: I’d be scared to have six weeks off. I wouldn’t know what to do… It still takes you four or five days to wind down. Even now [just 12 hours after the Socceroos played Japan in a World Cup qualifier] I’m thinking, ‘OK, what are we doing today, are we training? Where are we going?’ It’s kind of like that – it takes me five or six days to wind down then I’d probably have two weeks of being completely rested. And the last week or so I’d be thinking, ‘Oh gosh, I’ve got to start thinking of doing some work in training, I’ve got to be right for going back to pre-season’.

Harry: You’d probably have a period of, say, two weeks, where you’d do completely nothing. But in that two weeks you’d still maybe go play golf, you’d play tennis, or some sport activity just to keep you going…

Let’s talk player development in the national team. We’ve been lucky to enjoy the contributions of this so-called “Golden Generation” of Socceroos. What’s your take on this next generation coming through who’ll likely be the back-bone of the Socceroos for years to come?

Mark: I think we’re on a little bit of a cross-roads. We’ve got a sort of group of players who’ve played in the A-League or gone over a little earlier before playing in the A-League and are the ones supposedly taking the next step, you know, up to the national team.

But at the moment, none of them are playing regular football. And that’s that transitional period. When I first went overseas I spent two-and-a-half years without playing regular first team football. So it’s kind of
one of those transitional periods for some of these guys

Harry: But that’s a different thing in that you’re a keeper. It’s a different ball-game…

Mark: For sure, as an outfield player you’re generally …if you’re in the squad and get an opportunity to come on and off quite regularly but as a goalkeeper you don’t – you either play or you don’t play generally.

But I think at the moment we’re at a period where this group of players are either going to make it or they’re going to come back to the A-League or go to a lower league to start playing games. So we’ve got some players who’ve got ability and talent but at the moment that’s it because they’re not showing it week-in-week-out. And they haven’t as yet had the opportunity to show it week-in-week-out.

Harry does it worry you?

Harry: You know what? I won’t sit on the fence. I’d say yeah. These young boys have got talent. They’ve got a lot of what we had as youngsters.

Do they have the same desire?

Harry: [pauses]. That’s the difference, I think. You say the golden generation, the players who’ve played for the big clubs and are still playing there. There’s something different about them that. As a footballer who is single-minded, you want to play. And you see a lot of young players coming through now that they play maybe half a game for the first team then they don’t. As soon as they’ve played that half a game they think they’ve made it. You know? And it’s a shame. They get that nice car, they get this they get that and they think, ‘Oh, I’m there now’. That’s the biggest foul in football really. It sends them on the wrong path straight away.

Too soon, too easy?

Harry: [pauses] When I grew up, it was tough. You know? I started off cleaning footballs, cleaning boots, doing the whole process of learning my trade and I think that’s a big thing. I think you need to learn your trade. You need to start from the bottom and once you get a chance you think to yourself, ‘Well I ain’t going back down there again. I want to stay up there’. I just think the young kids here, they’ve got all the necessary skills but I don’t think they know exactly how to use them yet. And a lot of the clubs they choose are maybe not the right clubs for them. But then that’s down to them. You’re a young man you’ve got to make your own decisions. I haven’t made the right decisions in my career but you live and learn by them – and that’s the only way you can learn in football. But they’ve got it – they just need to tap into a little more.

Schwarzy, agree with that? Maybe that ruthless desire some of you older guys have isn’t as prevalent?

Mark: 100%. Because, you know times have changed and it’s like anything we’ve experienced how football can be and what it used to be like playing for the national team and how difficult it can be. You didn’t have a lot of respect when playing for your country when people didn’t regard you very highly when you were overseas.

The younger guys are coming into a national team that’s a ‘brand’ now, aren’t they…

Mark: 100%. It is very much like Harry says a lot of younger players these days, because of the money in the game and players get rewarded very, very quickly and often get rewarded for doing very, very little. And it’s actually more detrimental to them rather than doing them any good most of the time. And that’s probably one of the hardest things for these younger players coming through to understand. It’s not always guaranteed that if you go overseas and join a club that you’re going to be playing regularly for your national team. I’ve always said you’ve got to be playing regular first team football to warrant selection in the national team.

I know they’ve all come along at different times in your careers and in the national team’s history, but who is the Socceroo manager you look back on as being the best?

Harry: Hiddink for me. He for me knew the game inside and out and he knew how to get the best out of us. I mean, when we were training I could see how he was looking at players, how he knew how to push players, how to get the best out of players but he knew when to stop it as well, because we’re quite feisty. So we’re happy to throw challenges in and he can ride them but he knew when to stop it. But he just knew how to play the game.

Would you agree with Harry?

Mark: …l mean big managers make big decisions whether or not you’re happy with them or not. That’s just a fact of life whether you’re playing in a club team or a national team. He [Hiddink] changed the whole mentality and ethos of the national team. Without a doubt. We went from being a team that over the years really I thought lacking in discipline and direction in a lot of ways to some would say possibly going the other way when it came to discipline and direction.

But he was in it for a very, very short period of time, perhaps only around seven or eight months with the national team and he had a goal. And that was the only goal he ever had and like Harry said he knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish. And he knew by looking at the players looking at the team he knew a system he wanted to play. He had an idea of what the best he could get out of players and that’s what he went for and he was driven for that.

I don’t know whether he could’ve continued to manage the team like he did for a longer period of time. I think for that period of time it was the best possible opportunity.

It was a great experience and obviously my experiences and relationship is well documented over the years in regard to how I felt about it all [being dropped at the World Cup] but as a manager he was very good, very switched on and knew exactly what he wanted, what he wanted to accomplish and how he wanted the team to play.

You know, even carrying on from that and a lot of people didn’t like Pim [Verbeek] but I thought he again had a goal and an objective and we accomplished it. From the outside world no-one’s said it was easy to qualify for the World Cup and I think that’s been lost in potentially with his persona and the way he communicated with the media and outside world. But what he accomplished you can’t take that away. And the way we accomplished qualification for 2010 was excellent. Again that’s continuing on again. What we’ve done since then we’ve been able to carry on that similar ethos with the manager and the way discipline is in the team and that’s continued with Holger [Osieck].

He’s very much his own man and he makes his own decisions. It’s all about trying to get the best result for a game and not necessarily thinking, ‘OK these are my best players and regardless of the situation I’m going to play them’. He’s looking at each game individually and going, ‘Alright, at this moment in time I need these guys and that’s what I’m going to do’. And that’s what he does and it’s worked well for him
so far.

Harry names Hiddink, who would you name?

Mark: The three that we’ve had most recently stand out the most, without a doubt. And don’t get me wrong, Frank [Farina] gave me the chance to come back into the national team after a long time and Eddie Thomson gave me my debut so there’s a lot of history there as well. But these last three managers have been very influential in the whole direction of the way the game’s evolved in this country.

Harry, I was there that day you arrived at Melbourne airport for Melbourne Victory. Schwarzy, did you see that?

Mark: No I didn’t

Harry: Don’t lie! [cue more laughter]

FFT: You must have!