Hill oversaw Australian football from 1996-1998 and managed to bag one of world football’s most famous coaches - who only a year earlier famously took England to the Semi-Finals of Euro 96.

Venables’ exuberant style saw the Socceroos play an attacking and entertaining brand of football which saw him win his first 12 games in charge. It was a marked difference to the previous eras of Eddie Thompson and Frank Arok which were noted for their defensive approaches.

However unfairly as it may seem, one game would define Venables as coach of Australia. The date that is synonymous with what Australian football fans as the Iran Heartbreak - November 29, 1997.

In front of a then record crowd at the MCG the Socceroos were leading 2-0, but Iran came back to draw 2-2 and clinch the final spot for the 1998 World Cup on the away goals rule.

Hill remembers the aftermath vividly.

“I’ve never seen a worse scene in sport,” he said.

“Alex Tobin who was a very presentable captain was just not physically capable of getting to the press conference.

“Now the FIFA rule is the coach and the captain have to attend but Tobin couldn’t do it. It was awful so I sat next to Venables and all he could say was, ‘gutted, I’m gutted.’

“I was saying ‘that’s football’ – which didn’t help. People wanted more than that. They wanted pain. They wanted blood. They wanted recrimination. 

“I underestimated how upset people were.

”Everyone wanted to see some drastic response. Everybody wanted me to sack Venables but I thought he was fantastic for Australia and I wasn’t going to do that.

“All the established football fraternity wanted some sacrificial bloodletting but I just thought bugger it, Venables is too good for Australia.”

Venables never lost a game in that World Cup qualifying series. In his 24 games as coach he helped Australia achieve a top 30 FIFA world ranking, which before then had never seen the Socceroos able to crack the top 50.

Hill feels that the former Barcelona and English coach achieved a great deal for Australia during his short time.

“That’s another thing that sticks in the craw, to be eliminated from the World Cup qualifying undefeated – that has only happened to one other country - Trinidad and Tobago,” he said.

“Afterwards at that Confederations Cup we got to the final. It’s the highest we’ve ever reached in international football and to do that the week after the crushing elimination from the World Cup was again the measure of Venable’s greatness.”

So how did Australia even mange to sign Venables as coach? In the book, Hill reveals a chance conversation with an admin temp at Soccer Australia, who was on a working holiday knew El Tel from her time at England’s Football Association.

“I didn’t put it in the book but I had to lend her my mobile overnight, because she was an English back packer she didn’t have any money,” he said.

“She was staying in a backpacker’s hostel in Redfern and I dropped her off that night with my mobile phone. That’s how she tracked Venables for me.”

Before Venables came on board, Eddie Thompson had left the national team to coach in Japan and Hill said he was surprised there had been little discussion about who would be his replacement.

“I didn’t know the established process,” he said. “I didn’t tell the board of Soccer Australia. Because soccer was so riddled with cronyism and nepotism and it was usually the strength of personalities pushing their favoured candidates,

“It was only when I was on the plane to England that I told Deputy Chair Basil Scarcela and swore him to secrecy. I said, ‘Can you wait till we get to London and then you phone them and just tell them to shut up about this’. Because it would’ve leaked of course and they wouldn’t have kept that secret. But I knew that if I delivered Venables that the board would love it.”

For the first leg of the qualifier the Socceroos travelled to Iran and Hill recalled a moment before the first leg in Tehran that highlighted Venables’ unique coaching methods.

“We were based in Dubai because we didn’t want to spend too long in Iran,” he said.

“We stayed in a seven- star hotel and we had villas, not apartments or rooms, they were like palaces. Venables and I had lunch together and we just went for a walk around the hotel. The team had trained in the morning and all the players were in their rooms resting because it was bloody hot and they were going to have a lighter training session later in the afternoon.

“We went past these swimming pools and bars and there was one customer who was sitting with this big goblet of brandy and a cigar -and it was Mark Bosnich. Bosnich probably doesn’t remember it but he looked over and raised his glass and said, ‘Mr Chairman, Coach’

I didn’t quite know how to react so I just kept in step with Venables and he nodded and went on. He didn’t offend Bosnich, he didn’t make a great issue of it but he clearly didn’t approve of what he saw but not enough to get upset about it.

“I just thought it was an example of the natural gift of a management that Venables had.”

Australian football fans will never know what a squad containing Mark Bosnich, Mark Viduka, Ned Zelic, Paul Okon and Harry Kewell could have achieved if they qualified for France 98.

And Hill said he couldn’t bring himself to visualise that scenario.

“At the time I was fatalistic,” he said. “I didn’t allow myself to think that way. I would’ve been too crushed. I had the self-discipline to say – ‘that’s football’. I didn’t think if only?

“Given what happened the following weeks at the Confederation Cup you could realistically say we could have gone past the group stage – how big would that have been?

Hill believes that hiring the former Tottenham and Leeds coach inspired Australia to hire Gus Hiddink in 2005, who after 32 years of waiting finally finished the job.

“Getting Venables changed everything,” he said. “Up until then we always got an Australian coach and I quoted in the book what I said to the press at the time – ‘if we can get the best coach in the world why wouldn’t we? We don’t we have to get a local coach when we could have the best in the world? ‘

“That changed the attitude completely – the big difference was we got Venables cheap - for only 200-000 pounds.”