After Johnston’s first game, Boro manager Jack Charlton called him “the worst footballer I’ve ever seen” and ordered him home. 

Craig Johnston Craig Johnston
Image: Professional Footballers Australia

Australians are today spread throughout the world’s biggest football leagues like spores of wattle. When, in 1975,

15-year-old Craig Johnston headed to Middlesbrough for a self-funded trial (after his parents re-mortgaged their house), it was unheard of. After Johnston’s first game, Boro manager Jack Charlton called him “the worst footballer I’ve ever seen” and ordered him home.

But Johnston hid in the Middlesbrough car park where he practised for hours every day, cleaning the players’ boots and hiding from the gaffer. When Charlton left, Johnston cracked the first team. The rest is history. Much later he was honoured for his remarkable career with Middlesbrough and Liverpool in which he overcame adversity, injury and rejection to forge a 271-game career in the English First Division between 1977 and 1988 before retiring at the remarkably young age of 27. He won nine major titles with the Reds, including five First Division championships, two Football League Cups, the FA Cup, in which he kicked a goal in the winning final, and the European Cup.

“Through his single-minded determination and ability to succeed at the game’s highest level, Craig Johnston was the catalyst that changed the thinking of Australia’s best young players,” says Professional Footballers Australia chief executive Brendan Schwab. “It’s arguable that no single individual has had as much influence on football in Australia as Craig Johnston.”

You may recall Johnston’s record transfer fee to Liverpool, the controversy which surrounded his not playing for Australia or England, the invention of the Predator football boot, a hotel mini-bar accounting system called “The Butler” (which he invented because Liverpool team-mates had been raiding his mini-bar) and a football skills program called “Supa Skills” into which he poured his fortune and which bankrupted him into homelessness and rock-bottom depression. Well, today he’s back on his feet, a resident of a gated community in Florida and a neighbour of Tiger Woods’. As the Socceroos show their style on soccer’s biggest stage, Inside Sport sat down with a true pioneer to revisit one of the most extraordinary lives in Australian sport.

You once said playing soccer for Australia is like surfing for England. Now the Australian Professional Footballers’ Association has given you a gong, the Alex Tobin Medal. Sounds like all has been forgiven …

I think so, yeah. We’ve all been young and it was a stupid thing to say, not least because there have been many brilliant English surfers (laughs). But I couldn’t play for Australia – it was impossible to travel back. It’s not like now – we weren’t pampered like today’s players are. But the bottom line was, whether I pulled on a Middlesbrough or Liverpool shirt, I was representing my country. Every time I went out for a drink at night I knew I was Australian and did the right thing. There’s no issue that I haven’t represented Australia. I’m a very proud Aussie overseas.

It must feel good to be a pioneer, to have inspired the guys who have played in Europe?

Yeah, it does. I read that 567 Australian kids have followed me and been contracted in Europe, and that’s not to mention those who haven’t. Their dream has been to go over and at least try.I grew up supporting Liverpool in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s watching Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and later yourself, John Barnes, Ian Rush … And that support came from watching English soccer a week late on Friday nights, with that theme music. You’d have had a similar experience?

Totally. That was our Tuesday night. We’d watch Frank Garnett, Til Death Do Us Part, then “bup-bump-bump-bump-baarr-da-ba-bump”, the Match Of The Day theme tune. And I’d watch it, spellbound. Then next day in the quadrangle at Booragul High School there were about 12 of us, soccer tragics. And we used to dissect every player, every move, everything. And after three or four years of this, we were 12-13 years old, someone said, “Wouldn’t it be great to go over there and do it.” And somehow that stuck in my mind. And I was like, “Yeah.” But people said, “Don’t be stupid, how would you afford to get there for a start, and anyway, we’re not good enough.” And I certainly wasn’t. These guys were all older than me and they were better than me, so I secretly hatched a plan. I was too embarrassed to tell the older kids I was going.

You wrote some letters to a bunch of England clubs from an absolute football backwater. Did you really expect to get a reply? Was it naivety? Or did you fair dinkum think you were good enough to play in England?

Yes and no. I wrote to them, but I didn’t know if I’d get a reply. We wrote to Tommy Docherty, Dave Sexton … big managers. Chelsea, Man U. Jack Charlton was at Middlesbrough and he’d toured Australia the year before, so we knew he knew Australia was on the map. His was the only letter we got back, saying that if you pay your fare and some money for board and lodging, we’ll let you have a trial.