A goal in the ‘86 FA Cup final at Wembley. Not bad for a boy from Oz. A goal in the ‘86 FA Cup final at Wembley. Not bad for a boy from Oz.
Image: Getty Images

Where did you watch the Socceroos’ famous win against Uruguay?

For the first leg I was sitting in an obscure bar somewhere in America. It was in North Carolina, a town called Durham. I had to hunt down a bar and bribe the bartender to switch the channel. We moved it to a Spanish network so I had the Uruguayan commentators. But I saw enough there to know this was a historic moment and I booked a flight the next day for the return leg and just made it to the stadium.

How about their loss to Italy?

I was in Kaiserslautern sitting behind Frank Lowy, John O’Neill and Sepp Blatter. Franz Beckenbauer was nearby in the VIP box. Mr Blatter invited me.

Dud result …

We were cheated, no doubt about it.

You like to invent things. What would you invent to stop that diving shit?

Decent refereeing! The funny thing is, I knew it was going to happen. Ah well – it was such a brilliant effort, but it was fate that we shouldn’t do it. It was cruel fate.

You live in Florida, a fair way away from the A-League. You catch much of it?

Every time I get home, two or three times year. I’m always surprised how much the standard is improving. These guys set out to make an A-League and put Australia in a World Cup, and they’ve done incredibly well.

What’s next for Craig Johnston?

I’m in this interesting stage of my life after having a lot of ups and downs. I recently received this award from the players’ union saying, “We want to give you something recognising that we think you were given a bit of a rough ride by the administration and media.” And these are words from someone like Craig Foster – who I respect – saying that all they knew was that I was a good player who didn’t want to play for Australia, but now they understand my story. There’s Colosimo, Bosnich, Slater saying, “Thank you for being one of us, a player, an Australian and standing your ground, we understand that it was the administration you had a problem with because they let you down, behind you there’s 567 kids with a contract who’ve followed you.” It was really emotional and there were tears galore. I didn’t expect that, to feel so humbled and welcomed.

– Matt Cleary