Epakis, 27 has been making a name for himself of late after becoming the youngest coach in Australia to gain an FFA accredited ‘A’ Licence.

Last season he was the assistant coach of Canberra United’s W-League team under former Matildas star Heather Garriock and prior to that spent two years coaching at Sydney FC’s youth academy.

Epakis left both Sydney FC and Canberra United to focus solely on his dual role as senior coach of both Sydney University’s men’s and women’s teams.

In his first season in charge he led the men to fourth place in the NSW NPL 3 Club Championship and guided the women to the NSW NPL First Grade Premiership.

“When I took over the men’s team they were the second last in the Club Championship and were close to being relegated,” he said speaking to FTBL.

“But we ended up almost pushing for promotion to NPL 2 and we may have succeeded if there were a few more rounds in the season.

“In terms of our women’s team the average age was 20 and we competed with NPL teams whose average was 28-29 and who had senior Matildas in their squad while I had Young Matildas.

“We won the NPL club championship in record time and we only lost two games all season and were unbeaten against Macarthur Rams, Manly United and Illawarra Stingrays which are full of current W-League players.”

All this by the age of 27 is an achievement in itself, but that doesn’t include Epakis' role at the FFA and Football NSW where as a coach educater and assessor he assists with the delivery of C and B coaching licences.

The young coach has put his success at Sydney University down to the FFA’s methodology which he uses in both the male and female programs.

“A lot of my playing principles that I’ve implemented at Sydney University was the core of the FFA curriculum and the core of the coaching process,” he said.

“The coaching process is the document and you really learn and discover more in the coaching licences and that process is all about how you coach effectively in a training session.

“The FFA Curriculum then provides model sessions which are the basics or the real platform with which you can develop your sessions further.

“Those two documents are my guide in how and what I coach.”

A number of the current Joeys squad who are at the AFC U-16 Championship in Malaysia  were at Sydney FC's youth academy at the same as Epakis.

He believes the U-16 Australian team are a prime example that the system is starting to achieve positive results.

“The recent result against Iraq was not only a good result but the way in which they played their football was effective,” he said.

“There are definitely players out there that are developing to be very technically good   decision makers.

 “We just need more of them and they need to be exposed more often than not to high levels of football either in the A-League or overseas.”