My National Team Aspirations

I’ve got a two-year contract here and like every other player I’ve got hopes of representing my country so I’m no different. I’m going to do my best for the Wanderers so hopefully I can get back in the national team and you never know what can happen.

Being a World Cup year, making the Australian squad would be in the back of everyone’s mind that isn’t in the squad at the moment. But to get there you have to do well with your club first and that is an ambition of mine. You’ve got to do your best and you’ve got to be performing and if I got picked I’d be over the moon. But my main goal is to play well for the Wanderers and anything else is a bonus.

My experience of playing for Australia was great. I made my debut under Ange Postecoglou and played against Belgium and they had world class players on pitch like Kevin De Bruyne, Vincent Kompany and Kevin Mirallas. Any time you put on the national team jersey it’s a great occasion and I always felt very proud to represent my country. By doing that you make your family proud as well. For me there is no better feeling than playing for your country and I’m no different. I still see myself able to do that but my talking has to be done on the pitch and that’s what I intend to do.

I was on the bench for the first game of the Asian Cup in 2015 against Syria and in training the next day I did my Achilles. It was leading up to the second group game against South Korea. So it was definitely disappointing. Ange Postecoglou is a great coach and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with him. He’s the right man for the job. He’s done a great job transforming the team in to the team we have today. We have a great footballing team and great players. I really rate him as a manager and every time I’ve been in camp, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with him

Obviously, we had a great group of players and we went on to win the Asian Cup which was awesome but that injury was part of football and part of life and that’s all behind me now. So this season I’m just looking forward to having a long campaign and staying fit and healthy for the whole season.

After playing a few games in the A-League and the FFA Cup I find that the standard is really high. There are great players in every team and there is not much difference in quality between the teams. If I would compare it to the UK I’d say it’s definitely up to Championship quality and playing in the Championship is really tough as it’s a really good league. That’s credit to Australian football and Australian footballers for growing the game. I believe the A-League is only going to get stronger as time goes on and hopefully we can get to the World Cup in Russia next year and we can build and grow the game even more.