As Australian football evangelist

Then of course after 12 months everything was ripped up and started again with the A-League and it was like wow! What is going on here? And then it was a roller coaster. World Cup qualification, the A-League, the move into Asia, the change from soccer to football and then the Asian Cup final in 2011 and then it was boom, boom, boom wow!

I was like a lot of other British expats when I came here, ‘oh yeah Australia, beaches, sunshine, lifestyle, yeah I’d love a bit of that for a couple of years’. Then all of a sudden my career took off but mainly because the football landscape grew significantly so quickly and I was into a completely different world and I loved it. 

I’ll always love the English Premier League, I’m a Manchester City fan and they will always be my club, but I am more evangelical about football in Australia now than football in England. Football in England doesn’t need the likes of me. I’ll still love it and watch it, but football in Australia needs everybody to play a part.

You feel that as an individual. I love it, and that’s why I am passionate, probably too passionate about it sometimes. It’s what gets me into trouble. But I’d rather be that way than not care.

As Australian football critic

I am passionate about the game off the field as well, because it is still young in its development. As a journalist it's important for me to have those opinions and to get my thoughts out there. So that’s why in the book I also wanted to have a football discussion about where we are at with football in Australia at the moment.

This is a book that was five years in the making and the manuscript was handed in three or four months ago so if people are expecting it to be bang up to date in terms of Ange Postecoglou and where we are at this point in time in terms of the FFA Congress, well I’m afraid they aren’t going to get that as these are all rather recent developments.

But I do talk about the state of the game, and in particular the fact that the elections of 2015 should’ve been a watershed moment for the game. We should’ve have democratised the game and that didn’t happen. I though that was a mistake and in some ways, that has been proven since what has happened since with the congress.