The 26-year-old striker spent two seasons with Gold Coast United in Australia’s top flight, scoring a handful of goals during a stop-start spell with the now defunct club.

Stuck behind the likes of acclaimed marksmen Smeltz and Joel Porter during his days on the glitter strip,Barisic swapped Skilled Park, Robina for the Gelora 10 November Stadium, Surabaya, in 2011.

Barisic’s move to East Java and one of Indonesia’s biggest clubs, Persebaya Surabaya, not only rekindled his passion for the game, it also sparked a flurry of goals during his time with ‘the green crocodiles’.

His impressive form, combined with a change in coach at Persebaya led him to southern rivals Arema Malang.

Now united with Australian fitness coach Nathan Hall at Arema, Barisic will tonight aim to help his side overturn a two-goal deficit against Saudi Arabian outfit Al Ettifaq at the Prince Mohammed Bin Fahad Stadium in Dammam.

“It’s been really good, to be honest,” Barisic said of his time in Indonesia. “When I first came to Arema we had a whole change in team management and coaches, so at the start we only got one or two good results.”

“But the team gathered some experience together, and playing as a group we slowly gelled.

"We went 13 games without a loss which got us through to the second round of the AFC Cup where we beat Kitchee from Hong Kong.”

Barisic and Hall’s experience in Asia’s second tier club tournament has taken them from Myanmar to Malaysia and Vietnam to Hong Kong and the pair are working towards the final four of the AFC Cup if they manage to fight their way back into the contest tonight.

Last Tuesday, Al Ettifaq won an eventful first leg in Malang 2-0. With the floodlights at the Gajayana Stadium failing in the 51st minute, the home team struggled to find their rhythm after the unplanned 20-minute break.

The return match against the Saudi’s marks the duo’s first foray into West Asia, and along with Slovakian attacker Roman Chmelo, Barisic will be tasked with netting the goals to take the Lions a step closer to AFC Cup glory.

“It was very hard to fight with the likes of Shane Smeltz who has gone to the World Cup,” Barisic said. “I didn’t get much of a chance [at Gold Coast].

"But I scored eight goals in 11 games when I first got to Persebaya.”

Barisic would end the controversial Indonesian Premier League season with a total of eight strikes in 15 appearances for Arema, level with strike partner Chmelo.

But it has been working with experienced Serbian coach Dejan Antonic, and his assistant Darko Vargec, which has provided further reward.

Vargec is a former captain of Red Star Belgrade, and represented the club in the UEFA Champions League.

“Dejan has quite a good name in South East Asian football and is very experienced,” he said. “But Darko and I have private sessions all the time and it’s really helped my game.

"He [Darko] has certainly helped me on a personal level.”

While Barisic's local language skills have been improving in Indonesia, he can rely on fellow Aussie Natrhan Hall for some easier chat.

Hall’s journey to Malang began in Sutherland where he worked in the New South Wales Premier League.

After “sacrificing probably four or five years of weekends” studying the philosophies of top teams in Spain, Germany and Italy, Hall earned his break in South East Asian professional football with Thai Premier League club Thai Port.

Stints with Thai Tobacco and MuangThong United followed, before Hall was tempted to Malang to try something new.

“For me Bangkok is my second home,” Hall said. “[But] I was working in Thailand for three years and I was umming and arring about the possibility of exploring another South East Asian country.

“I went on a short holiday to Vietnam and I received a phone call from my manager. He said Arema had made an offer and that I had 24 hours to accept.

"At the time I had no job and obviously as a coach you want to keep coaching. For me it was a no-brainer. I made the decision like that to come to Indonesia.”

With the Indonesian league system currently under review, Arema Malang had not played a competitive match for over two months before last Tuesday’s tie with Al Ettifaq.

Limited to friendly fixtures, Hall and the rest of the Arema coaching staff have only had four weeks to prepare their players for one of the biggest ties in the club's history.

Describing the challenge as “unique”, Hall has also had to contend with Ramadan during the preparation phase with 90% of the Arema squad Muslim, which has made training practically impossible.

With a cloud hanging over when the start of the new Indonesian league season, neither Barisic nor Hall know where their futures lie after the knockout duel with the ’Commandos’ from Dammam.

But both are excited by the chance to carve their names into Indonesian club football history at a time when Indonesian club football is at one of its most historically significant junctures.

And Hall refuses to throw in the towel.

“They [Al Ettifaq] are a top team,” he said. “They have a smorgasbord of under 23 Saudi national team players, and probably on the whole they are stronger than what we are."

"But in a knockout match, anything’s possible.”