‘Drop ten, turn and Face.’ Quilty’s Football Yarns 24 Finding a football team to follow

‘Drop ten, turn and Face.’ Quilty’s Football Yarns 24

Finding a football team to follow

Coming to Australia, as I have said, it was natural to seek out things with a certain familiarity. In my case the coaching and playing of football quickly sorted itself out. My family and I actually found an NRL side before an NSL based one.  That was the way until a new side was located on the North Shore at North Sydney Oval. This new side was Northern Spirit. Somehow the NSL had overlooked this part of the city for expansion. Thus, when they did come up with the team in 1998 for 1999, there was a lot of latent local goodwill ready to spark. In that first season the new club really nailed its marketing effort attracting many people who had never connected with an NSL team previously. Playing on balmy Friday evenings at North Sydney was a masterstroke. Children were admitted free while Northern Spirit really had two complimentary target customers. First it was ‘Families with children’ closely backed up by ‘City workers coming straight to the football’ from their offices. The convenience of having a few drinks on the way certainly appealed to many. 

The side itself was a mixture of Australian European returnees, ageing foreign players and up and coming youngsters. The experienced Robbie Slater, for instance had played for West Ham and had also been an EPL winner with Blackburn Rovers in 1995 before becoming skipper in for Spirit in their champagne first season in 1998. Ian Crook had played with Spurs and Norwich City while Graham Arnold was both an Australian international and someone who played in both Belgium and Japan. Craig Foster also later turned out for the side after returning to England to play for Crystal Palace being the Sydney clubs skipper in 2001/2002. Remo Nogarotto was a prime mover in putting the squad together. Northern Spirits flirtation with foreign imports, was a bit hit and miss. A certain Nicola Berte came over having also played for Spurs but no one seemed to have told him he would be expected to actually play football for his money in Australia. He was a disaster! That said Spirit did pick up one brilliant player in Kresimir Marusic a midfielder who was a true magic man. Locals Mark Rudan, Luke Casserley, Paul Bilokapic, Troy Cranney and Michael Cunico made up a competitive first year squad. The latter had actually played for my JPII side back in 1995, so it was with added excitement that we all went along.

From a supporters point of view Northern Spirit was a typical ‘band wagon’ experience, nice and family friendly but a ‘bandwagon’ all the same. I took both Dan and Cassie to the games and it was a truly safe evening activity for the thousands of young kids who attended. Cassie, as a eight year old, collected hundreds of plastic beer glasses form in front of the Bob Stand. Visits from traditional NSL clubs Sydney Olympic, Sydney United and Marconi were electric. Crowds of 18-19,000 commonplace. Never short of an opinion my chief concerns were that Slater was wrongly entrusted with being the sides ‘playmaker’ when in his career he had been as a hard working water carrier. Predictably me and my mates gave it to him verbally, especially when he seemed to often blame rather than lift the youngsters in the team. The other subject of our supporter scorn was coach Graham Arnold whose imitation of a deer in the headlights didn’t go down well with us. A finals play off place in Season One was really the highpoint for the club. One thing which did appeal was the chance to follow the club all over Sydney and parts of NSW. Spirit took several thousand supporters to away games. We went to Olympic, United, Power and Marconi as well as Newcastle, Canberra and Wollongong. I likened the Spirit away support to naïve ‘trainspotter types’. A good indication of this was the afternoon they entered the Sydney United ground and proceeded to head for the ‘Home end’ behind the goal. Being early there were only 50 home fans in there at the time and Spirit walked over to stand next to them! Predictably, a thousand more United locals raced across to meet the challenge and only police cordon intervention avoided a nasty situation. Northern Spirit was a great experience while it lasted but was really a wasted opportunity for the game. As ever there were those out to make money from Australian ‘soccer’ and the clubs great marketing start was not maintained. An incident that typified the rapid decline was one evening match when I took the kids. Somehow, I only had twenty dollars on me but knew kids got in free. What an embarrassment then when I was told kids were no longer free and I was $10 short. We were meeting friends inside but there I was outside North Sydney Oval unable to pay my way in. Fortunately, the person on the gate agreed to just ‘accept all my money’ before letting us go in! Not long after, the rot seemed to set in at Northern Spirit, Slater, Crook and Arnold all invested and lost $200,000-300000 in the club. Glasgow Rangers took it over but by now they had moved to play at Brookvale and lost 3/4 of their support. A big problem was the ongoing cost of using a ‘drop in’ pitch to replace the rock-hard cricket square. Clubs who don’t control their ground often struggle and Northern Spirit were no exception. As supporters we had a great experience in the two year ‘window’ when things were going right. The ultimate failure of Spirit is an instructive warning to A League side Western Sydney Wanderers, who also seemed to hit the right initial formula before losing some momentum.

That said, standing on the halfway line with Derek Kirk,  Noel Hooper, Mark Salkeld, Gary Hayes and Jimmy Everitt, shouting “Pass the ball Slater” was always great after a hard week of work. Nothing like it!