Ian Crook

He's gonna make the Socceroos squad, and this is what you can do.

So you know the funny thing I said to s- Ian Crook, who is the new technical director of men's football for Football Australia, I said, "You know, the, the A-League has had its struggl- struggles, uh, and financially the clubs have been in trouble.

But that trouble ironically is helping young players because we used to fill all the strikers' roles, all the attacking players' roles with foreigners."

Yeah.

So it was definitely something that people took an interest in, which I guess shows the passion people have in the Matildas and their Socceroos stars.

Sticking with stuff at national team level and development level, Football Australia announced Ian Crook as the new head of men's football this week.

No stranger to football in Australia.

I think he's been doing the coaching rounds at almost every level since, well, the best part of this century, really, and has been at head office over the last couple of years as well.

We were still saying, are we actually good this year? This is another one of those things, like we'd seen under 14, 15, under Arnie, where we start well, but we don't have the legs, or it just isn't going to work for us.

We were so jaded by this stage, I think, around following Sydney, because we'd had the Farini years, we had the Ian Crook month.

We'd seen a lot.

We'd seen Levichka fail to...

...

Ian, Ian Crook, uh, Stuart Bevan, as I said, Mickey Hazard, Paul Miller, you know, these are all players.

And we also looked, we also looked on the likes of, of, of Graham Roberts and Tony Galvin, who in effect weren't homegrown, but had come in effect from non-league.

Yeah.

You know, it, it certainly wasn't a case of, you know, the first team involvement, the first team trained there, and, you know, the youth team and reserve group were, were very much, uh, away from that.

So I think that the, the influence that's, that the, the under 20, or the reserve team coach and the youth team coach had around the group, I think played a big part in, in, uh, the, the first team group itself.

Because then, that, then that transition for, uh, for players, as I said, your Terry Gibsons, your Mark, uh, Mark Falcos, uh, your Ian Crooks, Mark Bowen, that's, uh, that, that came s- uh, touched.

It was, it was, that transition was very much easier into, into the first team.