Ange Postecoglou

Literally, they turned it into a full-time program for developing footballers.

So the Dukes came out of that.

Brett Emerson came out of that.

A lot of the players who ended up on this side of the world came out of that system.

But the top tier of the sport, a lot of those guys never played in Australia at the top level.

They left before.

Harry left when he was a teenager.

Timmy left when he was a teenager.

So they didn't really play.

So the top levels never really changed.

It's always been a, you know, a third to fourth tier sport still to today.

But there was a period there without, and again, sort of fuelled by the migrant communities.

Like Dirk's will tell you, it was the Croatian community in Melbourne that made him the player he was.

His dad and his uncles and his cousins, and they just lived and breathed football 24-7, you know, and he becomes the player he becomes.

Yeah, I think it's perfectly sort of put together, Gary, that I do, I have the passion

the Greeks hold for football but it's the Australian competitiveness who in any sport we compete in we're the underdogs so to speak but you know we've produced champion golfers tennis players swimmers

athletes, basketballers, you name the sport, we've pretty much gone to the top of everything, including, you know, football.

And I think that's because of the sporting mentality in the country, you know.

Especially when I was growing up, sort of 70s, 80s, sport was everything.

Like, we would not be inside at all, mate.