ABC Grandstand's Unsung Sporting Heroes

by ABC Grandstand

  Off the field, they managed to stay out of trouble. On the field, Julie clearly justified her selection. Australia finished the tournament in third place and Julie, the rookie midfielder, was named on the tournament’s All-Star team. That team was supposed to embark on a tour of Europe but, for one reason or another, that never happened. Nevertheless her selection was a stunning introduction to international football for a girl who’d been playing the sport less than twelve months.

  Looking back, she shrugs off the achievement. ‘I think at fourteen you’re not under any pressure because you’re not aware of scouts, or being selected for European exhibition games, so you just go out and play. And you’re fourteen, you’re in Hong Kong, you’ve got your fourteen-year-old buddy and it’s just a bit of a hoot really.’

  The pressure materialised the following year in a different form. Julie’s family moved to the far north coast of New South Wales to run a café in Alstonville, near Lismore. She wanted to continue playing for St George Budapest in the Sydney first-grade competition, but what that involved was leaving Lismore on a 6 o’clock bus on Friday evenings and travelling all night (a journey of more than 760 kilometres) to arrive in Sydney around 6 o’clock in the morning on Saturday. She’d have representative team training that day, and do some training with St George on Sunday morning before playing in the afternoon.

  ‘I’d turn up on somebody’s doorstep, maybe Trixie Tagg’s or Pat and Joe O’Connor’s, stay with them on Saturday night, then get pretty much straight on the bus after the game and head back to Lismore. Then I’d get off the bus and go to school.’

  This routine was only manageable every second week, though not due to any lack of dedication on Julie’s part. It was simply that her parents couldn’t afford the bus fare every week.

  At sixteen she left school, did a clerical course at TAFE, then moved back to Sydney to pursue her burgeoning football ‘career’. She was selected in the Australian team every year from 1975 to her retirement in 1989.

  In 1979, when she was nineteen, she was named captain of the Australian team for a match against New Zealand. Jim Selby, the coach of the team, said she was a natural choice to lead, partly because she’d had experience captaining St George, but also because of the style of game she played. ‘She played in a central midfield role and was a good reader of the game, and could set up attacking moves and inspire other players through her involvement and creative play,’ Selby says.

  By 1979 the Australian team had become official, under the auspices of the Australian Women’s Soccer Association. They regularly played a Trans-Tasman Cup series against the Kiwis, mainly because it was the most affordable international for a team that was footing its own bills. ‘You know, girls could get time off to go to New Zealand,’ Julie explains. ‘But they couldn’t do a three-week tour of Europe, get time off work and afford to pay for the trip as well.’

  There were some slightly more exotic tours, though. In 1983, Julie captained Australia at the first Oceania Cup in Noumea. Then, in 1984, they went on a tour of China where they played against European teams; they also played at the World Women’s Football Tournament in Taiwan that same year.

  Although the captaincy was sometimes shared around to give others a chance to lead their country, it was Julie who was given the honour at the 1989 Women’s Pilot World Cup in China. That was where she led Australia to what was, at the time, their most memorable victory.

  In the first round they played and beat football giants Brazil. Oddly enough, Julie’s reaction at the time was not one of pride. ‘We scored early on the counter through Janine Riddington and then just hung on. They never pulled it back. I was dejected because I thought we played really badly even though we won.’

  Selby said, ‘You’ll look back on this and remember it as one of the greatest things the national team’s ever done.’

  These days she admits, in her typically, understated way, ‘It was big for us.’

  Julie Murray, who played in that game and also went on to become a captain of Australia, has no hesitation in nominating it as one of Julie Dolan’s best performances. ‘What was a “reasonably okay” game for her was “playing very well” for other people,’ Murray says. ‘Playing Brazil was such a different thing for us. We’d been used to playing against New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji. We were a bit in awe of those big football-playing countries. The Brazilians were skilful, flamboyant. They played with real flair. For her to stay in control in the midfield that game like she did took some real talent.’

  The Pilot Women’s World Cup was Julie Dolan’s swan song in the Australian team. Julie then went into a premature retirement, precipitated by the financial strains imposed by playing at the top level. ‘You get to twenty-eight or whatever and you’ve spent fourteen years doing all this, six or seven days a week, and you’ve got nothing. You’ve got to quickly make adjustments and get yourself a house and everything everyone else your age has got.’

  Julie estimates that she’d had at least ten different jobs during her playing years. ‘I did anything I could manage, really. Office work, any kind of work that I could pick up ’cause I needed to pay the bills and save up for the next trip. A couple of companies were really, really good. They let me go [on tours] without pay but after a while it became, just, you know … No.’

  She also went to university as a mature-age student and studied sports science, graduating with the first class to study for that degree at Lismore’s Southern Cross University. During a teaching stint in Japan she returned briefly to the football field, playing for Yokohama and coaching a high school team, but on her return to Australia she had no direct involvement in the game.

  She credits the standard of play produced by Canberra United in the W-League in recent years with re-sparking her interest, and she often drives from her home on the central coast of New South Wales to the ACT to watch them play.

  The CEO of Capital Football, Heather Reid, is chuffed that someone she describes as ‘an icon of the game’ has been inspired by the approach of one of her clubs. She finds it ironic because seeing Julie play in a Trans-Tasman trophy match in 1979 was an inspiration to her, giving her a belief in the standards that could be reached by female players.

  Reid says that as a player Julie was ‘a bit of a free spirit, but she really managed the game on the field. She knew the game, she was skilful, could read the play and was very comfortable on the ball.’

  Former Matilda’s captain Julie Murray says Julie Dolan was, and still is, her hero. ‘Julie was incredibly gifted technically and tactically. She was a dominating figure on the field, and really directed play.’

  Jim Selby, who is now the Asian Football Confederation Director, has no doubt that, while the game has gone ahead, his former captain would still rate among the top players in the game. ‘Julie’s style of play and her skill on the ball would enable her to effectively play in most of today’s national teams throughout the world.’

  While Julie’s profile isn’t what it should be, her influence on football in this country is indisputable. And it’s set to continue. In 2013, Australia’s first football high school opened in Kariong on the central coast of New South Wales, with the former Australian captain as technical director.

  I feel very lucky to have met Julie Dolan and something tells me that in coming years, hundreds of budding young football stars — male and female — are going to feel the same.

  The power of Parra’s fans

  by Jean-Paul Pelosi

  I’VE SUPPORTED THE Parramatta Eels rugby league team since Space Food Sticks and Prima were my chief diet. At that time, the Eels were the sport’s best club and their fans enjoyed an embarrassment of riches. The team won — often.

  But things have changed.

  It’s admirable that Parramatta Eels fans are still optimistic about their team, despite nearly thirty years without a grand final victory. The Blue and Gold Army always shows up at Parramatta Stadium in droves, even though their team is more slippery than e
lectric, more spotty than glistening. I, for one, think their loyalty is worth celebrating — even if their team’s results are not. In a manner of speaking, their dedication is heroic.

  This unwavering positivity is born of the fact that most adult Eels fans can remember when Parra won four grand finals in the 1980s, three of which were consecutive (between 1981 and 1983); they know the taste of victory, and have held onto the hope that another golden era is just around the corner.

  I was five years old for the first grand final win, which I promptly celebrated by asking my dad to buy me an Eels bag for school. It was blue nylon trimmed with gold, and it had the snaky Eels logo printed on the front. Back then, the paint was never premium grade for these sorts of things and so by the time I was in second grade and the Eels had added their first two Winfield Cups to the trophy room, the logo had well and truly faded.

  It was a time when the Eels championships were led by superheroes like Peter ‘Sterlo’ Sterling, Steve ‘Zip Zip Man’ Ella and Ray ‘Mr Perpetual Motion’ Price. My childhood memories consist of images of confetti raining down onto Cumberland Oval, and shaky live vision of punters going bananas at the Parramatta Leagues Club. So far-reaching was the hype that, in my first year at primary school in northern Sydney, all of my mates and I gravitated towards the Eels, even though we lived nowhere near Parramatta.

  This is why there are so many Eels fans today, I believe: because during the club’s halcyon years, a troop of Star Wars-obsessed, Calippo-slurping, Mario Brothers-playing rug rats were smitten with the yellow jerseys and golden locks of Sterling and Paul Taylor. The Eels were the best — they played exciting football with clever chip kicks and grubbers, speedy runs down the wings and nifty fakes from dummy-half.

  Only a handful of clubs equalled the Eels for personalities too, with icons like Eric Grothe, Mick Cronin and Brett Kenny. It was the last two names that brought the house down at the Sydney Cricket Ground in the 1981 grand final against the Newtown Jets. Kenny sprang into the open field like a startled elk when captain Ray Price burst through Newtown’s defence and charged for the line. Realising Price wouldn’t have the pace, Kenny sprinted up the left wing in support and caught Price’s perfect pass en route to the line. It was Parramatta’s first try of the match and evened the score at three, before Mick Cronin split the uprights with a sideline conversion that drove the Parramatta crowd crazy, their hundreds of blue and yellow flags waving in unison as if they’d won the game. It was this level of enthusiasm that made the Eels special.

  Now these Eels fans, maybe a little rounder in the belly and a little greyer about the temples, wait patiently and optimistically for the glory and accompanying elitism to return. Eels fans once strutted around proudly but now are forced to cling to small victories, like the one over the Brisbane Broncos in early May 2013. In that game, Parra wound back the clock, playing with probing runs, delicate chips and mesmerising dummies. They sidestepped and scooted away from their opponents repeatedly, sending the eleven thousand Eels supporters in attendance into rapture. And for a moment you felt a chill, as if the rugby league gods realised Parramatta had suffered for long enough.

  Reality set in later.

  It’s also hard for Parra fans to endure the continued success of rivals while their side flounders. The Manly Sea Eagles are now one of the sport’s elite clubs and have been for about the last decade. And the Canterbury Bulldogs, who met the Eels in two grand finals in the 1980s, are rarely outside the finals fray.

  But perhaps worst of all is the resurgence of South Sydney, a club that once was more forgettable than the poor old North Sydney Bears, who aren’t even in the competition any more. Enter Russell Crowe with a chariot full of cash and cachet, and suddenly the Bunnies become more popular than an inner-city café. Success followed and, in 2013, the team is arguably the NRL’s most formidable squad.

  And just as the Souths’ fanbase swelled when Crowe entered the arena like Maximus, it seems to have recently grown again, with even more people around Sydney sporting red-and-green striped jerseys and plastering white rabbit logos onto the rear windows of their cars. As a brand, Souths have now become hipster-cool. This couldn’t irk Eels fans more, because we know that for thirty years the Rabbitohs were no match for Parra. And we remember when the Eels were once as popular across Sydney as the Bunnies are now.

  Let it be said that Parra’s players appreciate their fans. Eels rookie second-rower, Kelepi Tanginoa, said it was the home crowd’s support that got them over the line in that tight contest with the Broncos. ‘The Eels fans have been incredible,’ he told the Eels’ media team.

  Indeed the crowd at that game was boisterous. When Broncos’ half-back Peter Wallace lined up a try conversion from the sideline, the Eels fans in the section behind him — a particularly wild bunch of fanatics — unleashed a barrage of verbal taunts that caused Wallace to send his kick wide. It wasn’t the sort of moment most Eels fans would be proud of, but it showed the degree of passion that fuels Parra fans, who are prepared to trek out to the stadium on a cold night to watch a team with little chance of knocking off a perennial contender like Brisbane.

  Lately, though, the Eels haven’t shown the fortitude needed to compete in the NRL. They simply haven’t been consistent enough, sometimes even crumbling under the sheer force of larger forward packs. That may just be a by-product of modern rugby league, a game that boasts Terminator-like athletes running doggedly at the opposition’s torsos. There’s no denying the fact that today’s players are more dynamic, and capable of stunning feats such as launching a metre into the air to score a corner post try, or chasing down an interceptor sixty metres to save a try. But there’s also a lack of focus on the basics on the Eels’ part, which would be their Achilles heel — if they had ankles.

  If you think back to that championship Eels squad and the way they moved the ball from the centre of the pitch across the backline to the wing, there’s a noticeable delicacy in their passes. They were deftly skilled at the fundamentals — pass and catch. It might not sound like much, but it was the reason the old Eels were so great. They mastered sending the ball to the open man and placing him in space, quickly and efficiently. The Eels were particularly good at stepping, weaving and offloading because their halves, Sterling and Kenny, were about the best going around. In short, Parra fans were treated to sublime footy and everything post-1986 has had a great deal to live up to.

  Parramatta endured many losses in 2013, including that of its coach to another club.

  And yet, even as the boss eyed a new future, the points against accumulated and the wooden spoon loomed, Eels fans stood pat.

  We’ve been down this road before, you see, and somehow always find our way. That’s simply the nature of a long footy season — you revel in the adventure of it all. You have to.

  Because at some point there’ll be a clearing — an opportunity, like Ray Price’s inspired dash in 1981. You can bet Eels fans will be ready when that happens, poised with fists full of blue and gold confetti.

  That, at least, is the hope.

  Out of the shadows

  by Karen Tighe

  AT FIFTY-ONE, in her first Paralympic Games, Joann Formosa realised a long-held dream of competing for Australia and winning dressage gold. It was the first time an Australian had won an equestrian title at the Paralympic Games since Sydney 2000.

  The venue was the magnificent Greenwich Park in southeast London, at a Paralympics which surpassed all others in ticket sales, atmosphere and coverage. It was there that this self-described dreamer from country Victoria toppled the London Games’ face of para-equestrian competition, 38-year-old Briton Lee Pearson. Pearson had been unbeaten over his three previous Paralympic campaigns and was widely tipped to add more gold to his already impressive tally of nine titles. He finished with the silver.

  ‘I was always told I was a dreamer, head in the clouds. I just dreamt. I knew what I wanted,’ Formosa reflects. ‘People kept saying, “Nah it’s not going to happen.” Particularly
after my first accident, being told I would never ride again, to forget about all that stuff. Hanging on to my dream and my goal is what got me through all of that.

  ‘I’m out of the shadows now and I’m in the sunlight. Look out. I’m here to be seen now,’ she says, laughing.

  I first met Joann in our ABC TV Studios at the London Paralympics, the evening after her first dressage routine, in which she had demonstrated the potential to match it with the best, including the favourite, Pearson.

  She was deservedly excited, but it was her willingness to share her passion and the searing determination she exuded that made me want to know so much more after our brief interview was over. I made a mental note to do just that.

  I catch up with Joann on the phone shortly after the Paralympics. She has arrived home: Broadford, a small community around ninety kilometres north of Melbourne. It’s surreal, she tells me, to see her photo blown up at the local petrol station. To have her much-loved community of Broadford and nearby Kilmore so proud, including the district nurses and medical staff at the local Kilmore hospital who she has depended on daily for treatment over so many years.

  She’s been relegated to living in one room of her house following extensive damage from a burst hot-water system just before she left for the Games. The back half of the house has been gutted. She says the dust isn’t good for her fragile lungs, but hopefully the builders will be finished in a couple of weeks.

  Apart from that, it’s wonderful to be back with family and friends and her menagerie: two Warmbloods, three Welsh Mountain ponies, a Jack Russell, a Chihuahua-Pomeranian cross, cats and Toulouse, a one-year-old goat, who was raised on cows’ milk in the lounge room of the Formosa home. ‘We rescued him. He thinks he’s a cross between a cat, a Jack Russell and the ponies which taught him to eat grass. He doesn’t know he’s a goat!’