Stolen by Croatia?

[Punter]

...Then there is Ante Seric, the Parma left-flanker, a Sydney boy, who began to be courted by Australia in 1998, well after he had become a star with Hajduk Split. Too late.

He was bribed by Croatia with a World Cup selection carrot and he was lost to us, the point being, why wasn’t he courted before? When he was 17, when he could have been picked and quarantined from the kind of cultural robbery Croatia engaged in at the time.

Mark Viduka was similarly sniffed by Croatia when he was a teenager, but Mark opted for Australia. Which is a savage irony, given the events of recent times.

But you get the drift.

Terrible, isn't it?

[Tones]

dude ! where are these exerts from ??

sounds like some Aussie rednecks slagging off the Croatian community again........i think that they are itching for another Cro demo (in Aus), or perhaps even another Cro soccer club (in Aus) winning another major trophy and creating wonderful "scenes" afterwards.....haha

or perhaps they are just jealous cos some of them have been to Hrvatska recently, sucked in by all the latest tourism hype, realised that they absolutely love cevapi (except the ones in Dalmacija), and then gone back to Aus thinking that the only place to get them is at the local Cro soccer club within which they are petrified to step foot into........so in the end, they are having cevapi withdrawals.........screw em..........back to the pies and bangers and mash you uncultured Kenguri !!!!

[Phil S]

Youcef Abdi
Sisay Bezabeh
Viktor Chistiakov
Tatiana Girgorieva
Fabrice Lapierre
Dmitri Markov
Kosta Tszyu
Lote Tuqiri
Willie Ofahengaue
Toutai Kefu
Steve Kefu


...just a few athletes 'poached' by Australia. I could add to the list but frankly I'm too bored.

[CueRack]

Keep going Phile....

What about Milan Ivanovic... former Red Star player immigrated to Oz and played close to 50 games for Australia...Aussies don't make too much of a fuss about players of an English or Irish background (of which ther are many) but find it easy to attack Croats....

And that article didn't even mention Josip Simunic... now that's a story!!

[CueRack]

Guest-Tones said:

or perhaps even another Cro soccer club (in Aus) winning another major trophy and creating wonderful "scenes" afterwards.....haha

Well unfortunately those scenes won't be seen in Austalian soccer for a while. Tomorrow (or today in Oz) Melbourne Knights (Melbourne Croatia) play their last ever National Soccer League match, ironically against their sister club Sydney United (Sydney Croatia) who themselves may be playing their last ever game in the league

All that's left is my Western Knights!!

[Matt]

The passing of an era
By Michael Lynch
February 29, 2004




Melbourne Knights, Somers Street and passionate fans proved a heady mix, writes Michael Lynch.

What Andrew Marth remembers most is the crowds. The noise, the atmosphere, the chanting, the intimidation, the sense that the Melbourne Knights could not lose in front of that passionate, hostile Somers Street crowd.

That was back in the mid-1990s, when the team from Sunshine was the football power in the land. Five grand finals in six seasons, two premierships and three runner-up trophies - a sustained period of success that few football teams in any code have equalled in the modern era.

Back then, in a golden period from 1990 to 1996, the Knights supplied Australia's footballer of the year four times, its under-21 player of the year twice and its top goal-scorer twice.

With players of the calibre of Mark Viduka, Danny Tiatto, Steve Horvat, Frank Juric and Josip Simunic, to name just a few who went on to have significant overseas careers, the Knights set a standard few other teams - either then or now - could match.

"Without a doubt, my greatest memories in soccer have been here at this ground," said Marth, the grand final-winning captain, this week as he reflected on the Knights' imminent demise.


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"For the quality of the teams we had at Somers Street in 1994-95-96, I don't think there's any around that touched them. The Carlton team I played in my first season there was good, but I think the Knights teams in the mid-1990s were very special.

"We used to pack the crowds out then. Thousands of them would come. It was a great atmosphere. People said they (the crowds) used to put all the other teams off and give us a big advantage. It did give us a lot of confidence to know that other teams didn't like coming there, that they expected a belting."

All that comes to an end today when the team from Sunshine plays its last game in the national league. A club established 51 years ago by Croatian immigrants, the Knights have, down the decades, clung s.ly to their roots. Whether as Essendon Croatia, Croatia, Melbourne Croatia or the Knights, they have been able to mine a generous seam of talent, the sons of generations of Croatian immigrants from Melbourne's western suburbs and Geelong.


"Without a doubt, my greatest memories in soccer have been here at this ground."
- ANDREW MARTH
In the end, what gave them such strength (as is the case for so many of the traditional ethnically based National Soccer League sides) is proving to be their undoing. Soccer no longer exists in the ghetto of mainstream sport. Its days as "wogball", a sport played, as Johnny Warren was so memorably taunted as a youngster, only by "sheilas, wogs and poofters", are long gone. It is now the most popular sport for youngsters nationwide and the new board of the Australian Soccer Association is desperate to tap into this latent audience for its new, reformed national league. But clubs with an overwhelming ethnic base are not wanted.

It is, as the Knights' hierarchy admits, the cost of progress. Bigger budgets ($5 million a year will be required to sustain a side in Frank Lowy's planned Australian Premier League) are beyond the imaginings of clubs such as theirs. Their supporter base - as the dwindling crowds this season in their least successful campaign in years show - is either dying out or disinterested. Sponsors are ever harder to find.

The future of Somers Street is as yet unclear. The Knights want to play next season in the elite state competition, the Victorian Premier League, but with their players dispersing after this game to other VPL clubs, it is unclear how many will come back.

The Knights are a member-based club and the site also contains the Croatian Social Centre. An extraordinary general meeting is planned for later this week to determine its fate. The options are to raise the funds to pay off the remaining debt on the venue - about $1.3 million - or sell the complex and play elsewhere. A lot could hinge on the fate of the application by the new Melbourne United consortium to join the APL. It has been offered the Knights' facilities as a training venue should it want them.

Whatever happens, it cannot be denied that Somers Street has left an indelible mark on the NSL. Visiting teams, as Marth pointed out, hate going there; the surroundings - industrial sites, urban waste grounds - are far from inviting and, in the glory days, the revved-up crowd chanting "Cro-at-zi-a, Cro-at-zi-a" at top volume, was intimidating.

The venue always has a down-at-heel, scruffy, look, allied to a "So what? We don't care what you think of us" attitude.

Flares are all part of the experience on a visit to Somers Street and, doubtless, many will be dispatched today. While the more sensational elements of the press and tabloid television create the impression that Knights supporters are hooligans, the reality is that there is rarely any trouble.

The supporters' worst offence was three years ago, when a tiny group of so-called fans attacked Perth Glory coach Bernd Stange and a handful of Glory players, citing the "Serbian salute" that Perth striker Bobby Despotovski had allegedly given the crowd as justification for their action.

It was inexcusable and the club was fined, ordered to improve ground security and play its next home game against Perth in Tasmania.