One Night on Wilson's Prom

Reviewed by Tony Wilson

Jesse Fink, 15 Days in June: How Australia Became a Football Nation Hardie Grant $29.95

I read Jesse Fink’s Fifteen Days in June in the middle of the night in the middle of my honeymoon. I was meant to be enjoying three days in Walkerville, when mosquitoes launched a suicide mission against the honeymoon suite (read 1950s fibro bedroom). Our one year old was also under attack, and her squawked alarm, in combination with the bloody excitement of our 2am reprisals, meant I was too on edge to sleep.

I picked up the Penguin Classic edition of Brideshead Revisited. For three weeks I’d been wading through it like a Russian soldier through the marshes of Grozny. Small type. Flowery language. An unlikeable effete who carries a teddy bear. Then I picked up the Jesse Fink book. Big type. The back of Jason Culina’s head on the cover. A chance to revisit the best fifteen days of my life, and most likely, the best days of his.

Fink didn’t let me down. Four hours later, dawn rolled in over my 180 degree panoramic beach view and I was still under a blanket on the couch, reading. The book begins where it should begin. I’ll never tire of hearing where people were and who they jumped on when Aloisi’s kick hit the back of the net in November 2005. Fink’s personal account of that night is as good as any — the joy of the moment, the letting of the pain from campaigns past. He allows himself to jump out of his professional role as sports journalist to be a fan, to do a similar job as the one I undertook for Australia United.

From early on, however, it is clear that whilst we both decided to write books on Weltmeisterschaft 2006, we set ourselves very different agendas. Whereas mine was to be mainly travelogue, steeped in songs and sauerkraut, Fink sought to place the Socceroos achievement in its historical context, to record and celebrate the football that was played that year, as well as the prevailing off-field mood. In order to stretch his historical canvas, Fink is constantly glancing forwards and backwards. There is recognition for not just the 1974 Socceroos, but the 1965 team which undertook something of a footballing Burke and Wills expedition with its brave but ultimately unsuccessful foray into Cambodia. Against that, the second half of the book is primarily concerned with the post World Cup period — the Hiddink vaccum and a remarkably prescient analysis of the disastrously misjudged Asia Cup campaign. (Fifteen Days in June was published before the tournament, but it anticipates the team’s poor performance.)

Fink laments the fact that he missed out on an interview with Guus Hiddink. Apparently the super coach’s management denied access for the simple reason that Hiddink wanted to support Hiddink’s book, and not Fink’s. In truth, the book doesn’t suffer. Fink speaks to many of the players and the support staff, and they provide a fascinating portrait of the man who will come to define the era. Tough, respected, prepared for all contingencies, clear thinking, observant, hard, honest with his players and himself. And lucky. For all the undoubted ability, Fink correctly points out that things could have gone horribly wrong. The man the Dutch call ‘Guus Galuk’ (Lucky Guus) played games with Schwartzer and Kalac, believing neither to be a suitable number one, and there were disasters against Japan and Croatia. After the Japan game, Fink quotes Ruud Gullit as saying Hiddink had a ‘horseshoe as big as my house’. The interview with Graham Arnold, where he recalls his conversations with Guus about when to substitute during the second half against Italy is nothing short of fascinating. ‘We’ll get them in extra time’.

Fifteen days in June is unashamedly a football book, canvassing a raft of football issues. How did Lowy get Hiddink? Is his importance overstated, or does he deserve his beatific reputation? Why did this team gel? What was wrong with the old style of game employed by Frank Arok and Eddie Thompson and even Frank Farina? Why did Hiddink prefer an athletic player like Wilkshire to a more skilful midfielder like Josip Skoko? Did the Socceroos ultimately suffer for the lack of a true number ten like Andrea Pirlo? Do we have the coaching systems in place to ever produce a player of that technical quality?

Fink’s game analysis is superb, revealing his years of experience as a sports journalist. Amidst the tickertape of the overall achievement, it’s easy to forget the game by game dynamics. Fink reminds us that Australia was poor in the first half against Japan; that the now immortal Tim Cahill would have been somewhat less immortal if a penalty had been called against him in the seconds after his first goal; that Emerton was brilliant against Brazil, as was most of the team, that Viduka had a very good tournament, leaving aside the nightmare of Italy; that the Italian game was lost not with the Grosso penalty, but with the midfield brain freeze that allowed Totti eight seconds to size up his options; that in deciding on substitutions, Lucky Guus gambled on extra time and finally rolled snakes eyes.

There is a subtle blend of reportage and opinion, and time and again, I found myself recalling the action nodding in agreement. It’s also pleasing that unlike most fans who might undertake this task, Fink has a journalist’s even-handedness about the performance of the referees. At the end of the chapter on the Brazil game, the reader doesn’t blame Markus Merk for our defeat (as Harry Kewell and almost every Socceroos fan in the stadium did). It was Brazil’s superiority in the box and the presence of even an out-of-form Ronaldo that generated the best chance of the game, the chance that was the difference. Of course, that said, it’s impossible to write about the Croatia game without mentioning Graham Poll and his inability to count to two, and Fink does so delightfully, remembering that Graham Poll also failed to count to two in the South Korea versus Togo game.

Fink touches on the significance of the tournament to Germany. His effort in inserting the word Vergangenheitsbewältigung must have been a challenge as much to the typesetter as it is to the people of Germany. It was impossible to breathe in all those flags and all that nationalism in Germany without thinking of the Nazi past, and Fink, like me, recalls that month in June as an overwhelmingly positive release. His base for the tournament was Strasbourg, just over the border in France, and he spends part of a chapter explaining that city’s amazing history — the way the border has shifted like skipping rope. He finishes the section with some football history, the story of Racing Club de Strasbourg with its proud Resistance affiliations and its wartime rivalry with Sportgeimeinschaft SS Strasbourg, the secret police team.

The politics that dominates the book, however, are the politics of Australian football. Readers of Fink’s former blog on the Fox Sports site, Half Time Orange will know that he is a passionate fan of the game and its directions, and not one to pull his punches. A theme throughout is the provincialism of Australian sport, and the mountains football has climbed in gaining mainstream acceptance. The likes of Peter Fitzsimons are named and shamed, not just for their tireless bashing of the sport (‘what World Cup?’) but for their about face as the Socceroos approached their Everest. There are fascinating sections on the need for improved junior development, the challenges and benefits of being part of Asia, our failure to produce world class coaches, the urgent need for team regeneration towards South Africa 2010, and the FFA’s failure to properly acknowledge past Socceroos and their enormous contribution.

One former Socceroo who touched Fink in Germany was Ted Smith who played two games at the 1956 Olympics. At Ohringen, a few administrative and media headaches were getting to Fink when he spotted Smith, whose eyes were glistening.

I’m walking on cloud nine … I never thought I’d see the day. I missed out as a player and I always thought I would as a fan, but I’m here now. There’s Australians here from everywhere. Germany’s beautiful. Beautiful.

Coincidentally, Ted Smith, who signs off his emails Socceroo #156, is a former player who has touched me too. We met at a Green and Gold Army breakfast on the morning of the Ghana game, and he sent me a lovely email after reading Australia United, welcoming me to the fold as a relatively new fan (I’m an Iran ’97). The other odd coincidence is that one of the people thanked in Jesse Fink’s book, his cousin Cameron Fink, is one of the lead characters in Australia United. Cam Fink’s eccentric partying ways as well as his Cannonball Run style dash for tickets through the streets of Stuttgart made him one of the memorable fans I encountered in Germany.

Jesse Fink’s book is less about that pavement thudding hysteria (and the gross injustices of the FFA’s ticketing system) and more concerned with the football. It is a fascinating amalgam of on-the-ground experience, meticulous research and considered opinion, and it flows so well that I was still reading at 8.15am, with the sun shining over Wilson’s Promontory and my mosquito ravaged babbit screaming for milk.

There was only one point where I lost my rhythm. It was in a section concerning 1974 Socceroos captain Peter Wilson. On page 194, Fink argues that the quietly spoken Wilson has been unfairly dealt with by the football community, and in particular, the game’s loudest mouthpieces at SBS. He argues that despite Wilson receiving the endorsement of 20 of 22 players in a team vote, history remembers Johnny Warren as ‘Captain Socceroo’ and the team’s leader in that campaign. He then cites the author of ‘a recently released book about the World Cup’ as saying Warren was ‘the Socceroos best player during that famous 1974 campaign.’ This was not the case. Warren only played one game, and according to his teammate Adrian Alston, was ‘lucky’ to get to Germany.

Another great thing about Fink’s book? He had that nameless author on the rack, and could have roasted him for his sloppy research. But instead, he showed some mercy. At dawn on the second day of married life, sprawled out on a couch, contemplating the glorious honeymoon for Australian football, rest assured Jesse Fink — he knew who he was.

Tony Wilson played for Hawthorn's reserves in the AFL (but don't hold that against him). He is a writer and broadcaster who has fallen in love with the world game. Visit his web site.

DAS LIBERO Issue no.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9