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Craig's got this new, this new foundation, this new plan to do this and it sounded to
me absolutely fascinating Craig. Well, I've got four kids so, you know, in one way it's
not the kids fault. If you grow up being a gamer, and you've got bells and whistles and
lights going off in your face and everything's a thousand miles an hour and exciting and
you get adrenaline, you know, and all the mediums you talked about. Then for a kid these
days to go out, in the backyard, and kick a ball around it's like so boring. Have you
ever kicked a ball in the backyard? I have my brother used to make me, my brother used
to make me play, yeah practice with him in the back garden. Is it boring? I found it
boring yeah. Well it is boring, that's what I mean, it's boring. Sitting on the PlayStation
is fantastic. Anyway, I think we've got to talk to kids in their own language and we
have to develop programs whereby we can give them the gaming experience but they're using
their feet and their sensory perceptions to actually do skills and drills, meaning, right,
put them into a giant PlayStation where their feet are like, or a pinball machine, where
their feet are like flippers, which turn off and on, light and bells and whistles, if they
hit the correct target at the correct pace of ball, you know for passing and dribbling.
So , I've spent a long time, actually maybe twenty or thirty years, because the methodology
I honed in the middlesborough car park way back then when all I had was a ball and a
brick wall, right, that was 1975, you know, now 2013 there is technology out there, right,
and we've got to make it more interesting, is my point. It's a long winded explanation.
We got to make it interesting because English football and Australian football, I believe,
is going backwards. All the foreigners are coming in and taking the jobs, and I was the
original foreigner if you like, so nothing against foreigners by the way but, but they've
all got 75% have got the places in the premier league. Now thy're taking 50% of the premier
league academy jobs, why? Because they are better, because they're better passers, better
dribblers, better players and they're hungrier. Where as our English kids are, they're not
hungry. Well some of the best players, if you look at brazillian or south american,
it's because that's what they are doing, in the street playing football, back to basics
without the technology. Well that's becuase they don't have playstations or televisions,
their object of desire is that football, that is their toy it's theire one and only toy.
It's social standing in that flavella or bario, right, is is you might be the ugliest, skinniest
kid in the world but if you can nutmeg someone three times in an afternoon you're a genius
and that's the social standing and believe it or not in the back streets of Liverpool
and Middlesborough and Scotland, you know, only twenty, thirty years ago, that was the
same situation but now, okay as nations maybe we've grown up maybe we've provided more for
our kids and they've got a better standard of life. So, we're knocking it but it has
it's pros and cons but we're going backwards. I mean, the Aussies I think and the English
are going backwards as a national team because of this problem. Well obviously you were touching
on skill and developing skill the way you did when you first came over to England, but
what's something that you are an advocate of is the determination and not just the skill
and the ability but the want to play and the passion for it. Yeah and erm, you know, it's
interesting, if you haven't got that then you're not going to make it at any level and
it's really funny but I've seen all these talented kids come along with great skill,
with great vision, they're actually great players but if that hunger and desire and
want and determination's not there, they're not going to make it. then you see kids like
myself, like Stevie McMahon, that just struggled, struggled, struggled, but were determined,
right, and when they got their chance they went through people, they cleaned people up,
they just wanted that ball and as I was explaining before to Neil. You know, my job in life was
to get that ball for Liverpool, give it to someone that could play, then run off on a
tangent to give them an option, people like Dalglish and Rush and we made those blokes
look good. They were good but we made them look even better, yeah, that's right. And
it's also about wanting to do well for your team, not just for yourself, like you said,
you didn't care about making yourself look good, you wanted to make the people you worked
with look good as well. Well you know what, in hind sight, you know, it's about the people
you're playing for as well, it's the city, it's the poeple that pay their money, the
working class people, it's when you buy into something like Bill Shankly's philosophy of
why you play football, who you're playing football for and what it means to them. That's
kinda what makes Liverpool different to anybody else and you dig deep into that rich heritage
and history and where it's coming from and where it's coming from up here. If that's
your starting point, right because Liverpool was an ordinary team when Shankly came. It
was never an ordinary city by the way, we know that. So it took an extraordinary man
and an outsider to come in and say, you know, give me a team of scousers and I'll beat the
bloody world because he recognized, I guess, what I've recognized as well because I'm an
outsider, there's something unique about you guys. It's wacky, it's weird, you are definitely
weird but you've got something and I think that's why you can come somewhere like Australia
and there's like ninety-ninety five thousand people all singing your song about your culture
and about what you do. It's really really interesting and might I just say, welcome
to Australia, and we've been waiting so long for you guys to come and it's kind of you're
giving us some of your self. Well what can I say, I think on behalf of The Anfield Wrap
and Red Touch Media, we are thrilled to be here and thrilled to be speaking to you. So
thank you for your time. I'm Kelly Forshaw, this is Red Touch Media with Craig Johnston
and Neil Atkinson of The Anfield Wrap. Thanks for watching.