In My Sporting Hero, a new podcast series from Nutmeg, footballers talk about the athletes who inspire them. Sometimes those sportsmen and women are also footballers. Sometimes not. You can listen to the audio on this post, on the podcast app of your choice (just search for ‘My Sporting Hero’) or enjoy the written version below.
Our next guest is Craig Moore.
Craig landed at Rangers during the club’s nine-in-a-row supremacy, and received a crash-course in the fundamental importance of winning at Ibrox from the likes of Richard Gough, Andy Goram and John Brown. An uncompromising and dominating centre-half, Craig spent most of his career at Rangers, and during two spells in Glasgow’s south side he claimed six league titles, four Scottish Cups and three League Cups. He was capped by the Socceroos 52 times and represented Australia at the 2006 and 2010 World Cups.
Craig’s sporting hero is fellow countryman Craig Johnston, who starred for Liverpool during their golden era and inspired other Aussies to follow him to Blighty.
I’ll tell you what didn’t draw me to Craig Johnston: it wasn’t his long, permed hair! As a kid in Australia, we would get up in the middle of the night to watch him play on television. He was our Australian hero, involved at the highest level of the game. A lot of Australians supported Liverpool because our highest-profile player was playing for them, and this was during the era in which Liverpool were winning everything. I remember the 1986 FA Cup final against Everton, which Liverpool won 3-1 and in which Johnston scored. After that, he was my man, I just wanted to be like Craig Johnston.
That was a formative time for me as a young football fan, and I also clearly remember the World Cup that summer and I definitely took it all in. I actually saw Maradona play in the flesh when he came to play in a Bicentennial Gold Cup tournament in Australia in 1988 – and Australia beat Argentina 4 1! Anyway, I was fascinated by Craig Johnston and totally obsessed with football and wanted to become a professional. There wasn’t a fully professional league in Australia back then, so you would wonder about playing overseas, and Craig Johnston was the Aussie who had made that breakthrough, so he was very much my hero and idol.
Craig was hugely successful, but for me it was his backstory that was so fascinating. He actually sold up and moved his family to England, which was an enormous commitment, and demonstrated his all-or-nothing mentality. It was a huge risk, because many players before him had chased the same dream and it hadn’t worked out for them. It didn’t work out initially for Craig at Middlesbrough, but he was so resilient and brave that he kept persevering. Then, when he claimed a place in the first team, he nailed it down, and that’s the real achievement: making it stick, season after season. It’s particularly difficult when you consider that most players have been through something challenging, be it a loss of form or injury or something in your private life.
In Australia, soccer is probably only the fourth or fifth most popular sport. But Australia is very multicultural, and a lot of people came over from Europe during the 1960s and 70s and built community football clubs. These became a hotbed of talent and the league became very tough; it was semi-professional but it was of a very strong standard. If you were able to hold your own in it, then you could consider opportunities overseas, and lots of players had a lot of success abroad. The group I come through with at the Centre of Excellence included Mark Viduka. You had 21, 22 players all with the same dream, all just football-daft. We all forgot about school, which wasn’t a good thing because education is very important, but it demonstrated that all-or-nothing mentality.
Because of my English mother, I had an opportunity to play for England under Terry Venables, but my heart was with Australia. However, that doesn’t make me think any less of Craig Johnson (who played for England Under-21s). I’ve met him a couple of times – his mind never stops. He’s been involved in quite a few things since retiring from his playing career, including photography, and he has a lot of imaginative ideas for enhancing the popularity of football in Australia, to make it more fun with a bit of American-style razzamatazz. He was always someone that impressed me, and I know that they say never meet your heroes, but Craig certainly didn’t disappoint me, and he had maintained his passion for the game. I’d love to see him more involved with Australian soccer, even in an ambassadorial role.
It was incredible for him to play in great Liverpool sides, with all the trophies that they were winning. I think at times people overlook those achievements, how big they really were. But not me, because I’ve had that experience, I’ve been involved in football, and even though I got nowhere near a European Cup final, I know how hard it is to make it as a professional. For me, moving to the UK was difficult more later on, because you realise you have missed out on so much family life back home. But at the time I didn’t have my own family – I was only 17, and I had already been living away from home since the age of 15. When I scout talent with a view to them moving away from Australia, I always try and give players and their families all the information required to make a good decision. If appropriate, I might advise them to stay in Australia for a while and cement their place as a regular in the (second-tier) NPL, and then the A-League, because it can be difficult moving to the other side of the world where you don’t have a network. Sometimes moving abroad hasn’t been thought through well enough, and perhaps the plan or the timing isn’t there and it can become a bad experience. Homesickness can be a real problem, although keeping busy, by constantly driving yourself forward, alleviates that.
When I eventually made it into the Rangers first team, the dressing room was full of strong characters such as Richard Gough – who was an inspirational leader, Andy Goram, Stuart McCall, Ally McCoist, Mark Hateley, Ian Durrant, Gordon Durie, Ian Ferguson and John Brown. I couldn’t have got a better education because these were wonderful people; great professionals and absolute winners. I learned very quickly what it meant to be a Rangers player. I remember Coisty telling me early on that to be a success at this football club you must have thick skin. When I look at the current Rangers team, I sometimes wonder if many of them have got that thick skin.
Anyway, Craig Johnston is someone who I still regard highly today, because he was the man, he was the one for me as a young kid growing up who captured my imagination and inspired a dream.
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