Being the half-Samoan, half-English kid, I didn’t have a natural niche, didn’t fit into the typical ethnic divisions, but being part of Olympic, it didn’t matter; I soon became known as an “adopted Greek”. The fans and the parents of the other kids in the youth squads all talked to me in a mixture of Greek and their heavily accented English, and it got to the point that I understood some of it and could even get by with a few phrases.
Australian football has changed a lot since then. The A-League is the only thing many younger fans know today, but, for me, the old NSL was my highest aspiration. My dream was to make it into the starting eleven of Olympic and have those Greek fans waving blue and white flags and screaming when I’d score.
But even though you’re wearing the Olympic colours and crest as a youth player, it’s still a massive dream—a huge long shot—that you’re ever going to play for the starting eleven in the Olympic men’s squad.
I played with some top players at Sydney Olympic—really exceptionally talented young guys. There were players who never fulfilled the potential of that talent because of the various paths they chose. Some got a serious injury. Some met a girl and had a kid. Or the needs of family called on them to step up and work full time rather than pursuing their dream of football. And then there were those who had the talent and the drive but lacked some other advantage—they often didn’t have that one good role model in their life who believed in them.
Others, however, just didn’t have the discipline. They chose going out, having a party lifestyle, rather than the regimen of daily training. It’s a hard truth: reaching the pinnacle of anything requires not only talent, and good fortune, but also a single-mindedness towards those things you can control—if you’re disciplined enough.
It’s nearly impossible to have this combination of advantages and personal qualities, but today I tell the kids in the youth football academies I run in Australia that what matters, if you really want it, is that you devote yourself to those things you can influence. Give yourself over to your passion. Take every opportunity presented to you.
At Olympic I came up through the ranks, part of a tremendous youth system, much like the system used by Barcelona or Manchester United to develop the talent of the youngest schoolboys in their academies. I was fortunate enough to have great opportunities—and I took them.
WHEN I WAS FOURTEEN I made a trip back to Samoa that turned out to be one of the best—and most complicated—experiences of my young life.
I’d been to Samoa at a young age; we’d go there long enough to get a taste for the culture and lifestyle and, most importantly, our family heritage. It was crucial in helping us kids understand where we’d come from.
Then, sadly, my grandmother became very ill. At the same time, I’d been called up to play for Samoa as a youth international. Both Sean and I were selected for an Under-20 tournament team, Sean, of course, as the goalkeeper. I was picked as a midfielder though I was still six years under the cut-off age and doubted I’d see much playing time.
I vividly remember the family discussing it over the kitchen table. Football, was in fact, secondary: the biggest thing for Sean and me was going to seeing my grandmother—we could make certain she was being cared for by the local doctors and my Samoan family.
We’re from a tiny village in Samoa called Tufuiopa, right on the water. It’s the village where all my maternal family were born and raised. We had a small family house situated on a bit of land. The typical home in Samoa is called a fale, an open dwelling with a concrete base, some mats, four big poles and a roof. But if it rained—and the afternoon storms were often fierce—the rain would lash in through the sides. The fale is where they have village meetings, traditional ceremonies, feasts, as well as prayer for church on Sunday. It’s the centre for communal life in that tiny village.
This visit to Samoa was different from the ones I’d made as a kid, trips I could hardly remember. Now, for the first time, my brother and I were fully immersed in our Samoan heritage and culture. In the mornings we bathed in a watering hole right across the road from where my grandmother lived. One side of the hole was for cleaning your clothes and the other side was for washing yourself. It was the strangest thing for a couple of kids from the suburbs of Sydney to look down and see a fish swimming at your feet as you’re soaping yourself up.
Bathing that way is just an integral part of Samoan culture. No one bats an eye; you go down and have a wash in the local watering hole. Right next to you are other families bathing and also the local women are doing the laundry.
The Under-20 team prepped in Samoa for three weeks before leaving for Fiji. When Sean and I weren’t training, we spent loads of time with my grandmother and we did it rough. We enjoyed mucking in, cleaning up, helping with the cooking—all while running back and forth from training. Living just the way most Samoans live their daily lives.
We got so immersed in the culture that whenever we weren’t in our football kits we’d wear the national dress. The men wear a lava-lava—a type of simple sarong, often brightly coloured and with beautiful patterns. Sean and I would walk around the village in the lava-lava with no T-shirt, sometimes in flip-flops, sometimes barefoot, to and from the watering hole, looking exactly like the locals.
My brother and I were there for football but, in truth, rugby is the important sport for most Samoans. Many of my own cousins became quite successful playing at both the club and the international level. It’s unreal the amount of talent that comes out of Samoa—a lot of it ends up in Australia in rugby league, or in New Zealand for rugby union and in New Zealand’s national team, the All-Blacks. In American Samoa, there’s also been an explosion of academies to discover talented youths to take to the USA to play in the National Football League. That’s largely due to the success in the States of islanders like Troy Polamalu, who grew up in California but is of Samoan descent.
We got to know our extended family, all these rugby-playing uncles and cousins, most of whom had that typical Samoan male build: huge and powerful, which made me feel even smaller than I already did. There’s something in the Samoan genes—yes, the men are strong and big-boned, but they also tend to be quick and athletic. I never could sort out if it’s a combination of the diet and the outdoor lifestyle, but clearly there is also something in the Samoan DNA. You can see it as you stroll around the island, predominantly in the younger men: they’re basically naturally built athletes.
Not every Samoan male is big and agile, but many are. They’ve had generations of natural training. It’s often said that the only tool a Samoan man needs is a machete: to cut the grass, to slash open a coconut, even chop down a tree.
Because my grandmother was so ill, Sean and I would wake at 5:30 a.m., fetch water for tea, then walk down to the bakery, which opened at 6 a.m., to get hot bread. We used to have this delicious New Zealand butter spread really thick on the toasted bread, with a cup of hot tea, and if you were lucky maybe some baked beans or spaghetti from a can. That was considered a special treat.
Normally, when you go into camp as an international, you think you’ll stay in a hotel, get tracksuits, proper kits. Not in Samoa. When we went to meet the staff and the players—a few of whom had flown in from New Zealand—we realized most were locals and were dirt-poor. Some of the boys had no football boots, or if they did, the boots were in horrible condition, not even the correct size for their feet.
The training pitches were awful—the grass was very high, the field was lumpy, the goalposts were wonky. The quality of the play was poor and the organization was disjointed. Once we put all the boys together, you could see what a mixed bag we had on our hands: some were above-average footballers, but some had mostly played rugby, so they had some stamina but minimal technique. You could