‘Who are these blokes?’: The other kinds of ‘Aussie DNA’ threaded throughout the Socceroos – ABC News

Last week, following the Socceroos' World Cup qualifying win over the United Arab Emirates, News Corp.. publisheda column that suggested the Australian team were largely unknown entities.

"Go the Socceroos. But who are these blokes?" the title read.

"I've scrolled through the starting team and mostly come up with blanks. Who's Bailey Wright? Isn't he in the World Surf League? One of Tyler Wright's brothers?

"Who's Jackson Irvine? The Wests Tigers halfback? Martin Boyle? Didn't he win The Voice? Jamie Maclaren? At last, a recognisable name. The Bathurst 1000 winner.

"Point being, without well-known figures such as Harry Kewell, Tim Cahill and Mark Viduka, the Socceroos have an identity crisis."

Setting aside the admission the writer did not watch the game, the question around who the Socceroos are in their post-"Golden Generation" glow does reflect a wider perspective of the casual Australian sports fan as well as the lack of storytelling across many mainstream media platforms about who these new, young, exciting Socceroos players really are.

The lack of awareness is due, in part, to the circumstances the team have found themselves in over the past three years.

Their qualification campaign for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has been one of the longest of any nation in the world. Their first qualifier began all the way back in September of 2019, with a 3-0 win over Kuwait, butthen took a 500+ day pause the following year as the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to global sport.

Their final qualifying gameended on Tuesday morning in a dramatic penalty shoot-out win against Peru, 1,008 days after the whole process began.

Not only that, but the Socceroos' disappearance from the public consciousness was also due to them playing 16 of their 20 qualification games away from home, largely in the Middle East,due to border closures and quarantine regulations.

That meantgames were played in the latest or earliest hours of Australia's mornings.

Without the Socceroos on home soil, then, they were out of sight, and therefore out of mind.

Luckily, the team's final, heroic win against the higher-ranked Peru which saw photos and stories splashed across almost every newspaper in the country means the interest in the current crop has reached fever pitch.

So, in order to assist those still asking, "who are these blokes?", ABC has provided a selection of some of the Socceroos players who made Australian history by qualifying for their fifth consecutive men's World Cup.

We start, of course, with the man of the hour: goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne.

Known as "Redders", the 33-year-old Sydney FC shot-stopper made just his third appearance for Australia when he came on to replace captain Mat Ryan in the final 10 minutes of the Peru game.

He is the true A-Leaguejourneyman, having represented five different clubs around Australia over the course of 14 seasons.

It got to the point where, in 2016, Redmayne contemplated quitting the A-League altogether, completing a barista course with the plan to work at a friend's cafe while finishing his degree on the way to becoming a primary school teacher.

"I just didn't think I was good enough, to be honest. It was a pretty rough stage in my life," he told News Corp. a few years later.

But Redmayne stuck it out, ultimately linking up with his first goalkeeping coach John Crawley at Sydney FC in January of 2017 the same man who also coached the gloveman Redmayne replaced on Tuesday, Mat Ryan.

From there, Redmayne grew, emerging as the club's number one following the departure of fellow SoccerooDanny Vukovic.

Since then, the "Grey Wiggle" has been the Sky Blues' saviour on multiple occasions, especially from the penalty spot, helping the club win the 2019 A-League Men grand final against Perth Glory through similarly theatrical shoot-out heroics.

It was Crawley, too, who opened the Socceroos door to Redmayne after he joined Arnold's coaching unit in 2019, and who was one of the only members of the entire Australia staff and team who knew about Tuesday's shock substitution plan.

The humble giant may have only played a small role in the larger Socceroos campaign, but Redmayne's story echoes that of many others.

They includeJamie Maclaren, Adam Taggart, Rhyan Grant, Mitchell Duke, Andrew Nabboutand Craig Goodwin, whohave spent most of their senior careers in the A-League Men.

While it's a competitionthat may not beregarded as one of the world's best but which has provided full-time football, professional environments, financial stabilityand an opportunity to grow it has been ideal, even for late-bloomers like Redmayne.

It is testament to the A-Leagues' ability to produce national players that the majority of Socceroos 17of 23 players listedagainst Peru started right here at home, representing one of the country's 12 ALM teams.

As one of the Socceroos' most experienced players, 31-year-old Aziz Behich has been MrDependable for Australia throughout their World Cup campaign. A snowstorm back in January was the only thing stopping him from appearing in every single qualifier, and he's one of the first players Arnold lists on his team sheet, which included both play-off games.

The son of Turkish-Cypriot migrants, Behich emerged through Victoria's football pathways with Green Gully SC before debuting for Melbourne Victory's senior team in January 2010. He made the switch to cross-town rivals Melbourne Heart later that year, where he slowly transitioned from his more attack-oriented youth football to become one of the country's most dependable left-backs.

Behich's heritage meant he was eligible to represent three nations Turkey, Cyprus, and Australia but he chose the latter when he accepted his first senior call-up in 2012.

Soon afterwards, Behich helped blazea trail that many other young Socceroos have since followed: spring-boarding from the ALM to ply his trade overseas, first with Turkish club Bursaspor and then with Dutch giants PSV Eindhoven. He returned to Turkey following the 2018 men's World Cup in Russia, where he remains with Giresunspor.

Behich, along with Mat Ryan, Trent Sainsbury, Tom Rogic, Mat Leckie, Aaron Mooy, and Bailey Wright, is part of that middle generation of Socceroos connecting the legendary players Australia remembers to the emerging group of talent.

They're the ones who have not been quite as highly celebrated for ensuring the Socceroos maintained their World Cup appearance streak, which the win over Peru has extended to a historic five in a row, but who have maintained club careers abroad and been crucial in handing down the lessons they learned from the legends of the game tothose still to come.

Like the more senior players, Behich relishes his mentoring role in bringing through the likes of young defenders like Kye Rowles, Fran Karai, Joel King, and Nathaniel Atkinson, all of whom have been introduced into the fold over the course of these qualifiers.

"All these young boys coming in they've been brilliant," he said before the Peru game.

"We have a great mix of experience and a lot of young boys coming in through the Olyroos [U-23 team], which is great to see.

"They had a few good games in the Olympics and, working with Arnie, I think they'll only get better.

"With new players coming into camp, and for us as older players, it's all about making them feel welcome and just to be comfortable so they can show their best football when they get the chance.

"Our success so far is about brotherhood. Every time we come together, it's like we've never been apart."

One of those emerging talents Behich speaks of is 25-year-old Ajdin Hrustic, the midfielder who scored the Socceroos' winner against the UAE last week.

Hrustic, alongsideKenny Dougall and Jackson Irvine,represents a different kind ofAustralian player: one who, after playingyouth football in Australia, skipped the A-Leagues altogether and moved straight to Europe in order to chase thedream.

Hrusticstarted out in England with Nottingham Forest before joining clubs in Austria, Germanyand the Netherlands when he was still a teenager, working his way through the tiers before signing a contract with Bundesliga side Eintracht Frankfurt in 2020.

In May, he became the first Australian to win the UEFA Europa League Europe's second-biggest club trophy after defeating Scottish side Rangers, scoring in the penalty-shootout decider.

Like Behich, Hrustic was also eligible for multiple nations including Bosnia and Romania through his parents, but despite being contacted by the former in 2017, turned down the offer due to his desire to represent the country of his birth: Australia.

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Largely overlooked by the Australian national teams since moving overseas, his dedication to his football eventually got him noticed by the Olyroos later that year, making his "A" international debut for the senior team in 2018.

Despite being one of the outsiders at the beginning of Australia's tumultuous qualifiers, Hrustic's technical abilities, visionand goal-scoring ability have seen him become a regular starter for the Socceroos and one of the players that overseas media singled out as one of the team's most talented and dangerous attacking weapons.

He's part of a cohort of younger and fringe players who may not have spent significant time Down Under (or, in the case of players like Karai, Martin Boyle, and Harry Souttar, any time at all), but who have felt a calling to pull on the green and gold and represent Australia none the less.

Finally, one of the Socceroos' most exciting players of thisgeneration is winger Awer Mabil, who scored Australia's final penalty against Peru before Andrew Redmayne's crucial save.

The 26-year-old represents our new migrant story: a first-generation arrival from Kenya whose family sought refuge and opportunity on our shores.

It was in his birthplace the Kakuma refugee camp that he first learned how to play football, using a rolled-up sock or a bundleof plastic bags in place of a ball and practising withbare feet in the sand.

He arrived in Australia with his family in 2006, settling in Adelaide, where his talent was quickly noticed and nourished. He made his debut for Adelaide United when he was just 17 and earned his first call-up to the Socceroos the following year, scoring his first goal for his adopted country in 2018 and celebrating alongside fellow debutant and South Sudanese refugee, Thomas Deng.

His club football has taken him around the world from Denmark to Portugal to Turkey, with a move to Spain now on the horizon.

As he told media after the Socceroos' win over Peru: in the moments he was preparing to take the decisive spot-kick, running through his mind were images of his family, the opportunities provided by Australia, and how he could use this one act to give back.

"I knew I was going to score," he said. "It was the only way to say 'thank you' to Australia on behalf of my family.

"My family fled Sudan because of the war. I was born in a hut, a little hut:my hotel room here is definitely bigger than the room we had as a family in that refugee camp.

"For Australia to take us in and resettle us, it gave me and my siblings and my whole family a chance at life. That's what I mean by thanking Australia for that chance of life, that chance of opportunity."

These players might not be the household names of Kewell, Cahill, or Viduka, but they are arguably much more representative of the "Aussie DNA" than that which head coach Graham Arnold emphasised over the course of these final two play-offs.

While their gutsy win over Peru certainly embodied the mateship and underdog spirit often associated with a more mythologised Australian identity the kind associated with 20th-century politics and parochial bush poems they also reflect an Australia that is more modern, more real, and more relevant to the rest of the country.

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They're a group who have embraced the opportunities Australia has provided them while also striving for more, with many taking themselves off to lesser-known clubs and leagues abroad to keep their dream alive.

They're a group who have shown remarkable resilience and commitment to the larger Socceroos project, spending extended periods of time away from family and friends as Australia battled through their COVID-ravaged qualifiers.

They're a group filled with young and emerging players who have stepped up to fill the voids left by departed or absent veterans, carrying the at-times-unbearable weight of the Socceroos' own history on their shoulders.

They're a group whose belief in themselves and each other has seen them weather the storm of growing media criticism, as well as the fading hopes of a footballing public who all but wrote them off against their Tuesday opponents.

But most of all, they're a group who reflect Australia'smulticultural, migrant-rich population,perhaps more so than any other national team we have.

Since the first Socceroos team was established in 1922, they have been one of the most accurate reflections of the country's ever-shifting cultural landscape: from theEnglish and Scottish immigrants who first introduced the game in the late 19th century,to the influx of Western European families who embraced First Nations footballers during the two world warsto,morerecently, the arrival of Asian, Arab, and African communities fleeing war and persecution, or simply seeking a better life in Australia.

The country's multicultural threads are all tied together, as they have always done, in thisSocceroos teamwith all thecurrent players descending directly from these histories.

From Redmayne and Behich to Hrustic and Mabil, this grouphas emergedfrom all backgrounds and experiencesto meet here, in these moments, to help each other thrive. They are the global game in local colours.

This is the true "Aussie DNA"that the Socceroos embody: a team that not only represents the story of Australian footballbut the story of Australia itself.

So if someone ever asks you "who the hell are these blokes?", you can confidently point to the diverse, vibrant nation around you and say: "This is who they are."

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'Who are these blokes?': The other kinds of 'Aussie DNA' threaded throughout the Socceroos - ABC News