LES Murray known as Mr Football in Australia, was a broadcaster for SBS Television for more than 30 years.
Last week Murray was in the country for three days and was hosted to dinner by Fiji Airways at the Sofitel Hotel on Denarau Island in Nadi.
The dinner was exclusive to the media where Murray shared his experience of the development of football in Australia and the pathway for Fiji Football Association to take the sport to the next level.
Fiji under-20 coach Frank Farina and Murray’s close friend Pradeep Singh also attended the dinner.
Les James Murray born Laszlo Urge in Budapest, Hungary, on November 5, 1945 was inducted into the Football Federation Australia’s hall of fame recently.
The Beginning
“I started at SBS in 1980 and the picture was very different,” Murray said.
“Football was a marginalised sport and perceived to be belonging to the immigrants only.
“It was really an underdog sport compared to the big ones like rugby union, rugby league, cricket and Aussie rules. But it was the world game which none of these other sports were.
“So we began to open the Australian eyes and it took a while. We needed a lot of persistence and patience. We would run lot of football on television which did not rate. We had a few thousand viewers. But the station to their credit was patient.
“It took us ten years before we really got some decent audiences. That start in 1990 with the first FIFA World Cup that we exclusively covered.
“What SBS needed to do was to open up the Australian eyes to the cultures of the world. Before SBS the only cultures that were exposed on Australia television were the Anglo cultures. Australian, British and American, that was it.
“So SBS was put there to change that and show the Australian audiences that there is French cinema, African music and Brazilian football. We did that and finally the penny dropped. We did that by persistently showing the best football in the world and the best players in the world which the other stations never did. Frank Farina grew up at that time.
“He was a young player. Frank could look at football on SBS and say Marco Van Basten what a player or Michel Platini.
“There were a lot of role models around. So we had a generation of players who grew up on exposure through these players. Harry Kewell’s role model was Marco and there was only one station that he saw Marco was on SBS.
Breakthrough
Murray said the realisation of the popularity of football in Australia kicked in the 1990s.
“In the early 90s globalisation kicked in which meant that when you are part of it you had to play balls with the rest of the world,” he said.
“Australians began to realise and paid attention to football, particularly to the Socceroos and what they were doing because whether they were rugby union fans, cricket fans, Aussie Rules or rugby league fans, they began to understand that football was important.
“It was important to the country and the World Cup was the biggest sporting event in the world including the Olympics.
“The most important thing is because it has twice as many viewers as the Olympics. And the Australians said that they want to be on this stage and relevant to the world. So that basically drove the appeal of the game. We were the World Cup broadcasters and have the rights until 2022.
“That is the best football that you can expose. Australia’s population is approximately 24 million. We had 11 million viewers for the World Cup in Brazil last year. So that is nearly half.
“And it is not a football country, it is a cricket country. It is amazing that the level of realisation in Australia the importance of football.
“Frank Farina was an iconic player. He was player with fantastic crowd appeal. He was a pin-up boy player and was on the front and back page of the newspaper.
“Early in the 2000 Soccer Australia which was the predecessor of what is now the Football Federation Australia, was in a bad way financially.
“It needed money so it went to the chairman of Soccer Australia Ian Knop and he went to the Government and said ‘give us some money’. The government said we won’t give you any money but if you invite us to have an inquiry on how football is run then after that we will give you some money.
“So Ian had no choice but to do that. They may have been a few hundred thousand dollars in the kitty but that was it.
“So the Government did an inquiry and invited Frank Lowy to come in and take over the game. He was then the richest man in Australia and very successful businessman and great football fan.
“He came in and changed everything. Under his leadership Australia created a professional competition called the A League. He basically shut the previous company down.
“They got $50million from the Government. More resources were thrown at the Socceroos than ever before and they qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 32 years.
“They got integrated with Asia. The game got a lot of credibility back, sponsors started to line up. The ethnic divisions were not there anymore. Last week there were 50000 fans in the Melbourne derby.
“The Sydney derbies are always sold out. It would have been unthinkable back in the 1970, 80s and even the 90s.
“It was a rough road but we always believed in it. Johnny Warren before he died they asked him what he would like to have as his legacy he said I told you so. All his I told you so have come true. There are still things to do and it is unfinished business. It has been a terrific story.”
Murray’s background
Murray started his career as a newspaper journalist in England before moving to Australia.
“When I was in newspapers I was not a football writer,” he said.
“The opportunities did not come. But I always wanted to be a commentator. An opportunity came when I was in England, when the old National Soccer League (NSL) started in 1977, Channel Ten started a football program. A friend of mine said there is a football program starting on Channel Ten and they don’t have any commentators why don’t you apply.
“I was living in London so I took a tape recorder to a Chelsea game at Stamford Bridge against Nottingham and I commentated on the game on tape. Then I sent it into Channel Ten. And they played to the executive producer and he liked it and I got the job as chief commentator.
“Because Channel Ten was a commercial station, they only looked at ratings and the show did not rate so after one year they took it off.
“Three years later I was working at SBS as a Hungarian sub title person. I was moonlighting there with quality cinema.
“Then I accidentally ran into a guy in a corridor who was the executive producer at Channel Ten when they hired me there. He was now working for SBS and said Les I’m glad to see you. He said we have our first outside broadcast on Sunday and this was a Friday and that was the NSL grand final.
“It was in 1980 and he asked me, are you available to commentate. I said it was short notice. He said they tried to get big names like Martin Taylor, John Motson, Barry Davies, and all knocked us back.
He said your co-commentator would be Johnny Warren. I had never worked with Johnny before. So we did the grand final in Canberra. It was between Sydney City and Heidelberg. It went off like a dream and that is where my career started as a commentator. Then I became a presenter later. Murray commentated Fiji’s 1-0 victory against Australia during the 1988 World Cup qualifiers from the roof of Prince Charles Park in Nadi.
Fiji’s potential
Murray said the key to success was through quality youth development.
“There is a lot of raw talent in Fiji and I have seen it down the years,” he said.
“But raw talent is not enough; you have to polish that in the right way. If that is done properly, then you have a lot of potential. Fiji is a small country but lots of small countries have done well in football.
“There has to be money spent. I’m not sure where it will come from but the Government apparently at the moment is willing to spend money on sports.
“But bulk of that money should go on youth development so that Fiji can cultivate quality players who can compete internationally. I’m surprised that Roy Krishna is the only Fiji player in the A League. There should be more.
“We have got some seriously mediocre, boring players who have been brought into Australia as imports for what reason I do not know. It would be far better to bring in players from Fiji who are young and exciting and we are doing something for the Pacific Nations which a responsibility.
“In the 1980s Australia was playing many top club sides. If Fiji’s last international was two years ago then it is a disgrace.
“It is very difficult for Fiji to qualify for the World Cup because Oceania does not get an automatic place. There has to be a qualifying round against Central America or Asia. It alternates.
“Last time New Zealand had to play Mexico. So it is difficult for Oceania to get direct qualification to the World Cup. With Australia gone, it unlikely that Oceania will get a result at the World Cup that would justify them arguing to get automatic qualification.
“My personal view is that the Asian Confederation should be split in half with the West and the East and the East integrating the Oceania region.
“But the people that run Asia would not want to reduce their power base. So it is unlikely that it will happen.”
Results don’t matter
Murray said results should not matter at the youth level. He said the people in the country should back development and should not be results orientated.
“It is about learning,” he said.
“It is about developing players who will become good players later on.
If they are going to be constrained by results and the need to get results then they will not learn and will not develop.
“What I would ask the Fijian community is that they should judge the Fiji U20 not on results but what they tried to do, how they performed and what the coaches tried to do to make the players better.
“If this team tries to play and has a go even at Germany so what. If they perform and lose it is as long as the players have learnt from it and as long as the national identity has been justified. The Aussies did that in the World Cup in Brazil. Though they lost all three games, they had a go at Chile, Holland and should have won those games. They even had a crack at Spain. They weren’t trying to defend, park the bus, you can’t do that with kids.
“This is a rare moment for Fiji. They are at a FIFA World Cup tournament for the first time. What they do there should be measured by the results that they get. It should be by how they perform, and bring a sense of honour to the nation. If they lose three games so what.”
Farina’s View
Former Socceroos coach Farina reiterated Murray’s comments the tournaments in the country were results oriented.
Farina said there was lack of qualified coaches.
“There is a lot of potential particularly in the U20s,” he said.
“We are getting players who are 18 and 19 years for the U20, but the development hasn’t been there. It is not their fault. If you get a player aged 18 and 19 whose basic skills are not as good as it should be, it is very difficult to change that.
“If the development is not there then you will not develop your players. It is not only the players, it is the coaches as well. I can’t believe that there are less than 10 B Licence coaches in the country.
“The scenario is like, would you let someone drive your car who doesn’t have a licence to drive. So why do you have coaches in charge of development programs or teams who are not qualified. You can’t develop good players without good coaches. To have good development programs you need good coaches.”
Farina said Australia had come a long way to reach the FIFA World Cup.
“I was 16 when Les was commentating on me,” he said.
“Australia has come a long way and are Asian champions at the club level. The change has come after 30 or 40 years. Player development was a major one. Fiji has the most potential in the region.
“I have worked in Papua New Guinea and have been to the Solomon Islands. I have seen the set up there. There are two fantastic academies here one in Ba and one in Suva. They are good facilities with good staff. The actual potential to develop the young players and coaches is a lot.
“Ravinesh Kumar is the coach who guided the national team to the FIFA under-20 World Cup. I did not do it. It is Fijian who did that. He has opened up ten or more development centres. He has the role as acting technical director which is extra ordinary. If you don’t have a good development program and get sponsors to come in you will not improve. You will keep stumbling along.
“When I was playing, it was always Australia, New Zealand and Fiji who were the three forces in Oceania.
If you look at the last five years, countries like the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua new Guinea, they have all caught up to Fiji. Fiji is no longer a dominant force, why, because at the club level it is too much oriented to results.
“In the overall picture Fiji has been starved of international football.”
