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‘Not really’ I replied ‘I’ve been snorkeling before!’ I said in a somewhat cheekily tone.
She laughed as she tossed me my flippers ‘You know what I mean’ she said in a voice that conveyed a bit of seriousness, ‘If you don’t get the job or don't like it we can always move somewhere else instead of going back to Canberra, it’s too bloody cold there, maybe you could get a job with Roar or Glory?’
It was a thought, I had just left my job at the AIS and it wouldn’t be too hard to get a job somewhere else, Western Australia and Queensland were both options but I wasn’t really interested in staying in the Australian system anymore, hence why I was here in the first place, I hadn’t expected the phone call I received but I was happy to come and have a look and see what this place had to offer.
‘We could go to England, should be able to pick up a job there pretty easy’ Mary just shrugged ‘Sure if that’s what you want to do, bloody cold there and we wont be doing this too often’ she said smiling.
It was true, we definitely would not be snorkeling over there too much, especially in these sorts of conditions, a beautiful lagoon excellent visibility and no pollution to speak of greeted us, and an abundance of fish and coral to check out. I dove out into the water with Mary in tow.
‘Sit’ said Lee, gesturing to a chair in front of his desk as we walked in from doing the rounds around the academy, ‘So what do you think?’
‘Impressed’ I said, and indeed I was, it’s one thing to hear that the facilities are good but to see them for myself first hand and expecting the worst it’s a pleasant surprise to see my fears allayed, the academy had two international standard pitches here both immaculately kept, the first pitch a little higher than the second and the ‘main’ pitch had all the works and jerks you would expect, the main stand housed around 3000 people while the ground itself could hold around 5000 people.
The academy also houses all the offices of the local FA, aswell as having a dormitory that could hold 32 people easily, as well as having all the amenities like media conference rooms, medical rooms, training rooms, it was a pretty good set up and it was all thanks to an initiative called GOAL set up by the world governing body.
Lee nodded at my comment ‘It’s not going to be an easy task, you will have many duties as both technical director and head coach, and lets face it we are a developing football program here and football is not even our number one sport, or number two for that matter, the core of your players are going to be under 21, so all we want for the moment is to develop, and maybe in 3-4 years we will have enough skill and experience to be able to start looking at getting some consistent results, you will also have the under 21’s and under 19’s to look after as well as coaching and development of the younger generation’
He paused, ‘So with that in mind Mr Stadler, what do you say, will you take on the helm as head coach?’
I smiled it was indeed an intriguing offer, no real goals of success at the moment, it was just a building and development job, much as I had been use to in my native home of Australia as a youth a development coach in the AIS.
‘Certainly Mr Harmon’ I answered ‘We have a deal, I would love to take over the helm here at the Cook Islands and by the way you can call me Phil’
A broad grin beamed across his face as he shook my hand ‘I think you’ll love it here, plenty to do and see, and you may call me Lee’
So there it was I was the new Technical Director and head coach of the Cook Islands Academy and with that came the National job responsibilities, it was going to be a fun time in my life that’s for sure and at 29 I still had a lot left to live!
Thanks Spav - yeah theres some interesting factors here at play as well as Cook Islands being crap, I started thinking FM08 wasn't to bad but as i got into it, there are some shockers. One I'm not sure on is playing teams from other regions, I can beat Fiji at home who are a long way ranked above me and in my region, but when I play say the any of the Virgin Islands or Djibitou I get absolutely thumped, these guys who have worse stats and travel to my home can hit 60 yard passes, play on touch football, moving it around the park with precision and then smash it in the back of the net, where my players are missing passes from 5 yards out, I had 3 players 5 yards from the ball and they let a winger from 35 yards away come in take the ball, smash it in the net, twice in one game. Needless to say this one could well be a short story, but im a few seasons in, I have stopped playing though, playing something else which is surprisingly not to bad this year
The Cook Islands
So what is the state of affairs from an insider looking in to the Cook Islands footballing community you might ask, well it’s a young community in that respect, and only have become a FIFA accredited country since 1994, the facilities are excellent here when you consider the Cook Islands are spread out over the size of Europe, so basically you can see the task at hand in trying to get some sort of National pool together.
Much of the older generation around here are either Rugby Union or League players which means we have little or no experienced older players that can guide the team, sure there’s a few but if I have better youngsters on hand I'm going to blood them quickly.
The staff situation is limited at the moment but I do have a free reign although Lee does want some locals here with a view to learning the ins and outs, I have an assistant here in James Ngametua but that’s all, James is a native here and 31 years old, he studied in England and played over there in various amateur grades but he knew early that he preferred to teach than to play. He’s pretty astute with defending and knows the tactical side of the game quite well but apart from that he’s pretty green, still he’s willing to learn and that’s all you can ask for.
One of the first things we needed to do was get some staff in here and first things first is that we wanted good qualified physio to help out, and I knew just the man. Ryan Allan was his name and a very talented sports physio back in the AIS, he worked with a few of the various football codes there so he was well versed in all types of injuries and preventions and he had just been passed up as one of the new heads of departments a month or so back so I thought he might jump at the chance at the head physio job here.
As it turned out Ryan was the easiest one to get, we approached a lot of people for the various positions, we started high trying to get the best we could, after weeks of searching and talking to various people there seemed to be a pattern of not interested thanks but no thanks.
I refined my search to just Oceania and quick marked off the more high profile people and after a few days I had my first acceptance, Johan Koonstaal was our new Goalkeeping coach, he had had a history of coaching in the youth leagues around New Zealand and had been an assistant at New Zealand Institute of Sport as a keeping coach a few years back.
My next coaching appointment was sheer luck or maybe fate depends on how you look at it but I’m glad either way, Miron Bleiberg was actually holidaying in the area and I ran into him at one of the local restaurants while there with Mary, we sort of knew each other from the coaching circles in Australia, but in truth he was definitely the more famous of us.
A few beers and a meal followed by a few more beers seen the 55 year old veteran join on as the under 19’s manager, I offered him any position he wanted which brought a chuckle but he said at this time of his career he would just rather work with the younger generation, I had no problems with that at all.
Joshua Stewart answered our ad for a coach, he was a 33 year old journeyman of Australian football, not as a player but as a coach, he had travelled all of over the country and worked at various clubs and he had a good grasp on what was needed here, couple in the fact that he was the only person who was remotely qualified for the job who had applied was another factor in his appointment.
The last to join the team was Jamie Vuksich the 29 year old became the under 21’s manager, in truth he would of preferred to have been the assistant but after talking to his references he had the necessary qualities to lead the under 21’s with a bit of guidance, he was good with the youngsters, a pretty strict disciplinarian, a good motivator and had a pretty sound knowledge of the game.
With my last appointment we had all the positions covered and could begin to work on other things like putting some squads together, and trying to get the word out amongst the Islands.
The call went out all over the Islands we would be holding open tryouts for all national teams it would hopefully perk interest up, but in truth there wasn’t to much expected outside of Rarotonga which housed the 7 teams which made up the Cook Islands league, with all of the players being amateur it gives you some indication of what to expect.
By late July we had only received interest from two of the other Islands in the region that had players willing to try out, Atiu and Aitutaki, so with that in mind we went out to see what was about.
There was 8 players from the outer islands that we deemed to be good enough to come back and try out, they would be joining around 400 others in the next coming days to see if we could get some semblance of a squad together.
Saturday, the 21st July 2007
National Trials
The players started filtering in around 8 in the morning and were greeted by the myself and the coaching staff as we went through the registration process, each player had to come in and give their details whether or not they were eligible for under 21’s and 19’s and then they were given a commemorative t-shirt to train in, all the shirts had a 4 digit number on the front and back this was to identify players easier.
By 9.30 it seemed everyone had turned up that was going to and with so with that I made my first address in front of 378 registered players plus lookers ons, the megaphone came out.
‘Hello everyone my name is Phil Stadler and I am the head coach and technical director of the national team, firstly I would like to offer my thanks for coming to the National Football tryout, why this is not exactly orthodox this is probably the best way that we are going to be able to identify all you talented individuals out there, we have 3 squads that we will be picking today the under 19’s, under 21’s and the senior team, if your picked in the age requirement teams you are going to have to be able to produce a birth certificate or some sort of identification, if this is a problem then we can sort that out when the selection criteria is done, anyone caught lying will be dismissed from the squad.
With me today to assess everything is me fellow staff, Jamie Vuksich is your Under 21’s manager, Milan Bleiberg is the under 19’s manager, while James Ngametua is the assistant manager, Josh Stewart and Johan Koonstaal will be involved with the coaching, while Ryan Allan is the team physio’
If you have any medical problems or develop any problems during today’s tryouts then please come and see either myself Jamie or Ryan, with that in mind we are going to split up into 6 Groups, each group will have 63 people in it to start so I will call out a range of numbers and then the coach’s name and you will go with him.’
During the registration while giving out t-shirts we had pretty much determined the groups by the size of shirts given out which would be important in the first hour or so when basic fitness was assessed we wanted the similar type body builds to be together.
‘Group 1 will go with Ryan if the number on your shirt is between 900 and 1000 can you now make your way down to the bottom field’ Ryan had the larger lads and there was definitely a few, it was though with Ryans better talent for nurturing fitness he could guide these players a bit better. If your number is between 700 and 900 then you are with Johan please follow him down to the bottom field aswell thanks’
Once all the groups were sorted out it was time to get into the action, the first session which lasted just over an hour after warm ups was designed to weed out as many as possible, it was basically all fitness and various running drills and it had the desired effect with around 140 people dropping out in the first session, as expected it was Ryan’s group that suffered the most with only 12 remaining out of his 63.
With the squad broken down to more manageable numbers we went into some basic skills sessions which again lasted around an hour, but with plenty of rest opportunities, it was just to get an idea of a various things, no one dropped out but we did cut another dozen or so.
After lunch we were doing a 3k time trial again to try and weed out a few more players the lads were told and a few left before the trial started leaving us with around 180, from their we did a range of things to try and better gauge what we had.
By 4 o’clock in the afternoon we had 120 players to pick from after telling a few more they just weren’t up to the grade, the players were all told to get a good rest before tomorrow, when we did a lot more competitive work like 4 and 5 a side mini games.
The end of the day seen us go to one of the classrooms in the academy to correlate data that we had seen throughout the day, there was a fair bit to go through and we had a few decent prospects straight off the bat, well decent for the standard we were going to be up against anyway!
Sunday 22nd of July, 2007
The trials continued and around 3 pm we called it a day, we thanked everyone for turning up and called out 58 numbers that would need to fill out more of their details, the others filled out details too but these guys were just going to be on the National Pool, we had our basic squads done now.
There was some happy lads when we read out the senior squad and in fact it looked pretty new with only four players in the 21 announced who had actually played internationally before, Junior Puroku was the most experienced with 10 caps and a goal, with John Pareanga with 8, Christian Teiva with 6 and Jonathan Kairua had one, the rest had zip.
Everyone picked in the squad played for a local side with the exception of 3, under 21 player and right full back Abenzar Wichman was currently without club while 19 year old senior player Adam Kamana actually didn’t have a club at the moment and in truth hadn’t played a lot of football, he was actually a winger for a Rubgy side believe it or not, but had played football when he was younger. The only player to actually play outside of the Cook Islands was Tuka Tisam and he played for amateur side Pine Rivers United in Queensland.
Seniors
Our two senior keeper were both big lads, 21 year old Tyson Tekeu was 192cm and 95kg, so far from what we had seen he had decent technical abilities, his positioning was a bit off and he wasn’t that flash in the air because of it, but apart from that he was decent enough, his competition was Jonathan Kairua a 30 year old veteran who had played once for his country, he was a bit shorter than Tyson but didn’t weigh any less, while he was better in the air, his handling was poorer and positioning wasn’t any better, he would be our number 2 keeper I think.
In defence Mike Lewis and Peter Teina would duke it out for the spot on the left at 18 and 19 years old they were very green but both had decent enough skills with maybe Mike just infront. Vaivase Samania was the obvious choice on the right at 17 he showed plenty of promise but he would have to play well to keep out Eric Newnham who was a very determined character.
In the centre we would be lead by one of our most experienced campaigners in John Pareanga he had decent pace and acceleration and good tackling technique while being half decent overhead, partnering him would either be Rob MacKenize who was similar to John just 7 years younger at 19 or the big Grant Taylor who was good in the air just a tad slow on the ground, Grant was actually our tallest outfield player at 191cm who was a cm taller than our backup centre back John Paul Tua Teatai, JP or the pope as the coaching staff call him is only 16 so we would move him back to the under 19 for some playing time if needed but he had decent potential, if we could work on his pace.
In midfielder Martin Samuel and Adam Kamana were our right sided options, Adam had shown a talent for the right side in our trials and was currently looking for a club while Martin was very similar in skills but maybe just a little more advanced he played for local side Puaikura. Joshua McDonald and Caleb Mateara both could play left, very similar types with Joshua being a little more inventive and flair type of player. We had 5 options in the centre but 2 of those could also play up forward and one definitely would Junior Puroku was pretty quick and hard working player, he was also the only player in the squad who had scored for country and was pretty deadly from all accounts from the spot.
Tuka Tisam was the other player who could play up front, a hard working determined sort of player who had decent technique, he was a starter it just depended where, Benjamin Maaka, Christian Teiva and Manu Tautu were our other options in the midfield, both Ben and Chris were decent players while Manu was a 16 year old up and comer, Manu just needed to work on his physical attributes and he would be a decent player.
Up front we had 2 other options than Tuka and Junior, Geoffrey Strikland was decent enough for a 20 year old, worked hard and determined who had a good first touch would see a bit of game time at least, while 17 year old Teavae Kare was our other option up front, a similar sort of player to Geoff, just needed to work a bit harder.
There it was the Senior squad with an average age of 20, it was going to be interesting trying to develop these youngsters and try and bring the Islands some interest in a sport which would hopefully take off.
Friendly games are basically way to try new things but when it’s your first friendly game ever for a country it means just a little more, we were young in both years and experience so my first friendly game I didn’t want to chew to much off so with that in mind we asked the British Virgin Islands to a friendly at our home, ranked at 182 in the World meant they were 16 places ahead of us, and boy did it show.
Centre back Rob MacKenzie was injured early a nasty ankle injury for the young 19 year old wasn’t the ideal start in his fledgling international career, but when he came off in the 12th minute we were already one behind thanks to Christian Tate who put away an easy tap in on the far post. By half time the players were run ragged, BVI had us chasing arses and it was only thanks to some poor finishing that the score was 1-0.
The second half was more of the same and when Delroy Johnson made it 2-0 for them just before the hour you could feel the floodgates about to open, but Paul Luiz van Eijk scored the Cook Islands first ever goal under my guidance with a nice effort just after the hour with our first shot of the day, it put the Virgin Islands slightly on the back foot.
It didn’t seem to inspire our troops to press on and go for an equaliser but it stopped BVI from attacking us relentlessly as they had been doing, well for a quarter hour any way, but 2 goals in the last 10 minutes gave some the British Virgin Islands some reward for their effort and the score finished 4-1.
What can you take out of a game like that is hard to say, we were greatly outclassed by a team that in truth wasn’t that far ahead of us in the rankings, but we did have a lot of debutants so about the only thing you can get from a game like that is experience, I wasn’t mad with the side, I was more sympathetic, but at least they now knew what to expect!
Home v British Virgin Islands – Saturday, 8th September Sunny, Dry 20°c – Attendance 2983
Goals :
Cook Islands: P van Eijk (66)
BVI: C Tate (7,80) D Johnson (56) J Clegg (84)
Inj: CI: R MacKenzie (12, ankle)
Man of the Match: C Tate (BVI) 17/20 pass, 3/6 Shots on Target, Goals: 2.
My new Island home! 
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