JOEY LYNCH on Football Journalism, Socceroos XI & Western United NOT Coming Back?! | EP 90

Buddhists. Oh my God. What an episode. We had the one and only Joey Lynch come on the show, one of the biggest journalists in the game in the country. He talks about how he got started in journalism, how journalism works in football, how he watches football, we go through his views of the Sockeros at the World Cup, his locks already in the squad, if you didn't know, Joey's the only one that flies around with the Sockeros to watch some at World Cup qualifiers, very, very knowledgeable. He also gives us his realistic views on Central Coast and Western United. There was so much in this episode. If you don't know Joey's story, he was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 16. There's going to be a full episode out on that on Patreon. Make sure you tune into this one, Joey Lynch, you are the one and only legend. Let's get into the episode. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Suited and Booted. I'm your host, Gerogba, to my left. Lord and my husband. To my right. Number 10. And we are joined today by a legend of the football media game. The hardest working man in journalism. Ladies and gentlemen, Joey Lynch. Joey, what a jacket might I say. Thank you very much. Hey, who is the hardest working person in journalism that you know, not yourself, other than yourself. It's probably the guys and gals at the Australian Associated Press who are at everything, filing on everything. And then their stories get sent out to numerous articles and nobody knows who they are because everybody just sort of takes the wires. Oh, that's shape, man. We'll shout out to them. Yeah, shout out to them, man. Without them, the industry collapses. So have you heard the term that we use on this show, ballitis, like the case, do you think that's a fair segment to put you in, because we would have you really high in that category from our point of view. I mean, as a bit of an expert in being sick, yes, I would agree with that. Which, which we will go into. But is a ballitis if it's your job? Yeah, yeah. Well, you've chosen your job. That's one part of it. But also how many hours of the day do you reckon you spend focusing on football? Genuinely, it fluctuates, but there's a lot because you're sort of always on call. So if something happens, you need to be able to react to it. So if I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077 and a coach gets sacked, I'm not playing Cyberpunk 2077. Because obviously you watch full games. You would be your own Twitter. You obviously rise. Yes. Like what is a average working day for you? Well, if there is one, there is no average working days of freelancer, because I got no office to go into. I got no regular hours. So maybe I'll give you an example of a busy day. Last week we had both Melbourne clubs doing press conferences. So we had Michael Matriciani, Melbourne City Women's Coach. He was up first at 9 a.m. on Zoom. Then we had Melbourne Victory, put up Seb Esposito and Arthur Dillis at 9 30. Then we had Melbourne Victory Women, put up Jeff Hopkins and Claudia Bunch at 945. The victory ones were Amy Park. And then at 10, we had Araleo Vidmar up via Zoom. So I just had to do that one on my phone leaning against the wall. I was going to say, are you doing this in a car? No, so the Zoom ones I'll often just do at home in my office, if I'm out and about, sometimes it's on the phone. Melbourne Victory, do there's at Amy Park. So I drive out to Amy Park and do those. And then adding to the busyness of it all, then we had the new FACO announcement that took place at 11 as well. And that took priority for the day, because it's some with all respect to the original rivalry. We only get a new FACO once every few years or so. So how does it work after you've done all those meetings? How do you segment the rest of your day to write about them? And then what take, I mean, you said what takes priority, but like how do you choose like what comes out first, like, so on and so forth? Paid work takes priority. So in this scenario, I had a commission from ESPN to write up the FACO story. So that one takes priority. You get the initial story up. Football Australian has announced a new CEO, yada yada yada. You do the press conference. You ask the questions and then you retop and update the initial new story that you sent through to ESPN. So I took the quotes, rewrote the story to provide a better summary, round out, put the quotes in context and that through. So because that one's a paid gig from an external company, that one immediately takes priority, then after that you look, so the four press conferences, you look at those will go on substack, the substack that I own, and I don't know in substack, but I have a substack, the substack that I run. And then I look at what games coming up first, do what does this need to go up today? Does this need to go up tomorrow? What sort of interest is in it? And then you'll sit down, go about writing those up and try to get those out before the game as well. So I do want to get to like how the landscape works, because every time I see you, oh yeah, I just got back from Uzbekistan yesterday, and I'm like, okay, but I want to start off with the cliche questions of what got you into football journalism, where was your start? People people may not know as well, listing that your dad is one of the OG greats of journalism and football, right? So I come from a media family, both of my parents worked in media and worked as journalists, my old man, worked most well known in football circles for his work as the chief football writer of the age newspaper, running for the city morning herald, but my mother also had a decade long career working in journalism across England and Australia. Doing a bit of everything, subbing, writing, editing, all of that sort of jazz. So I grew up in a journalist, a media house, which sort of, I think also in a way sort of tinged my, the way that I absorb both media and football as well in the sense that I was educated to examine it through a certain lens and examine how it was presented and analyzed through a certain lens. The way I fell into it was sort of, so what was it? 2013, 2014, it all sort of blurs together after a while. I had an allergenic stem cell transplant to treat my lymphoma, and that ruined me for a while. Among some of the complications, I was very weak in immunocompromised, so I couldn't really go to football matches and sit in the stands because I was very weak, I was very susceptible to infection. So for age, I would just go in with my old man and I would just stand at the back of the press box and just watch because it's a bit more controlled environment, there's less hustle and bustle, I can guarantee to ride to, I don't have to catch public transport anything to the games. And then that just sort of evolved over time and kept going in and I hooked up with some of the guys from the Daily Football Show and started appearing on the Daily Football Show and running for them. I also did some stuff covering Melbourne City's youth team, so I used to go to their games when it was the NPL2, when they had that promotion battle with Dandy City and the Dandy Thunder, and I used to live to eat their games and write the match reports after which, which was in hindsight, pretty good team to cover given they had like Daniela Zani. I'm an actor in Denny John, I kind of met a bunch of good players in that squad, and then it sort of evolved from there after the Daily Football Show, I did some stuff with FDBL, the New Daily, wrote for SPS the World Game before that closed down, all on a freelance basis, and then eventually hooked up with ESPN, the Guardian, Australian Associated Press, which are my current most regular freelance commissioners. And it's sort of been on that trajectory now for about four or five years. How do you find doing the freelance? Well, I guess we're sort of freelance when you come to thinking we're just free. We're more Lance at times as well. Sometimes we're Lance, sometimes we're just free, but sometimes we're free-lancing, but how do you find that that world? Because, again, I know nothing about nothing, but is it a choice of yours to not go directly to and work for one company? Do you feel like that's holding you back? No, I think I would take the full-time gig tomorrow if someone was offering it to me, because I would like to get a mortgage and all of that sort of stuff and start a family and all of that sort of stuff, but it's a grind, it's a lot of work, you need to be constantly, you know, ready to work. pitching stories, able to write stuff. If there's no work around, you've got to be willing to, like I've done the substack and all of that sort of stuff, you have to get very good at rejection as well. You've got to be willing to pitch stories and get turned around and realize that it's not personal and come back the next week with another pitch and so on and so forth and, you know, not get down. Well, you get disappointed a little bit obviously because I'd like to pay my rent that month, but you've got to be willing to take rejection and enjoy the grind, so to speak. I mean, the substack is an interesting one now, because that's like, it's almost like the new social media for writers, people that feel more comfortable with writing than doing video, but also you can charge subscriptions, right? You can charge subscriptions, I've made the decision not to, so people can pledge to pay subscriptions to me when I eventually decide to make that option, but I have at this point made a conscious decision not to put my stuff behind a paywall, one of the reasons for which is like I said before I prioritize paid commissions that I'm getting so I cannot guarantee that if I'm taking somebody subscription, I won't suddenly like during an international window when all of my work. I think it's going up for ESPN or the Guardian or something, I wouldn't feel right taking a subscription to somebody who's paying me for Aussie football coverage and they're not delivering that through a major thing, but so what I've made the decision to do is keep that from in front of a paywall, but have a donate button, so people can click on a link and if they want to keep throw 5, 10, 20 bucks my way, they can do that if they want, but that's the way that I operate it. It is a quick pause in the episode, you know what time it is, man, it's preseason, so you're out there, we're in shorts that don't match your t shirt that don't match your socks, your boot stink, your shin pad sweat smell, half the clubs rocking up in the polos that someone had in a store room from 2012 say what, stop doing that, you're not going to win the league doing that, you need to be professional. And the only way you can do that is if you get armadura on board to sort you guys out for your off field and on field, where fully customizable. No, but seriously, guys, if you want to look like a professional outfit this year, it doesn't matter if you're a state five or MPL one, Metro's even, I played Metro eights, half the team had jerseys from 1999, the other half had jerseys in 2006, you can't guess what, we didn't win shit. You need to look professional armadura will sort you out, if you want to win the league, the only way you're going to do it is if you armadue it armadue it armadue with armadura, therefore the footballer, let's get back into the episode, I guess how long did it take you to get into flow state of, because I'm assuming that you're getting these articles done very quickly, but is there ever, is there ever days where you just think I can't fucking write about this or like this is not up to my standard. Sometimes, yeah, but you just sort of have to persevere through because if you're not right and you're not getting paid and if you're not getting paid, you're not paying your rent, and if you're not paying your rent, your homeless, so you just sort of have to figure it out. You're not getting on substack and stop paying somebody out of jail, but I jolly a coffee for fuck sake, yeah, God, yeah, I'm on coffee now, not buy me a coffee because coffee, buy me a coffee doesn't let people use PayPal, and I was when they cut that off, my stuff went right down, so I went and found someone that let you use PayPal. Yeah, how do you, you said before watching you grew up in a media house and watching football through a different lens, can you explain what that lens is, because I feel like everyone like from how say was she and I may watch the game will be different to Jerome, but from your point of view, like, what do you, what is it that you're doing differently? I think for a lot of the like my first games that I used to go, I used to go to the NSL games, but when I was, you know, very young, I'd follow my old man into those. So first games I was attending when I let games, it was Melbourne nights, games at some street, South Melbourne, when Ange Poster, Cogloo was coaching them, Colton, back in the day, not old enough to have got out to Harderburg games, but sort of around that, and I would, once again, I was going with my old man, so and he'd be sitting in the press box working, so that's where I was sitting, and I wasn't going home until he was going home, so that meant I was following him into press conferences and all that sort of stuff. So when I'm five, six years old, predominantly, that's the sort of experience that I'm getting, and just at that point, when you have five or six years old, you don't know shit about shit, you're just sort of like along for the ride, but you do eventually osmosis demands that you do sort of pick up a few things and you start to learn, but, um, I guess it just, it's in a way like you're looking at it, you're looking at like how? Jernos love games that are boring, Jernos love it when a game is three-neil in the 70th minute, so if you're filing on the whistle, your story can be filed on the whistle, as a punter, and as a fan of the game, you love watching a dramatic late game where there's a bunch of goals, let me tell you, like the original rivalry on the weekends, where you hate that victory scored, had it disallowed, had a late scored. But think of the Paul Jerno that has to get a match report up within 10 minutes, and he's trying to think about how many, and they're working with the word limit, so they can't like make it so long, and they're trying to sort that out, so I imagine the Jerno doing the frickin Afcon game, are they're coming off the field? No, they're back on pretty much, and you've got to write it in a manner that engages the reader, you can't just say, you know, there's a there's a type of writing. You know, the cat sat on the match, which you want to sort of avoid just like the cat walked into the room, the cat sat on the mat, nobody wants to read that that's boring, you've got to sort of engage the reader as well. So you've also got to have the skill set of being absolutely pissed off that a goal's been disallowed, and then gone and scored at the other end, and maintain composure whilst backstate, backspacing and typing something that's inside their age. There are two wolves inside you. There's the wolf going, how awesome is this? This is incredible versus the other wolf going, you've got to file in five minutes, you prick. Oh, yeah, this is so fucking stupid that I didn't realize that you're writing it while the game's on my dumbass thought that you watched the game and then go back and look at your notes and things. So I've actually been in the press press room a few times where Joe has been in there amongst others, and there's some chat and jokes, but there's like keyboard just going locking in 20 minutes to go. It's locking chat drops. Yeah, yeah, chat drops. There's all like nice. Everyone's got coffees. They actually get food brought in. Yeah, sometimes I assume great. Sometimes not so great. Yeah, which I was there for that. So Joe, we just go a bit deeper on your education. So with your dad, did you actively learn off him? As in not just being around him, so I think I can like active, but not just him once I started going during the ALEG back when I, you know, started doing it, you know, going to ALEG games and then doing stuff with the daily football show. I don't think I don't think I asked a question in a press conference for a year and a half, two years, I tried to just keep quiet. Because it wasn't just him that I was, I think it was because like Matt Winley, Dave DeVoodovich, Ben McKay, these guys, you watch in all of them and you learn in off them and you're trying to figure out what works for you when you watch in others, you know, like I remember, you know, the rare opportunities before he is unfortunate passing, you watch what Mike Cockrell did. Cockers was a legend of this game. And you know, watching what he does. So you're always learning and even these days when you go into major tournaments and then like, and you know, like Johnny Liu was out here for the Women's World Cup. And he came down to Melbourne and he was at Masters press conference before Brazil played Jamaica, like just getting a chance to be in the room. So sort of rooms. These guys and all of that sort of stuff is fantastic and Tarek Panger as well came out for the Women's World Cup. There's all these people that come out and it's really, you're always learning and you're always learning off your colleagues and people that you respect. What, what are some, I like asking guests, this who work in different fields to just being a footballer, but what are some major misconceptions that people have about journalists because that we hate your team. Okay, that's definitely one of them for sure. Like I'll go on the road, I don't support a single team in Australian football. I have one team. It's Carl are united. We're in the national league and we got relegated from like to support them because that's where my mother's from. Yeah, I don't support a single team in the Australian football pyramid. Is that a conscious decision when you were younger, knowing I'm going to work in this field. There's no point supporting a team. I don't think it was a conscious decision, but like I said, I was going to South Melbourne games and then I was going to Colton, and then I was going to Melbourne nights games and then I was going to all these different games. I didn't have just one team that I went to watch. I went to watch it all. So and that sort of stuff. So I mean, maybe at some point you of course have teams that you follow along like I cover the Melbourne team. So of course I follow the Melbourne teams along more than others and you know that sort of stuff and I have relationships with the people that work at the Melbourne clubs. I wouldn't describe myself as a Melbourne victory fan, a Melbourne city fan, a heart of work fan, a South Melbourne fan because I deal with too many of them. Is there people in your field that the big part of journalism that people can misconstruise you're saying for you having a gender against them is when you report facts because some people don't like the facts about them coming out of whether it's form or you know something about a coach or this or that. But in regards to like are there journalists that have distaste to certain individuals in your field and then would have an agenda when they write topics about them. It's it's invariably going to happen in any in any field. People have agendas and people have views and at the same time. There is space in journalism and media like there is in any field for recognising biases and acknowledge acknowledging biases because no individual is completely unbiased in any field we all have lived experiences we all have different views that are inevitably going to bleed into how we absorb information how we analyse information. The important thing is recognising the context of your biases in the context of your work is this is what you're doing if you're writing an analysis piece. A level of they you're supposed to be analysing it which means that there will be an inherent bias because you are analysing it this is how you saw things if you're doing a straight up new story you have to recognise that you have to recognise your own biases when you are writing it to think. Am I being fair? Am I constructing this in a manner that suits my own view of things rather than the most natural view of how it actually came about. So it's all about being willing and able to recognise those sorts of things. And how do you balance trying to be honest with criticising something that you obviously seen player playing badly club doing badly coach doing badly how do you balance that with trying to be genuine and honest. It's about being in my view it's about being fair it's about being founded with your criticism it's about recognising reality but at the same time it's about being trying to avoid you know just screaming sensationalism I think a lot of the way that helps me do it is that a lot of the time like I go to the games I go to the press conferences so if I'm right if I'm writing that somebody's playing shit I have to go like or somebody's coaching shit like say earlier this season Arthur Dillis he was under the pump I wore bottom of the table I hadn't won in ages his job was on the pressure I had to write about that I did write about it he's on the pressure and I'm but the fact that I also had to go to the press conference and talk to him made sure that I had to be fair in my analysis and which I think I was because I said he was under pressure like even he knew that like everybody knew that but at the same time like I didn't go right I used the worst thing to have happen to Australian football you know he's a criminal lock him up but down Melbourne victory on that though like every time I've seen your work I feel like you never going to try to be inflammatory and I feel like a lot of people share the same sentiment as me is like you're one of the most level headed journalist you just cover what you see fair but I think they obviously use a market for those type of journalists as you see especially on platforms like Twitter what would be the biggest in terms of your stories that you've broken or you've written about the most controversial the one that got the most backlash or the one that got the most attention is there one that sticks out for you I mean it's not really backlash we used to get a lot of pushback when we were doing the national curriculum podcast free of sp and albeit a lot of our takes on the aged beautifully so I think if I was to just look at the biggest story because I don't actively try to call controversy so I don't really think about that sort of stuff the biggest story that I think I've worked I couldn't tell you what the page I'm a freelancer I don't get access to the internal metrics and all that sort of stuff I think the biggest story that I've worked on or the one that I'm most proud of is well within discovered that there's a story and there's an individual story in the story in general the stuff that I did covering the Afghan women's national team when they fled Kabul and arrived in Australia and England as well some of them as refugees that story is the favorite is my favorite thing that I've ever done being given of given an opportunity to share their stories and shine a spotlight on these incredible women and what they are able to accomplish like you talk to them and the work of people like Kaleigh Papal who founded the Afghan women's national team back in the day was forced to flee Afghanistan and moved to Northern Europe and Denmark to hear some of their stories and just like we haven't pretty good in Australia like these women just wanted to play football and had to flee for their lives because they would be executed or jailed for doing that in their homeland like some of these players as the Taliban were entering Kabul like they were being forced to hide in sewers forced to move in packs of people as Taliban insurgents were just going up the crowd with cattle prods and all of that desperately trying to get to the airport so that lawyers and human rights workers around the world could get them on a plane to get them out and you hear that story and it really puts things in perspective so I think my favorite and I think the biggest story that I've worked on was we did a big piece and a short film which I think you're still on YouTube with ESPN just about their story and about what they did and I think that's I've covered big story I've covered well cups and all that sort of stuff but if in terms of what I would think is important and biggest story I think that's the one and I'm not the only one that's done it like there's Suzy Rak with the Guardian in the UK has done a lot on that as well there's been others but I think that's the biggest of my favorite that I've covered where are they base out of now? So they've they're around Australia they're around Melbourne there's some in Sydney there's some in the UK as well they did field a team in the Victorian state leagues for a while with the support of Melbourne victory but eventually the decision was made to allow them to sort of go their own ways because they were spread all across Melbourne and all of that and logistically it was getting very hard to keep them all together but they've gone their own ways some of them do some coaching as well some of them play some of them were recently in the squad for the because FIFA recently brought together the Afghan refugee team and they played international matches recently and several of the players that escaped to Melbourne when the fall of Kabul and what Bay Steer was supported by Melbourne victory they were in that team so that was really incredible to watch as well Can I just talk about I feel like and I'm probably going to use AFL media here as an example but when it comes to like people that are in positions as players coaches from a mental health standpoint in the AFL if anyone comes out with that they're having mental health challenges it's like a well known thing to not cover it and expose it but from a playing point of view or a form point of view players will get hammered into the ground they get written articles about them they get taken to a dark place for example Lockheed Neil they're kind of well known exposed media authorities cheered on his partner now they're just all over the media and like it's kind of like they're the mental health card is used and respected in some ways but in other ways across journalism it's also a story that needs to get its light and then that can sort of in turn have effects on plays where do you stand on that with your own journalism and then I guess that the actual perceived journalism view of that in Australia like do you think we told the line well there do you think there's this that sort of thinking that's accommodated as sort of as is you know can be seen in the AFL I think from my own perspective just it's always about being fair and properly contextualizing things and I think like I said before I don't go out of my way to just smash people and be sensationalist and all of that kind of stuff so I don't I think that's an inherent strength coming into situations like that in the sense that you know like I don't like the idea like if the criticism needs to be made I'll do it but I like to think I'm fair with that and I think when you're walking like that if you know about the illness if somebody has come out and talked about the issues and that kind of thing it's again it becomes part of the context that you have to account for or somebody is battling with their mental health and that kind of thing it needs to be acknowledged it needs to be understanding and I guess you have to balance that with if they're still playing through that and if they're still being paid to play at an elite level you need to sort of hold them to their standards to those standards that's a scrutinized in the Premier League versus a run of games like so there I imagine the play welfare and some of those guys with the scrutiny they get put under is really just evolving up and down all the time oh yeah the level of scrutiny that is applied in Australian football is nowhere near the level of scrutiny that is applied Spain, England look at Madrid they lose two games they're getting fucking into the world yeah so that's it's actually interesting with the tick tockification of the world though especially even in media now because before people would buy papers right but now they're almost buying articles or selecting articles so to some extent you also need to be like to get your article read you need to be sensationalizing something right or if you're not you're probably getting less engagement true or true yeah true I guess that's I guess for me I don't write the headlines on like my paid commissions and all that sort of stuff and I also recognise that yes you do need to frame things in a manner that is going to attract interest and to be honest a lot of the times you know like if a story is staring you staring you down in the face you don't avoid that just to be nice or something like that like it's a case of if somebody had if a sockaroo came out and had a terrible game that's a story that people want to read it's an input it's something that's relevant so you write that story you don't avoid something just to be seen as I don't want to be sensationalists and all that sort of stuff sometimes sensationalism is valid if something is actually sensational it deserves to be wrote about in those terms but yeah and but otherwise like for my subs take for example I sort of make a decision to try to avoid those sorts of things because I don't really enjoy writing that way and I that's why you're so respected and why we have you on the show because you're one of the good guys as you say because we have all had our runnings with journalists even Jerome probably in his playing days but oh yeah just like for instance you were speaking about the scrutiny around the world which is so big and I use the afl reference because it's so big here people in New South Wales or Queensland can relate to rugby league with that but from a a strained football point of view do you think there is enough scrutiny around you know performances because like we we copped a bit of heat on here a few weeks ago I guess kind of challenging certain performances certain things around the league which we give balance views on but from a journalist point of view I'll use an example as well that hasn't really I don't know if it's been spoken about this is not a dig at Alan Stagic by any any share of the measure but across he's like hundred and something games in the a league he's 130% of it yet the scrutiny is there from maybe an internal but it's not like everyone's looking at their results going easy going to lose his job this week they've certainly just started happening in the last month but you could go across he's hundred games the a league and say the same thing do you know what I mean I think a large part of maybe the lack of consistent scrutiny I would say an Australian football is a lot down to the fact that like there's barely any Aussie football journalist left like you look at the landscape in terms of people who are actively being paid to do this and have it as their full-time job but you know like I work as a freelancer but like I don't have a full-time job either like I said I'm freelance you look at like guys like Vince Reghari George Clark and a Harrington marker Monteverde James Gardner and Newcastle Ben Smith in West Australia but like there's not a lot of active full-time football journalists and it's like that inherently means that there is going to be less scrutiny because they all there's only so many hours in the day they are invariably have other sports they have to cover as well because the game is not currently at a point where it can justify with editorial staff whether with editors in the like full-time permanent football correspondent five month of fucking off season but also yes so is that a is that a financial thing because this is the comes back to how we sort of say feels like at times the media holds football back in this country would you agree that there should be more opportunities A and then B is the reason there's not more opportunities a funding challenge I mean yeah personal perspective I would love it if there's more opportunity I would love it if tomorrow somebody came out and said Joey we want to give you a full-time running gig here Joey want we want you to comment highly games and soccer at least get a hashtag going so hi Joey, yeah Joey, I am a coffee there's a lot of it is to do with the amount of traffic it generates the amount of interest it generates yeah there are inherent I think there have been inherent biases against football in Australian media but at the same time look at the amount of coverage the league was getting 2014 2015 when it was buzzing people were excited that the A league was cool Australian football was cool look at the amount of coverage the Matilda's generate is especially in the build-up to 2023 and 2023 we had bloody newscorp flying helicopters over training sessions and all of that sort of stuff so yeah was it Sam Kerr but did she roll her ankle before she got the full-time? like that it was the biggest story how is her ankle yeah it was the biggest story in Australia at that point so if there is interest to justify it the coverage will be there one of it it almost becomes a chicken and egg scenario just you know like do you need the coverage to drive the interest but the coverage can't exist unless there's the interest to justify it like you talked about the scrutiny that exists in AFL a lot of that is because there is just so much people working in AFL media you'll probably someone that has a little bit more insight to the analytics of what's going on in terms of engagement between NRL AFL football and all other sports what are you seeing at the moment currently? I mean just people are interested more so in like perfect example I think for AFL is the A league exists one of the reasons the A league plays in summer is supposedly clear air meanwhile smack bang at the start has said clear air in the summer months everybody's talking about AFL trade week and you look at all of that sort of stuff or whatever the latest human rights crisis is in the NRL I don't follow the NRL I just know there's a lot of crime you just see RL I joked crime rugby league he's right though he's got bads man my brother played rugby union so therefore I have to like. I mean Chris it's increasingly the sense that there's nice such thing as clear air I don't really think anymore because sports especially in Australia they look to these American models now or sportmen you look at something like the NFL it's a 365 day product these days the NFL if it's not the regular season it's the playoff if it's not the playoffs it's free agency and trades if it's not free agency and trades it's the NFL draft and if it's not the NFL draft it's training camp and everybody's coming back for the next season it's 365 days of content and around the world every sport is moving more into that space the AFL like I said you've got the AFL season proper then you've got trade week and then every bloke is coming back in the best shape of their lives for preseason training and we're all obsessed with 5k times it never stops it never stops and on top of that you got like cricket now as well and that's increasingly around northern hemisphere southern hemisphere stuff so it's just that when you look at the trends the trends isn't so much people going one way or the other it's just that the sports that generate the most interests and receive the most coverage a shifting and metamorphosizing into entities that are year-round products coverage slows down certainly during the off season but there is always something happening and there is always something to talk about and there is always conjecture and there's always debates around these sort of things Joe do you think going back to what you said before about journalist sort of there's framing the game or there's influencing the game do you feel like that is some do you feel like journalists are still influencing talk around the game or do you feel like it's now more so we're framing what we're seeing rather than influencing discourse I think it's a bit of both like I said there's so few Aussie football journalists left that their ability to shake the conversation is limited and we are increasingly seeing like shows like this social media they are able to drive the narrative as well and there are certain times that you know it doesn't matter if every journalist in the country got together and decided to push the narrative will just go the other way I think if every journalist had gotten together and decided to say the Sydney Grand Final or hosting deal was a good thing it wouldn't have mattered because the public had already made up their minds on that front I think there are occasions when journalists can sort of help shape the narrative in the sense that maybe they shine a light on things that haven't been discussed before or they bring new information to the table like in a very tiny not in a very tiny level something like when I was in the US in November for the games against Venezuela and Colombia when Tony Puppovich comes out after the game and says every play was sick as a dog in the lead up to this game barely anyone could ever run that inevitably shifts the conversation around that game because all of a sudden oh yeah most of these blocks were in a bed yesterday and could barely walk and that puts the thing into new context so you can bring you information to the forefront and shape it that way but it's a lot less than it was 20 years ago where a journalist could single handedly go out and destroy an administrator or someone like that purely because something like that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort you go it's not just it's very rarely one story that does that you got to go hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer months and like there's not a lot of editorial scope to do that kinds of thought because like one of the big things about investigative journalism these days is so rare because good investigative journalism takes 3 4 5 6 months and it produces one story so you've got to be paying a journalist 3 4 5 6 months to be doing set investigation knowing that you're only getting one story from that so that's the type of thing that modern economics is butting up against it's like what makes sometimes it's difficult for me to go in depth on things or to do long reaching investigations and you know talk to cold people's I've got to pay rent and if I'm getting paid the same for a story that takes me 12 hours to research and write up versus one that takes me two weeks to research and set up which one do you think is taking priority course can I can I give you a scenario yes um say all hypothetical people say uh uh an all in brawl happens at a soccer who camp at Brisbane Royal game yeah yeah yeah every week this is an internal brawl yeah internal brawl right okay so things are said all four things are said a coach has come in he's thrown a punch through the boot and it's oh it's yeah it's a white student boot over there what is going on and you've got to cover that and everyone that was there that day roughly from a player point of you a coach point of view is tight lipped what's your strategy to find out what happened so was I there no I didn't witness it okay well like when we talk of investigative journalism usually the source is where you're not going to get comments or over time to someone go is there a you know rat in the camp that goes to Joey this is what happened well that's the thing you just talk to people you ask people you try to get as many people as possible to tell you what happened because like I said that's in the public interest if the soccer who's had an all in brawl at training that is absolutely something that the public deserves to know because this is the Australian men's national team no no no just can't use white fight after yeah but that's the they're brawling in training that is absolutely proper news but what what do you do so when you say just you are basically you're going to call a potential security guard that was standing over in the corner with his back to it like I can find out their information yeah you'll go that deep like where will you start in that process like you're gonna start with the people that you actually oh no with it well that you know with air and you just basically take from that you text them you call them you DM them on social media you just see who's willing to talk right and you keep asking and then you pro you always want to go first hand information first so you want to get primary sources witnesses people that were involved and if that doesn't work you then cast the net wider so maybe then you start to like find out right who else might have been there that maybe I don't know but I can find out who was there and if that doesn't work then maybe you start asking secondary sources did you speak to this person that was there what happened and then maybe you start to get a bit more like in this hypothetical you start to get a bit more information that you get some secondary sources telling you what happens then maybe you go back to the primary sources saying I've been told this happens is that what you say yeah yeah what about a situation because we've got pretty good sources yeah but uh one or two of the times it's kind of backfired on us we've got you know a bit dodgy information you got a check got a check why have you ever have you ever written something or produce an article and then found out more information you're like ah fuck has it ever happened well it's happened to me Joey yeah yeah yeah yeah there's one word you're over absolutely screwed on uh that's screwed on a fact words I mean I've got some stuff wrong absolutely nothing massive I can't think of anything massive that I've got and you can only report on the information that is publicly available and people willing to go on the record with it's like yeah that's where I fucked up yeah if somebody like you don't need to never reveal your sources never reveal we're not we we went into that thank you we never reveal the source and the one who got grilled the most about it was myself yeah it was a piece of advice I got you somebody trust you with information no it was me what what for getting information what do you mean oh bro it was bro bro bro no no no no no it was getting my relatives contacted yeah sorry I digress I'm talking to myself and I was over in Europe yeah yeah yeah yeah bro yeah you was just coming to you directly but then it continued on yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that was nothing was coming from you anyway sorry yeah because I kept on what I actually uh I'm sure you got some questions but I just wanted to you watch a lot of football and before we get into the soccer reason the world cup and stuff just to touch on the alien because I do want us to look at this offside decision um what what are you seeing across the alien right now like in your eyes this season who are the teams to watch out for and then how concerned are you it's a lot to ask you Joey but try remember how concerned are you about the central coast mariners situation uh I'll touch on the mariners first um probably not as concerned as I was a week and a half ago um in the center it's never good the when a club gets its license yanked off them um and everything happens with them but it feels to me like the Australian professional leagues the APL have decided to step in they're going to move to said they're going to keep the team on the coast and they just want to offload it as soon as possible and they sort of have to do that because my the APL aren't exactly flushed with cash right now so it's lean to jack I'm so sorry Joey you off but I swear to god that someone said right after the Western United situation that they were not going to do that anymore was that true I asked that they did no it wasn't the Western United situation it was even before that um Stephen Conroy I remember he did it was at a sports conference or something in um here in Melbourne Stephen Conroy told us or maybe it was on the final something I can't remember and though it's Stephen Conroy told us surrounding the jet situation um when a consortium of other clubs came out and propped up the Newcastle Jets for a time that the APL is no longer in a position to step in and fund clubs because they just did that for glory for a while and that runs their coffers um I asked this question of somebody at the APL when I came out that then I thought you said you weren't doing this after Newcastle I think Western United people the eight to twelve people left at that club the number varies depending upon how I speak to um but might have questions but apparently different scenarios this one they envision as being very quickly they'll offload it super quickly there's not a lot of um funding and all of that they have to commit to it compared to other clubs and all that kind of stuff so that's kind of how they're explaining being willing to step it on this one but yeah for instance the why the Perth was the last what like so if someone's in genuine trouble and like they've done all they can that's when they're a bit more open-stepping but for instance like Tony sage one day was like I don't want the club and then it's like well the APLs are going to come in and fund it because one day he's just changing mind-time thing or like that's your responsibility Western there's so many layers to it yeah Western you had it was an ATO bill you've also got the council involved with the stadium um and all that sort of stuff they still don't have a license to operate right now like people to I think I've seen a lot of chat about Western back in the league now they use screw because I use like uh doubting that that will be the case I would say a 1% chance they're back in the league next year wow that's that's fascinating because because when you look like I said as far as I can gather right now in terms of employees at that club somewhere from around eight to a dozen none of who have been paid in six months so you've got you know they're all operating there and when you think about so the January transfer window is open right now ostensibly when you would be looking to start tapping up players and signing players to contracts for a new season right now Western United has no a league men's elite men's coaching staff football department they have no a league women's coaching staff football department because you've got a very mind Western United it's a men's and a women's program I think it would be really bad look to just bring back the men's program without bringing back the women's program as well given that the women's program was so successful and we are we are hosting a women's Asian cup this year and it's a terrible look if we're just going to abandon the women's program because it's not important or anything like that but you don't just need so you don't just need to hire complete football department complete a league men a league women coaching departments and squads you need to hire a communications department a media department a memberships department a logistics department everything that else that goes into running a football club and who's hiring that and foot on top of that who's paying for all of that right now they've sorted out the tax bill but the question still but the reason they got into such large debt with the tax man was because they weren't bringing enough income that is still an issue just because they've sorted out the tax bill what happens in a year's time when the next tax bill comes around when the ATO comes knocking again and they've lost X amount of money it's not just a matter of right the tax bill is sorted they're good they still have to convince football Australia to give them back a license they have to justify to football Australia that we are in a position to take back the license that hasn't happened yet there is still a fee for transfer ban in place on them for the men's side what well it was last week I haven't gone on the fee for clearing house today in check maybe it's been paid probably built tonight yeah um but um I'll check it when we when I leave actually um and then so all of that sort of stuff so I'm not going to declare Western United dead but the road back is a lot longer than people think it is and I just Twitter celebrating yeah I cannot see I've been wrong before and in fact you know given that me being wrong involves you know 50 to 100 people finding work in Australian football and footballers getting opportunities and coaches getting opportunities I would love to be wrong best case scenario is that I'm wrong I just cannot see it happening next year well the central coasting you talk about all incredible points good to have a view outside of social media from someone potentially knows it on Western too because everyone's up in there about it but the central coast one it being a quick solution why have they shut down the academy then because that's what that's caused a lot of contention around is that parents have paid money for the kids to be in this setup that I don't believe allegedly they haven't got their money back and the kids aren't in a training program anymore which is obviously like you ripped out a a core part of your club I think that comes down to the inherent nature of the a legs beast you can remember so when we talk about Western not Western central coast at its core what is the APL trying to sell they are trying to sell a license to compete in the a leg on top of everything else the club the central coast mariners come on top of that but at its core what you are buying if you buy the central coast mariners is a license to compete in the a legs a place in a monopolized place in the Australian top flight and inherently what I can only gather what from my estimation my analysis I can only gather that if the APL has come in and they are trying to do everything that they can to offload central coast as quickly as possible without hemorrhaging money they have looked at what they can what they absolutely need to keep investing to keep the club afloat a leg men a leg women's programs they have looked at the academy and said this is not an expense that we need to keep paying to sell the club's license therefore it goes and that comes back to the nature of what the a leg is it's still at its core a private for-profit entity that has been granted monopolization of the Australian top flight and when we are examining things like expansion clubs folding clubs being bought clubs being sold we need to ensure that we keep that in our mind of analysis that these are licenses at the end of the day being bought and so when you look at Western United people talking about Western United coming back at its core there is a license there there is no we could get a third team in Melbourne in a year or two it doesn't necessarily have to be Western United if somebody came in and told the APL I will give you 20 million dollars for this license and I am setting up a new entity in Melbourne do you think the APL would not seriously consider that what they said yes to the 25 or whatever that Western paid yeah there was 13 or 14 from the South East region that in mind so I don't think you finished the point on central coast and why you're not feeling as worried about it is just because the APL just need to offload it as quickly as possible so there's you in other words from I think what you're asking is the your content it comes down to incentives the incentive is for the APL who have stepped in and a funding this club they don't want to be funding this club in perpetuity no no no I got that point but what I was asking you because you said initially when you spoke about central coast you said I am not as worried about central coast as I wasn't because the previous I'm the previous ownership the attempts to sell it from that it was clearly bogging down there was clearly it was clearly like the the attempt to sell it was running it like we saw comments came out from the attended buyer about lack of communication about how the I think was the fit and proper persons tests were slowed down it clearly had a lot of roadblocks in the way of it it was clearly bogging down there was a lot of confusion there was a lot of ill feeling from Marinets fans as far as I can tell surrounding the entire process so I feel as though the APL stepping in with an incentive to just sell as quickly as possible but also sell to someone that it's face at the APL don't want to be doing this again in three or four years yeah so I just feel as though the incentives involved in the sale are more conducive to a quicker one now so what are you saying Jake that there's people that have played paid money and then now they're not getting the product that's probably more a question to start with one family's pay for the kid to go into these academies as far as I can tell the Mariners Academy in the central coast Mariners with distinct business entities though yes yeah so yeah the report was and then what I what I had read from a past you know one journalist in football I won't use his name to say that they haven't got their money back so they've just closed that side right yeah like I even get it able to delve right too deep because there's only so many hours of the day I have to cover Melbourne based teams and soccer rules and all that that's a great political air to Joey yes but what I would imagine is that if these are distinct business entities the APL perhaps only agreed to step in and fund and take over the entities involved in the running of the central coast Mariners A league men and A league women's side and if the central coast cadet central coast Mariners Academy is a distinct business entity and a separate asset maybe that that maybe technically isn't tied to the Mariners license maybe that's why that situation has occurred speaking of the A league let's let's give some positivity because this weekend I thought was one of the better weekends we've seen in a while I personally thought that the original rivalry game was fucking awesome like I was watching it at home and my mum had family friends over and stuff who really don't give a fuck about football but even the last 10 minutes today were all sort of huddled around the TV like oh what's going on like oh disallowed goals on and so forth I think that that game was peak a league and when I'm at say peak a league I'm not talking about when someone scores an own goal from a halfway or some shit like people like to say I mean actual peak a league of a sold out stadium on a summer's night against two major rivals and a great game of football which had a great story although we must speak about the disallowed goal yeah Joey said before something along the lines of technically it's a correct decision but for the vibes each shit technically correct decisions the vibes of shit it's like I'm not sure how many viewers watch the NFL but it's like the interception in the bills Broncos game possibly technically correct but the vibes of that decision was shit yeah do you know what so what's interesting a couple points on this or first one football point of you unbelievable pass by matter everyone needs every young kid needs to watch Matthew McDormald his first touch his first touch in football is just one of the best in the league but on this right and this came up in a Pep Guardiola press conference a few weeks ago because Semenio scored a similar goal where a player was kind of perceived to be blocking the keeper's view or whatever in an offside position by the book as you said Joey he's in an offside position his foot is still in the six yard box and he's on the side of where the ball is so from Smith's point of view it's a fair argument the question and I think the consensus is do we want this precedence to be in the game where the keeper's not going to save that but we're going to follow the book here because that's what the referee's job is as much as I would like to go with the vibes base decision offside is one of the black and white rules in the rule book so if we're going to have an offside rule we sort of have to go with the black and white interpretation of it do we go with black and white is let's say black is offside white is onside do we include the rule of blocking the view of the keeper well yeah because it's in the rule book it's not saying do we have that in like as a factor of being influencing the game or do we say I think you kind of factor because imagine if we weren't doing that every every every team would just basically have someone standing on the goalkeeper every time you know and you know what the challenge is here right and this is that's a new rule that's not an old rule the victory argument is that uh kiki anus is actually blocking the keeper anyway right and there's no way he would save it the the probably the conversation that needs to be going forward to the players like jelastic here is get the fuck back on side yeah exactly like jelastic didn't cover himself if you watch it he's walking and he's left that position open which all right maybe it's later again hold on hold on kiki anus I'm sorry yeah I wanted the goal to stand being a victorian being a victory fan but kiki anus is not he's blocking the shot no he's actually standing he's blocking the keeper's view no he's not you don't reckon no no the shots have coming from over there kiki anuses kiki anus is actually you're talking about your ties up our brains are different by our brains sorry sorry yeah sorry kiki I was like what the fuck yeah okay okay yes so this also tells us to get back on side because that's two seconds and he probably think watch the full watch the full build watch the full build play back yep these walking rashes brother yeah fair enough he put his dart out he decided to do a little jog once the shot was already take a look but also let's just move to the right or the left yeah I will be balanced in jelastic defense as a player you know you're not going to be involved in the play you're not thinking you're like he's he's seeing it's like I'm not getting the ball now we will I'm I'm just like I'm not causing too much movement to avoid it but this is just no I wonder if this will be a thing for teams going forward of life let's let's go you can be in front of a keeper and rule a goal so what's the thing just because he doesn't see he's involved hold on it doesn't mean he isn't Nick can we please go back to the actual like as soon as the shot is taken like all right this this kid gremaldi how good is that touch bro hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on who's that at in the back corner no uh that's mutter no him is that kiddo kiddo yeah kiddo does that does that stand does the goal stand if they're looking at the line from kiddo to jelastic or no yeah it does but he's not playing the lacing on side so he's off side there mutters there must have probably more in line with jelastic then kiddo yeah true right there is behind him yeah so um but you are you are right juarogs that was one of the best games so and just on this for people for people at home to know is uh melden victory wrote into the c.e.o. khalan khanigi i was told uh this morning so on monday for those viewing it today on tuesday uh wrote into football astray asking for a full explanation like okay so it's pretty much trying to challenge a decision victor you want a full understanding of the conversation how you came to that decision because if you understand from victor's point of view it's it's it's you can understand fair enough to ask the question it's not a response and John Mosshead of referee said it was the right decision and in yeah what is in front it was if it was English was French it was f off what what what that's how it read what reply do you think you're going to get like as much as I was for oh sorry I was telling the social media team that uh I was going to have a rant on the pot about it I'm sort of it's sort of tongue in cheek because yes the rules are the rules I get it but the rules are shit so it just it didn't ruin a game because I I said to my mate who I was watching it with there is another goal in this game it cannot end like this and fucking chats off to Ryan kiddo because well but a victory also um it was interesting a couple of points victory were also uh got a uh one back on the offside because kiddo actually scored earlier and good goodman's leg was offside so they already there thought they was that to you know Joey to go to you know oh no that would have been kiddos first goal uh yes it would have been yeah it was too nil so they got one back and then actually Adelaide a lot of the Adelaide plays in the post match after this we're talking about Harvey Lopez two years ago scored an unbelievable goal oh that's a ridiculous comparison though yeah and and a player from Adelaide don't ask me how there was mouth he's in between the goal keepers legs and everyone's defending almost outside the box but there's an Adelaide play in the like in between the keepers legs and it's gone in the other corner keepers probably not getting it but they ruled it offside can I just say that's a ridiculous like Stefan even caliper was the keeper at that point big if I'm the party boy um but like he like they were not was basically playing tunnel ball at that point that's a that's a vastly different comparison I do want to say though Craig Goodwin is so fucking Craig Goodwin man they need to put some respect on his name more respect on his name I thought he was unreeling this game he's delivery he's he's he's he's dead balls and just he's crossing who is this sorry good one yeah good he is just like like even this goal I didn't have a patch of being a bit quite but yeah this season coming back to the world he's been he's what he's been taking all we spoke about a few weeks ago was that he changed his game but I'm saying man that's what I'm saying goodwin not that's not going to the world cup well we we spoke about a few weeks ago was how his games changed and he's more dynamic now almost like a number 10 and he can float than just being we're we're running down the line you know I think my I'm not taking anything away from Craig Goodwin here because I think it's self-explanatory but um just basics on defending here from victory if you go back if you're the vendor if you run at anyone that's a one-on-one type player and you sprint at them at full speed there's you know a very high percentage chance you're gonna get done he does so well to cover the ground and then it's about putting a brakes on and slowing the next movement down and here he just goes he doesn't see later I want to finish so man so if you were to take away I think Tommy or my at this point last week on one of those a league shows if you were to take Craig Goodwin's resume away and just based on what he's done this season would you be taking into the world cup yeah I also think that's a good point yeah there are people getting calls call ups for having periods of games like that well as in what no you're saying the opposite though right you're saying his phone hasn't been honest if you were to just take away Craig Goodwin World Cup goal scorer Craig Goodwin you know goals again show if you would have base it off his form with Adelaide United this season yeah he's saying he'd be going to the World Cup but there's doubts on that and I also think I also think and despite not all of them going there and this is respectfully because this is Adelaide's approach he's practically playing with the premium Oli Ru place so I also think I also think like I know they're not a bad team but they're they're one of the youngest teams in the league and I think with that he's been hurt a little bit I think if he's in an Auckland or a Sydney then Craig Goodwin's maybe doing more I honestly think I let Aussie players he has some of the best quality as an individual player you also need to look it up though because we we frame these contexts in X must go Y must go but it also needs to be framed in the context of let me just look up like I do depth chart articles but it's like if Craig Goodwin goes who are you leaving out and who in your mind would you see in that similar parameter yeah because like you've got to look at this position it's not there's only 26 places to go so and there's limited positions like so Craig Goodwin will probably he'll either play I guess he can play left wingback but it'll probably play as one of those inverted wingers in Tony popovich's system so how many inverted wingers is Tony popovich going to take to the World Cup and then you've got to look at the other options around Craig Goodwin and ask not just has Craig Goodwin justify his place historically and with his form with Adelaide United but are we taking him over so I like I go through the names Connor Metcalf, Riley McGree if Matt Lackie finishes the season super strongly Adrian Segechich, Sami Silvera, Nishan Valupele, Aidan Hustich, Martin Boyle, Nester Eurin Kunder it's not just a matter of does Craig Goodwin go or any of those other players go it's who are you knocking out to bring the other players in that's the balancing. You're probably going to take five in that position yeah you take a starter you take a backup and then maybe you take an x-factor player or someone who can play multiple positions and it helps that like a lot of those blocks that I mentioned can play other positions as well but so we may be looking at four, five, six spots on those in for those inverted winger rolls there's only one in there and I'm not going to say who because that's rude but there's only one in there who I think is probably not going to get a look in personally but I just said I wasn't going to say it. Why would you say it without saying that because it's it might be too early to say because there's still how long left but I mean if Riley McGreece fit he's going yeah yeah it's my bank that's one slot down yeah if Nester Eurin Kunder's fit he's probably going yeah all the same we're two down so now we've got to go to list the players we've got three spots i pathetic I think five three spots and like Samysel Vera and Segerchitz right now on recent form are probably in in the good books because they've been scoring and it's like we talk about if we are allowing historical resumes to come into it and what we've seen players do previously on the biggest stages if Matt like he's fit oh yeah would you take in mat like these are the covers so it's not just about yeah he's a child I'm under the impression with popper that he doesn't give a crap about past history with the soccer ruse but he doesn't doesn't but yeah and this is what I'm leading to that is with matlucky I think he would take that experience but for instance with Maddie Ryan I'm not sure Maddie Ryan's a guarantee I think Maddie Ryan's guaranteed to go I don't think Maddie Ryan's guaranteed to start which is you know he's playing in the it's Ramaliga he's wise that not the our number one so one of the biggest things with Tony Tony pop of itch is that he values players that he values players that he doesn't have if he plugs them in he's confident that they know exactly what they need to do and he's confident that they will be able to do that job like a player like when he was fit like Jackson Irvine played I think close to every minute he's in every game he's in due to get unfortunately but when Jackson Irvine was fit he played every minute of every game for Tony and that's because Jackson Irvine was yes he's got a big bold personality I personally I love the stuff that he does off the fields and the work that he does but when you actually examine him as a footballer he would run a million miles and then run a million more to eat the proclaimers he is a steadfast professional super fit does exactly what he needs to do so like you'd think maybe Tony pop of itch and Jackson Irvine clashing personal at least no because Tony sees Jackson Irvine know exactly knows exactly what he's going to get from him and he trusts him to do his job I think he would probably say Matt Lucky if it's and who and able to demonstrate his fitness in a similar vein so just on the world cup itself so for those that don't know as well and we'll probably go more into this Joey is the only football journalist in Australia that flew to every world cup qualify game and my friends are right I was too sick to go there we go so practically every game which just shows you the level of commitment Joey has and also when he speaks about the soccer rules it's worth listening because what most haven't seen he has seen plus you know there's more of what's going on behind the scenes and in clubland it's just anyone can know what's happening behind the scene well yeah pop of itch coach side but who yeah that's true what's the opposite of the Iraqi navy because that's the level of leaks you get from a tone published but just just with your knowledge right if you can do it relatively quickly who do you think are the locks in the squad already for the soccer rules because I think there's a lot that are still open is oh I would have Ryan let me go through them left back if fit Jordy boss yeah I think as his batch is a lot um a long form he's playing so well in the elite he's playing so and he's another one of these guys that super professional ultra professional if you plug him in you know what you're going to get you he's a amazing trainer leader he's the type of player you wanted a World Cup I think he's in the squad I also think it's the case of horses for courses say hypothetically Australia's playing Paraguay love to sit deep they don't concede a lot but they play a low block very tough to break down maybe you want Jordy boss playing in that game if you're playing somebody like a turkey or someone in the first group stage we're going to have to do a lot of defending maybe you're playing as his batch that left back in that game in state because he's more comfortable sitting back sitting back deep defending and you don't need to worry so much about him he's 40 behind you look at center back uh if it is the it has to be the um pro the disclaimer for all of these plays uh you look at jerkati um and Burgess um yeah sootar needs to come back and play games and chose form you know she'd take an act just move to cypress so you want to see him pick it up because he wasn't playing that much with topple of towards the um topple sorry towards the end of his an avid listener of the show might out knows to get it yeah shadow noosh um I would like to see noosh in the team because again the intangibles leadership but center there's a lot of center back that's in there it's really good I think chirals is close to a lot because again he's he's pretty much a third choice left back which is why it's going to be someone difficult somewhere in gallam elder to force their way into the team because you've got jordy boss in aziz and then chirals can play left back too all of a sudden do you need three specialty leftbacks if chirals can also play left back um right back i think Lewis Miller is close to a lock because he just played many minutes he base he was he played more minutes than anybody he had the longest starting streak for Tony i think he played he started every game of qualification um he's a hard nut and he's a hard nut um black drivers hey hey he but he's playing center back a black man rovers as well so again he plays right back for the changes but he plays center but that again maybe that's the you don't need to bring an extra center back because you've got Lewis Miller that can play there um you look in the midfield jackson and a vine if it uh I know Neil is probably flirting on the edge of being a lock even how much really so you put him in category of lock on it just look at how much he's been used yeah Tony pubovich like that's the other big thing like when i'm doing soccer is depth charts and all that sort of stuff and i'm trying to predict the soccer squad i'm not telling you who i take so the world yeah i'm trying to look yeah i'm trying to look through the lens of absolute Tony pubovich and all of that so actually I always speak at the World Cup squad Stefan Kolikowski might get on the plane that's in terms of let go with the position change does he then impact Craig Goodman well we think about Tony's system and well let you be more of it wait i'm sorry Joey let's let's go go back let's start the midfield then we'll finish on the forward so it's i'm just thinking well that's my point leku's now midfield pretty much this thing is you say how many doesn't necessarily play players in their positions are their clubs like when katoan's been playing as a 60s year at Melbourne City Tony played him as a center back when he called him up so Tony's not going to be wedded to what other coaches like he's put loose mills playing as a center back but he plays as a right back for Tony Tony is going to call players in with a certain architect but he wants them to fill in his squad it doesn't matter what they're doing at clubland if he feels that they'll fill the archetype that he needs i think he'll call them in that's why you also need to look at it it's not just a sense of who's like he might call up a bloke who's a fringe player or a bench player or gets sporadic minutes over somebody who's starting every week because he feels the player there's a bench player getting sporadic minutes is a better fit for this system that he wants to play and he feels that though if he plugs that fellow in the some of the socorru's parts will function at a higher level than if he plugs the other fellow in he's not just trying to build an all star 11 he's trying to build a functional unit so you need to look at it through that perspective as well so i think if leky was to go he could fill in the midfield heck that probably helps his case because bang all of a sudden he can play multiple positions i think he'd be more seen as one of these inverted wingers that Tony brings along he'd play jackson Irvine and maybe an eight no kneel in the midfield and then leky as one of the inverted wingers was i could be wrong before like Tony always springs a surprise in every squad so he could you know nobody's ever logged in down we can only predict but that's sort of what i'd be thinking but as for the midfield i'd say Irvine a lot odeno kneel flirting with being a lock but not there yet if he has a big start to the season with New York City FC maybe but not quite there yet and then you look at the forwards who's going to play that number 10 position trosage yeah well he sort of plays with two tens wingers the wingers that invert are sort of his tens yeah um so you've got which is maybe why we saw nester year in kundra struggle initially because nester year in kundra is a yeah like a winger who bombs up and down the touch lines where as when he came on against china he was being asked to drop into pop tight pockets and space struggled in that role and then we didn't see him until after qualification was assured when he's sort of matured as a footballer and he gets a bit better at that now Tony's of course not wedded to that system like you actually look at the soccerers during a game and they'll play multiple formations and they'll show you multiple looks throughout games but just for the sake of analysis it's easier to sort of overlay archetypes to certain to certain players in certain positions um yeah but you look at the forwards turn to be able to actually say that there are any locks for the squad turay up top turay's probably the closest striker i would say to being like but i don't think turay is a lock just yet i think he's very close he's probably in the aid and only two of the names for the number nine like position because that's really hard for us to be sort of to feel something quite strong for you quite a while again i think it's you've got to you've got to take the number nine position and then break it out into certain archetypes so it's not just a number nine it's who's going to be the number nine if Tony wants to accomplish this who's going to be the nine if the soccerers are going to have more of the ball versus who's going to be the number nine if the soccerers are going to have less of the ball who's going to be the number nine if the soccerers want to press versus sit back in a mid to load lock all that sort of stuff i think so i think you've got guys like mids turay on one side but then i think for another site you've got guys like mids juk and nick de gestino we're competing for a nine position but they're not competing with turay they're competing to fill in the competing to fill an entire different role within the squad so like i would have juk like sort of in that hard pressing destroyer type nine role i would probably have Mitch right now if i was to pick 26 i'd have Mitch juk on the plane as a starter no necessarily is well it's going to be horses for courses he might start some games that require a all action bustling forward but he might be on the bench for other games but right now it's between him and daggers i think those are the two leading figures for that all action bustling striking role you've got a pustalist amateur lapelist who's in there as well albeit he's falling off the radar a bit zack saps for who's also scoring goals unlike in scotland but when you look at who's been called up into squads the role that they've been asked to play you're like a juk and daggers in there and juk maybe off broadway a little bit he finished the season really strongly in japan like with macaida at the end of the season he was going great guns and he looks super fat how good did he look straight away yeah like that is cis that he got against the mariners like like i think he's going to go really well in the a league yeah i think so too and what's the latest proof daggers is it prison official official and that's going to be really helpful because now we've got these two blokes playing in the same league and we can sort of like actively measure them against each other nice two and so and the right it's it just goes back to the on the right wing or to just go back to your point of i guess there's a bunch of them in there like nestery or incunders probably close but you know i used to i don't think i don't think any young player which should which of the young players that have been called up over the last sort of six months do you see as the the most likely to actually get an opportunity at the woke up us terrain or incunder like those two have clearly those two yeah well though but those two have in a sense that those two have obviously been groomed they've started numerous games i think it's quite obvious that i think especially when you look at somebody like moturay it's not just that he's been given starts he's obviously been given feedback from the soccer rules staff like he's talked about Tony talked about it moturay talked about how like one of the big things was the got all this talent and ability but he kept breaking down but he kept getting hurt but he could never put together a consistent run of games and then you look at his form with renders this year he's doing that he's um playing consistently and i remember i talked to him in Montreal and he talked about one of his biggest learning experience has just been being a proper professional eating right sleeping right doing all the little things and that he's absolutely something that renders will work on that too obviously but like when you talk about stuff like sleep and diet those are two of Tony pop of which is biggest point so those are things that moturay has hit he's a big professional yeah yeah yeah and i spoke to him on the phone talked about the similar stuff i was actually surprised with how mature he is for example and i think pop is a big proponent on potentially bringing players in that maybe form has an overly justified but he'll bring you in to see how you operate yeah you want to see how you operate and he wants to be able to give you feedback yeah and then he wants to see if you take that feedback on and implement so someone like mo i remember when i spoke to him in Montreal he talked about how he still needed to learn to be a professional footballer and now you can see he's obviously done that he's turning into a real super pro and then he's only going to endear him to Tony pop of it even more so because he's not just good technically he's not just good on the pitch but now he's doing the little things to bring what's been the biggest motif of Tony pop of itch what is he talked about elite he's now being elite on the field and off the fields just just on your travels especially around the soccer ruse and stuff is there one specific or unique experience that you had that always sticks out to you in terms of this is a story i tell tell everyone i don't tell it off to China was interesting got go for it in the sense that obviously you have to get a journalism visa to get into China only was able to get that the day before i flew after a FA put in a few calls and i also had to pay expedited visa to get in so then i land in China and get that first time ever in China alipay wasn't working for me when i get in the taxi so i initially get in the taxi i swear i want to go and to get to this hilton place in the middle of the city he drives me to the hilton at the airport starts demanding payment i'm like no i don't want to all right just screw what i'm going to get out all right here's your money alipay won't work so we spend about half a hour me bringing up Chinese on my phone like i can't it will not work mate in the end what he does he just calls over some couple that are trying to get into the hotel one of them speaks broken english ends up paying for my cab ride with their own cash just to get me out of this situation makes me see on me yeah for those for those you don't know you can't just use your card in china like this it doesn't you have to use alipay or we chat or whatever they have these alipay had worked for me in the airport before i went out so i don't know why it was going wrong i eventually get another cab get to the hotel where where the map app where i think i can't remember was apple maps or google maps says my hotel was it's not there okay what i'm looking at it's two in the morning i'm walking around with a bank not knowing where the hell i am what's going on some cops start walking around looking at me funny because on this white western i'm walking around the city hung out at two in the morning with a big suitcase not wondering what i'm going on eventually somebody tells me no look at this app look at this one you want a different map al maps yeah they have a different yeah different maps and all that so it ends up being the it's three in the morning actually your hotel is two and a half kilometers in that direction no cabs around at that point i hadn't clocked on to the alipay headed dd app inside it already i could have used that so i ended up walking from three in the morning till four in the morning through the middle of a hung out with my heavy suitcase just to find my hotel oh my god i felt sick listening to that whole thing that is that is that is traveling that is honestly personifying an experience of travel in a country where you can't speak the same language and my VPN at that point was like super dropping in an hour yeah because the good thing for me was if you travel with the soccer ruse like like traveling media like they'll look after you like if you may if you run into trouble you can message to the media manager and either he'll help you out or he or she will help you out and if they can't they have other staff that can intervene on your behalf my problem was at that point the media manager himself was on a flight to china and even then my whatsapp wasn't working so good so joe you've been would you say you've been how many countries do you reckon you've been to i mean this window what did i do this window i did in the nature away japan away china away Saudi Arabia away also did Saudi Arabia for the Asian Champions League elite finals um and i did some when i went to europe i got some work in there what would you say the most unique place you've visited like the absolute most different from australia in terms of even the football like landscape because i think people including us we complain a lot about our setups and our and our infrastructure and stuff here but some of these other countries i'm sure would have some interesting uh setups i think when i think about most different to australia i mean china's right up there like an alley pay and all that sort of stuff and it's just it does take you by surprise just what it shouldn't because you know what going in but just the sheer scale of everything in china like you've got a hung jail and it's like i've never heard of hung jail until the soccarus game had been put here i was like oh so it's about an hour hang outside a sheng side sheng hi how many people live here eight million yeah what small village at a you look at that i mean and then you look at Saudi Arabia jettah it's a very interesting place um normally i'd like to like travel on public transport and all that sort of stuff when i'm going around this there was none in jettah there's no buses there was no train you're either driving on uber or you're out of luck and let's just say you can tell some of the uber drivers in Saudi Arabia were probably brought up in a healthy diet of a crazy taxi and need for speed under ground back in the day i think we got up to a hundred and eighty k an hour at one point on one of the freeways that's that's not even an auto bin this is a normal road i think that was we um roby tomson i think was in that uber with me to this from channel ten and we're just like looking at each other like seems like a good day to die i guess i don't roby to i did want to ask you another hypothetical love hypothetical someone commissioned you to do a four five six month project and you could just write one story what would you what would you write good question rash i sort of did that for the um stocker who's actually at the end of the world cup qualification campaign i sort of did a um you know not being about three thousand words from a spn sort of like a recap of basically inside the camp after tiny pop of itch first inside the oil in brawl yeah very hypothetical yeah there's a problem like that i it's funny like you were talking about that and it's like behind the scenes like it's a very tight ship the soccer is like that illness yeah sort of came out like admittedly it was a perfect storm because they stayed in Houston an extra day normally they travel on match day plus one so i booked my flights out of match day plus one i don't know what stadium you believe in the poppers regime in the soccer is if you stepped out of line i eat talking to media when you shoot it you could get dropped yeah hence this tight ship comment i i mean more so a passion project a story that's out there that particularly don't really know about at the moment uh and maybe you don't want to reveal that no no no i think again the afghan women for sure you'd love to do a follow-up on that sort of thing where they are now how they're going um you know what it's like returning to the international stage uh what more needs to be done um because obviously the Taliban still controls Kabul and women continue to suffer under the yoke uh of that regime um i mean it would be certainly interesting to just sort of be a fly on the wall in the us and up to the world cup wow with everything that's happening um at the moment and do you fear for anything around this world cup like it's a con it's a country like just to state the obvious and this may be stupid but it's a country that a lot of places where games play they've guns are licensed i always feel twitter are you going to get into the country yes i've already got a visa i was there i was there in i was there in september and november like i listen listen i'm not obviously you got to be careful but i feel strongly about certain things and i'll do a bit of a cleanup but at the end of the day like i'm not at the end of the day like but like i mean they're not going to watch the pod so fucking but at the end of the day it is literally you lost uh you never know oh are you you're the guy from pseudonym put a tv you know what you know what you know what you know what you know what you know what you know what money do you know how much money i would make uh if they did knock me back nothing what made i would think i would make the greatest youtube video you've ever seen oh yeah maybe and then i'll just recoup all the money from the views don't want a lot of you up bro no they won't i think i'm not there you you exercise a certain level of caution no matter where you go again that's it around the earth um and it's like but i am also like i'm a pretty confident traveler anyway so you know like i when i was in new york i was on the subway but tapping a wine or laptop at two in the morning like maybe because i'm stupid but like i wasn't worried night riding the subway i walk or i've walked around the streets of london new york all of these places and i don't know you can also you can also do things that invite danger and i think if you go in with the mindset of something bad is going to happen then it'll find you because like i said there is there is mate you just look a Bondi everyone talks about Australia just go look at that it can happen anywhere like stuff happens everywhere it's just about are you focused enough not to the point of being paranoid but are you focused enough of just like you know just keep your eyes open don't just leave you faint that's anywhere in the world i think i think it's also i recognize sort of the privileged position that i'm in the sense that i'm a tall white guy in a relationship with a woman from an affluent english-speaking country there are certain privileges that i am afforded and protections from institutions around the world and just society in general that aren't afforded to other people so i can tell you that in a sense that i am not really worried about traveling in the us because i'm not really that worried as long as i'm not acting like an idiot yeah traveling anywhere purely because like yeah i go to the gym and all that so i try and you know my stank face when i'm walking through you know sketchy areas trying to look threatening is good but there are but there are a lot more easier marks than i am and there are a lot more targeted populations than i am that affords me the privilege and the luxury of not having to worry as much about that as other populations are and i think it's important that we recognize that when we are talking about the stuff i got i got one more question before we wrap up and this is totally off topic it was more about what we were speaking about at the start we i think the first time i admit you might have been at one of the press conferences i was trying to count when you guys would play those hard yeah yeah and like i was hitting myself oh shit great story yeah i was hitting myself and i wasn't asking the questions bro Jake was i was just filming the camera you were comfortable bro right i was just and me and Jake was like oh fuck yeah Mr. Nisco over here now that everyone sees where does he sit in a press conference room with him yeah Jarwin Lynch is a consumer professional yeah uh i want to know because you're not how do you belt there's two questions how do you balance pushing for an answer you want and also you don't have to share it if you don't want but have there ever been any moments where in a press or even online where a player or coach has had a ride or go i mean yeah every coach i've had you know stuff thrown at me up by a bunch of coaches even nice good John Eloisey once had a go at me who press conference well that's no no not for it's through words out of words i've got to say not fucking relax no no no no nobody through no it wasn't George bush dodging shoes or anything yeah yeah yeah but like every coach has come in their angry their emotions are high often the last thing they want to do having because they have to do tv before us so they're already had to answer one set of questions and then they have to come in and answer another sometimes they're frustrated and emotions will fry and like i said John Eloisey one of the nicest vlogs in Australian football he's had a go at me like tiny pop of itch you know has you know been short with me on occasion um Patrick is norbo was short on me on occasion rato vitisic probably the nicest person in Australian football on occasion got short with me Jeff Hopkins has been my ad Jeff Hopkins is the nicest person in Australian football he's never had a go at me but i've been worried about it time she's the big man as well Adam Griffiths Adam Griffiths didn't have a go at me i was just trying to figure out what that was I prefer you have a go at me because i actually don't know what the fuck you said right well it's just i just need a quote Adam i just need to wrap my mat report i can't write about i just said the boys gave everything and let me go for those that don't know what Joey's referencing is Joey was the uh journalist on the side of uh A.I. can't reach you no that was uh Ronnie learner from one of the other one you've been on the receiving end of of the recent which which answers have you been on the receiving end we were at the vulgarist Troy was that no so i'm in the Melbourne once okay but like i think you get the coaches have a go at you but it's water off a duck's back it's expected in this industry coaches are going to have a go at you you don't take it personally because emotions are running high and it's like yeah i'm sure like you guys like i'm sure coaches ranted and raved and swore at you and insulted you and told you you were worthless and all this other shit and then you came back to work the next day and everything was fine yeah it doesn't quite reach that level um we journal it's probably because the cameras are on so they can't get away with it but it's the same sort of thing has there been a situation where away from the press they've been like oh i really didn't fucking appreciate that or is it or is it just whatever happened in there sometimes yeah and i think that's one of the reasons it's important to actually rock up and be present that these sort of things because i will never not report something if i think it is necessary to report us or i will never i will you know i will never just kill something just because i don't want to get in trouble yeah but it's important to be accountable so when you're rocking up and if somebody has an issue with it and somebody wants to have a go at you that's fine um if you believe what you're saying and you want to do back what you're saying that shouldn't worry you because you believe it and you're going to keep going with it like i said the national curriculum a lot of our takes aged really well so like in a few years time like i feel good about that um but yeah coaches have a go at you about that but like you've got to like i've got clips on my foot like sometimes coaches have a go at me and i will immediately go to the aliens website watch the video and then just clip it so i can like use the the coach having a go at me for like as a reaction video or something i have a video of tiny pop of it's just like looking at me on my phone and he's just looking at me like no and i like uh no why just no and now i use that like when i'm respite like when my putt like fianc i ask me have i done something i'll just respond with tiny going no why not just know jesus tony pop of it's in your kitchen yeah that's going to be annoying Joey i look like i'm sure Joey what was what was the scariest man for your off Joey what was the i can't remember exactly what you said but shout out to you for mentioning us in an article you wrote our season preview season previews and i hadn't read it yet and i said what the hell's Joey leaked saying about us but then what was actually you messaged me and you're like what's going on so i for my ears fianc season preview because every there's so many from season previews and all of that sort of stuff you need a point of difference you need to convince why people should read yours over others so what i do is i write a best case scenario worst case scenario what will actually happen and i like to have like a little bit of fun with it so i like it like worst case scenario i had for orklins they fall down the table and everybody else not getting paid by them continues to refuse to call them the black knights because i will never call them the black knights the most american thing i've ever heard in my life but for melvin victory i decided to because obviously at that point they've signed one matter i had worst case scenario one matter doesn't play it becomes a distraction for he'd been careful the challenges are the dealers to a charity boxing max on the suited and yeah that's right that's right yes yes actually no i take that back we get it up on the screen now yeah i there you go yes that's right there i what when i first saw it i i read it as like that's fake news like someone yeah like someone has said like i'll fit when the fuck did for he'd say when do we come like matrim boxing yeah i've been pushing you pushing for it so you can see and so the intro to sentence actual analysis yes then a bit of fun at the end that is that is hilarious man that is hilarious so how do you go with criticism online and like twitter and yeah because i can't deal with it Joey yeah yeah i'm a lot less active on twitter than i have been in the past like people look at my twitter these days i'm mostly just sharing stories and maybe during games i shit post just because it's still very fun to shit post um you get used to it people are going to disagree it's good people disagree with you means people are well i would like to hope that they read the content before that they criticize it not just go off the headlines or something like that and again unless it's on the substrate i didn't write the headline so i don't pop off of me about that as well um but criticism as long as they've read it indicates that they've read it that they've got opinions on it and it means that they're engaged enough to have actually read the content gone through it and shown that there is an interest because it's important i think you know we talk about a lack of coverage of Australian football we need to if the public wants more coverage of Australian football one you need to be discussing it you need to be generating the conversation and metrics around it we also need to be clicking on it and supporting it like i think somebody does an article about it like let's say if you see on Twitter Marco Monteverdo's written a story about someone signing for Brisbane Raw don't just engage the tweet that says Marco has reported this because newscorp doesn't care the twitter account has cited newscorp in this story they can't monetize that but what they can do is if you find Marco's story click on that read it not only will you be getting a far greater insight than what can be just included in 240 character tweet that um you so you'll get to read the original source see the actual reporting make up your mind but newscorp will see that that they will see the reaction and they will say oh there is a market for football here we should do more football coverage is the same thing when Vince writes something um for the aged newspaper if you want to read it go out and buy a paper or click on the website and actually read it don't ask for like if it's posted on reddit don't ask for someone to post the article in the comments because that doesn't get Vince any metrics then when Vince goes to the Sydney Morning Harold next time and says I want to write about Australian football as the story about Australian football he doesn't have to he resetted to say well we let you write that story a last week and nobody clicked on it it got barely any clicks it might have been the biggest story in Australian football yeah but if everybody's just reading summaries of it or reading stories great to comments it doesn't actually generate from the Sydney Morning Harold perspective and I'm interested to justify it same thing with me if you like the stuff that I write in the spn or the guardian click it read it and then share it because that's the type of thing that um these sports sections and that pay attention to yeah it's just it like I guess the monetizing stuff is different for us but it's the same shit if we put out a snippet which could be a headline if you're comparing it to articles you're going to get so much more context if you actually read or listen through the whole segment and I feel like but that's just where the error we're in it's the microwave there are everyone wants you know everything summarized in a few sentences for themselves but yeah the general rule is if you like the content support the content like if people like what soo didn't do to do get on the patreon or you know buying please buy merch all of that sort of stuff if you like the work that roundball Australia is doing watch their youtube videos share their youtube videos listen um to the point like there's a bunch your great young journals putting out content um at the moment like here in Melbourne we got um Isabelle Campbell doing stuff for the women's games she's doing great um Caden Foley young man who's dealt with some challenges in his life but he comes into the box he asks great questions um follow him on social media um even in the npl space guys like Adam Palombi does great work Neil Simon's does um great work they these people that are hustling it's all well and good to just engage with them on social media and look at clips and all that but when people are putting out content um it's important to not just to it's important to engage with the content like I one of my favorite uh I think I'm like you Jerome I actually consume very little football when I'm not working just hold on a minute you're wrestling go aren't you yes well I before before once I finished my point uh because it's wrestling um when I uh when I when I when I'm I work so often that when I'm get very limited minutes away from football I don't want to continue for all content so like I'll play Cyberpunk 2077 heavily modded fallout for oral watch OSW review right YouTube which is a wrestling podcast three Irish guys I really enjoy OSW review so I bought a t-shirts a t-shirt yeah because I really enjoy their content yeah it's like I'm a huge fan of the band's electric cold boy yeah really enjoy their music so I bought a t-shirt because I like their content and I want to say more like I'm a big fan of the arcane tv show so I bought a t-shirt because I like the content and I wanted to support it what's the um what's uh is it Anna Hengton what is she she there she's got a football the far post podcast it's yeah she's got it by the end herself and Marissa Sam Lewis fantastic podcast get around that consume that support that what what they do is great and I think they're really at the forefront of women's football journalism in this country I thought that was awesome well done to all them and they'll be doing a lot of stuff around the women's Asian cup so if you want to follow the women's Asian cup subscribe to them listen to them share them support them because if you want to you know support journalism around the women's shoulders around women's football the women's Asian cup support the people actually bringing you that sure canteen Australia the organization for young people living with cancer 12 to 25 everything they do for young people is completely free young people do not have to pay a cent if young people are based regionally canteen pays for them to can't to fly out to programs these young people that critically need psychosocial support that need peer support they do it all for free it's tax deductible to support them if you like wearing cool stuff they sell bandanas and everything it's an incredible organization get behind them guys I think we'll wrap it there that was awesome Joey or a legend thank you so much for that um guys like Joey said don't be like me read the whole fucking article because you can end up thinking that fake news will spread but Joey or a legend thank you so much for your time and really appreciate it was awesome incredible work thank you man uh booters just before we go a maples at this at the start anyway head over to our patreon because there's more with Joey Lynch over there on patreon that you can check out we're going a bit deeper on other topics uh we appreciate all the OJ Patronis and new super booters thank you so much for joining we love you guys we will hug you in person if you see us it's a mandatory requirement suited and booted we out don't hug me don't hug Joey