On the occasion of his 32nd birthday, Usain Bolt started without frills. There were no shots and no sprints for the eight-time Olympic champion during his first training session for the Central Coast Mariners, as he started trying to realise his dream of becoming a professional footballer.
He was here, beneath a hot, perfectly cloudless sky, passing in a circle, working on his give-and-go and lying on the ground performing a stretch his coach called “the rocking egg” – all while the cameras clicked and the TV footage was beamed live across Australia.
The club have been clear that there will be no special treatment for the Jamaican yet a unique welcome mat had been laid out for him in Gosford – the shape of a lightning strike was evident in the centre circle, faintly, like the imprints of old ruins that can appear suddenly in the extreme heat. During the session, passing truckers could be heard yelling “Usain!” while afterwards his new teammates joked with him, like he had been a member of the squad for years.
“The glare was on him,” said the Mariners coach, Mike Mulvey. And while it was a far cry from the pressure of those breath-holding moments before the starter’s gun fires in an Olympic 100m final, the global media ramped things up significantly. Up in the grandstand the local FM radio DJ whispered anxiously on the phone to his producer: “There’s ESPN, there’s Getty, there’s Fox Sports, then there’s us.”Tuesday’s debut session was closed to the public, but next door at the Gosford City Lawn Bowls club, Fiona Ford, stopped what she was doing to watch. “I’ve never followed soccer until the grandson started playing,” she said. “But I like it. And as soon as we knew he was coming, my partner and I said, ‘Right, we’ll go. We’ll go and watch a game.’”
Bolt, who gives off the impression that he has searched the world for this opportunity, arrived in Australia to a media scrum at the airport on Saturday before what the club have described as an “indefinite training period” and what has the potential to be a first professional contract.
It will not be easy. The perennial champion has had unsuccessful trials with three clubs in the past year – Borussia Dortmund of the Bundesliga, Mamelodi Sundowns in South Africa and the Norwegians Strømsgodset, for whom he had a 20-minute cameo against an under-19s team. By all accounts, he did not do very well.
For the Mariners, though, 55 miles up the coast from Sydney, the media scrum meant it may already be job done. Mulvey said Bolt had “already brought the biggest throng of media to this area, [putting] the spotlight on the Central Coast”. He said the club had become complacent to underperformance and “needed to be innovative, and creative”.
“And how much more innovative and creative can you get than bringing Usain Bolt in to trial?” he added. “We don’t have to make a decision tomorrow or today. If it takes 12 months, I’m happy for him to be here.”
Back on the pitch at the 20,000-seat Central Coast Stadium, the second-smallest in the A-League, all eyes were on the former athlete. His first input was a give-and-go: a short pass to a teammate, a touch, then a long pass, drilled down the line. A left-footer, Bolt performed well enough: good touch for the fastest man in the world, as some might say.
In the rondo (piggy in the middle) the ball slipped under his studs, however. He was too slow. His teammates clapped him on the back. When they broke for a seven-a-side game, Bolt didn’t play. He stretched behind the goal, in deep conversation with a coach and the new signing Kalifa Cissé, formerly of Reading and Bristol City, among many others.
The pressure was immense for what was a routine trot around the park. Journalists waiting for a story muttered among themselves, talking about how he didn’t move forward to the ball when receiving, was static, “doesn’t anticipate”.
Bolt said afterwards gaining fitness is his main priority, and after that he will focus on the football.
“I’m entirely out of my comfort zone but that’s why I am here,” he said. “It is just like track and field. The first day of training is always the roughest one. But it felt OK. I came to work and I’m ready to work. I’m very cool under pressure. I have an ability to understand very quickly and learn quickly, and I think I see the game very well.
“I’m just going to put in the work,” he added. “I have to get fit. I’m just here to push myself ... learn and get better … As I told the coach from the start, I’m here with a blank slate.”
Bolt, a frequent visitor to Australia, stated that he had picked the A-League over offers from second-tier teams across Europe. “We got offers from teams in Spain, France, places like that. For me it would have been harder, I would have to learn a new language. Australia is somewhere I enjoy coming to. I’ve come to Australia a lot.”
Outside the stadium, Michelle Bolte-Gall and her husband Stuart were walking their dog and trying to peek through the fencing. Their grandchildren play for the Junior Mariners, and they couldn’t be happier with Bolt’s arrival. “It’s very good for Gosford, we think it’s great,” he said. “I was a Bolte,” added Michelle, “My surname was Bolte. My first husband was Bolte. Now I’m Bolte-Gall.”
Like many residents, they hope to run into the Jamaican on the sedate streets of Gosford. Bolt said he is approachable and that residents should come and say hello. “I haven’t been out yet really, just trying to find a place to live. It’s quiet, and I’m that type of person. It should suit me well.”
Back at the bowls club, Ford was just as supportive, but with her game in full flow she was too busy to try and sneak in. “We’ve got a game on,” she said. “But he can peek over the top and give us a wave”.
