Nearly 43 years ago the captain of the South Korean football team arrived in Sydney to play for a New South Wales state league side. The program under which he came and the story of his involvement in the country’s football is little more than a footnote in Australia’s sporting history, but it shouldn’t be.
Fast forward to 2015, and the Asian Cup could hardly have ended on a sweeter note for the host nation, Australia, who beat South Korea in the final. People of South Korean background form one of Australia’s largest Asian diaspora communities, while fans linked to the continent’s other football heavyweights supported the tournament in the thousands. Australia’s relationship with Asian football was at an all-time high, and yet just two days after the final, Football Federation Australia announced that an Asian visa player category “was not part of the discussion” for the A-League.
Over the past few years journalists and people with contacts in various Asian communities in Australia have championed the introduction of an Asian-specific player position to the sport’s governing body. The response from the FFA is usually the same – they fear Australian clubs will be priced out of the market and won’t be able to attract the best talent in Asia. Instead of implementing a policy, the FFA prefers A-League clubs to take their own initiative. “It’s fair to say that individually there’s a number of clubs that are starting to understand the opportunities of Asia, and where they can recruit players from to increase their market exposure both here and on our doorstep,” the head of the A-League Damien De Bohun told Guardian Australia before the Asian Cup.
But there is no institutional will for an Asian visa player category, and the attitude of the governing body means Australia fails to reciprocate a ruling that has afforded many Australians the opportunity to continue their career in Asia. In recent years Sasa Ognenovski, Joel Griffiths and many others have benefited enormously from the “3+1” ruling that is legislated in many countries in the Asian Football Confederation. The rewards Australia has reaped from becoming part of Asia seems to far outstrip the value it has put back in.
It wasn’t always this way. For decades, Australia was rebuffed as it tried to leave the Oceania Football Confederation and join the AFC. In 1972, after a fact-finding mission through South East Asia, the Australian Soccer Federation introduced their own so-called “Colombo Plan” to encourage integration and cultural exchange with the region. Although the experiment is largely forgotten about these days, it remains an interesting example of Australia’s troubled sporting relationship with Asia, and of wasted opportunities in the region. It also serves as a historical precedent to the “3+1” policy.
The ASF’s Colombo Plan wasn’t part of the broader government-sponsored Colombo Plan, but it took the nickname as it was a one-off exchange program designed to curry favour with the AFC. In the ASF president’s report in September, 1971, Sir Arthur George lamented the lack of “international matches of competitive interest” in Oceania. “I think this aspect calls for a complete reappraisal of our membership of Oceania,” wrote George. “I therefore pose the question – should we consider at this late stage, whether we would be better placed by associating ourselves with the Asian Confederation.”
The ASF Colombo Plan was first reported on in January 1972 by the Soccer World newspaper in a front-page article titled Our Isolation Resented By Asian Neighbours, which stated that the “creation of a soccer “Colombo Plan” by the ASF will... improve relations with Asia.” The first arrivals were rumoured to be two international players from Hong Kong and South Korea.
Three months later, the South Korean player Kim Jung-nam landed in Sydney. He had been part of the starting XI in both World Cup qualifiers against the Socceroos in 1969. Kim wasn’t Australia’s first Asian import – Singaporean Johnny Wong played with APIA in the 1960s. He arrived, of course, before the White Australia Policy was abolished by the Whitlam Labor Government, a policy that was a major reason for the resentment towards Australian football among AFC nations at the time.
It was arranged that Kim would play for Sutherland, a newly promoted and ambitious team. He stayed in Sans Souci with Sutherland captain Colin Bennett. Sans Souci, an idyllic beachside suburb with sand as white as the locals, is like something out of a tourism colour-brochure. Overlooking Botany Bay, Sans Souci translates from French as “no worries”, but for Kim it must have felt a long way from the bustling capital city of Seoul, which was rapidly expanding and in the process of post-war reconstruction.
Bennett was happy to take on the responsibility of acting as host and tour guide. “We had a spare bedroom, so he came and lived with us,” he says. “My parents took him on board like he was one of their own. He would call my mother and father ‘mum’ and ‘dad’, so it was a pretty close affection.” Kim, who was paid a flat rate of $65 a week, remembers his time in Sydney and with the Bennett family fondly. “Colin’s family were very good to me and I’m very grateful towards them,” he wrote in an email to Guardian Australia.
Kim made his debut in the reserves against Prague in April, and then his first team debut against South Coast United, coming off the bench for Paul Smith in a 1-0 loss. It was a quiet, inauspicious start, but for the ASF, his presence was politically important. In June, the governing body left the Oceania Football Confederation, with the AFC firmly in their sights. Joining Asia, warned Soccer World, “could be a long, even painful process”.
For Kim, joining an Australian club was equally painful. “Teams would go out there and just try to get him,” says Bennett. “Sometimes, because he was so quick and skilful, there’d always be one or two guys that would tag him every game.”
In July 1972, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Kim was “disillusioned with Sydney football” and wanted to return home. “I’m not doing you any good playing half fit, and every time I go on the field I am kicked,” Kim was reported to have said to his coach, Mike Johnson. “I don’t feel like I am earning the money Sutherland are paying me. Perhaps it would be better if I went home earlier.” Johnson refused, instead blaming the “blatant violence” of the domestic game.
Bennett recalls the situation slightly differently. He says Kim was resolute and would ice his legs after every game to ease the pain. “He’d back up every week and recover pretty quickly, because he knew next week the same would happen to him again! I tell you, honestly, every game he would just burn the pitch up. The only way you were going to stop him was by bringing him down, and he knew that. Sometimes he would ride the tackles, sometimes he would come out worse off, but he played some cracking games.”
Fitting in was made easier by the fact that people could see his immense quality. The press called him “talented”, “polished”, “clever”, while team-mate Peter Wykes remembers him being “very skilful on the ball”. Bennett says he was an instant hit with Sutherland’s players and supporters. “Kim was a very friendly person who got on well with the team and was always prepared to share his experience with us,” says Wykes. “I certainly relished the opportunity to play with him, especially as he was captain of his national team.”
Despite Sutherland being an average side firmly anchored to the lower reaches of the ladder, after matches against top sides such as APIA, Pan Hellenic, Prague and Croatia, Kim was regularly named in Soccer World’s Team of the Week.
There was, understandably, a fair amount of confusion and misunderstanding about Kim, and the language barrier presented significant difficulties. The press, accustomed to dealing with Anglo and European players, reported his name under three variations – Kim Chung Nam, Chung Nam Kim and Kim Jung-wan. With little English, the diminutive South Korean would carry a small dictionary wherever he went. “Every time someone said something he didn’t understand he’d consult the dictionary and find out what it meant,” says Bennett.
Kim was a quick and eager learner. After Mike Johnson’s training sessions he would return to his room and write detailed notes. “Mike was more of an intellectual coach,” wrote Johnny Warren in his biography Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters. “Whereas some coaches were basically just trainers, in the sense that they simply physically prepare players for matches, Mike wanted the players to think about every aspect of the game – all of its tactics, psychology and subtleties.”
“Mike Johnson was a very good coach, passionate and friendly,” says Kim. “During that period it was quite a tough time. From his coaching, a lot was learned.” Indeed Johnson seemed to be a formative influence on Kim, who at 28 could see his playing days drawing to an end. “I think I’ll start coaching when I get back to Seoul,” Kim told Soccer World in July 1972. “Eventually I’d like to coach the Korean national team.”
By the end of the season, Sutherland just managed to stay in the first division, and their website proudly states they’ve never been back to the second division since. What’s not remembered is that in September 1972, Johnson singled out Kim for praise, listing him as a central reason they survived the relegation battle.
Yet despite the apparent success of Kim’s season with Sutherland, in following seasons there are no documented traces of Asian imports or the ASF’s Colombo Plan. Having left the Oceania Football Confederation, Australia were in international purgatory, and one can only assume that the exchange program died with Australia’s hopes of membership to the AFC. In 1974, the ASF were officially rejected for membership at a congress in Iran, and returned with their tail between their legs to Oceania.
Kim returned to Seoul in September 1972 in a cloud of confusion. “Kim is alleged to have complained bitterly during his entire stay with Sutherland and when he came home two months ago many newspapers carried his criticism in interviews,” reported Soccer World in November. In an open letter to the editors, the assistant director of the Korean Football Association admitted the ASF “led us to expect” that Kim would be sent to a “top club”. However he rubbished suggestions that Kim had complained about his stay. In an email Kim maintained the report wasn’t correct, and that he was treated well by his hosts.
On his return home, Kim was immediately re-integrated into the South Korean squad for a World Cup qualifier against the Socceroos. His old housemate, Colin Bennett, was part of the Socceroos squad and remembers the joy of meeting Kim’s parents in Korea. But while Bennett spent the rest of his career in Australia, Kim went on to much greater heights.
In 1977, Kim coached the South Korean national team against the Socceroos in Sydney in two World Cup qualifiers. In 1986 he took South Korea to the World Cup, facing Argentina, Italy and Bulgaria before coaching club sides in both China and South Korea. Recently he served as vice-president of the Korea Football Association and won the K-League with Ulsan Hyundai in 2005. It’s a long way from Seymour Shaw Park, but according to Kim, “the experiences I had in Sydney were very helpful”.
So what can we learn from this brief part of Australia’s football past? First, the current buzz around “engagement with Asia” is hardly new. The ASF’s Colombo Plan is just one of many forgotten engagement projects by the sport’s governing body. It should also be remembered that Australia played a small but not insignificant role in helping develop a South Korean player, coach and administrator.
If we were happy to sponsor an Asian player to come to Australia as a way of scoring political points way back in 1972, perhaps we have a responsibility to continue to create opportunities now that we’ve finally been accepted into the AFC. With the Asian Cup still fresh in the collective memory, FFA might have missed a chance to show the AFC nations that we want to contribute, not just benefit from their “3+1” arrangement. Hopefully next time the issue of foreign players is raised, FFA will remember the spirit of the ASF’s Colombo Plan. It is, as SBS commentator Scott McIntyre said during the Asian Cup, “just good family behaviour”.
Indeed the benefits of properly integrating with Asia go well beyond football. A lifelong friendship developed between Kim and Colin – a South Korean hero and a dinki-di Australian. “I was his bloody lift and everything for about six months,” says Bennett. “Training together, going out together, you learn a lot about their culture and he learned a lot about ours, you know? I learnt a few Korean words along the way too – because Kim is like Smith in Korea; he’d say ‘you climb mountain in Korea and drop rock, you’d hit Kim!’”
They may have lost contact over the years – both lamented the difficulty in communicating over the phone – but the memories are fond. Bennett’s voice swells with pride as he tells me about his old friend’s achievements, while Kim asks me to relay a simple message. “I’d like to thank Colin as he is a really good friend. I wish him and his family all the best. I miss Colin very much.”
