Happy Birthday Franny!

Now I'm not much for birthdays and shit - what with them being largely a vain attempt to impose imaginary figments of our importance on the cosmos and all that, and I don't know, why don't you just get them a book voucher, but they don't read, well I'm out of ideas, big help you were, well at least I'm trying - but we're making an exception in the case of Francis Edgar Awaritefe (who turns 45 today), one of this reporters more favourite players to have gone through the South Melbourne Hellas smile factory. Franny cops a lot of flak these days from certain people - who claim they don't even watch SBS or The World Game - for his comments on various footbally things, but we choose to remember the good times, his bizarre ability to score belting goals and screw up easy ones as well as his willingness to call it as he sees it. But instead of rummaging through the video vault, I've decided to showcase the greatness of the man with this excerpt I found in a Roy Hay piece talking about the former National Youth League (Micky P also gets a mention). Did you also know that Francis is the last Hellas player to win league top goalscoring honours, all the way back in 1993? Long time between drinks. Have a good one Franny.

Though the NYL came in for much criticism, some of it deserved, one of my abiding memories of the competition was when Geelong City played a Melbourne Croatia (now Knights) team which included Francis Awaratife, who was coming back after injury. The big striker spent the whole game coaching and encouraging the players around him, not only his own team-mates but also the young Geelong centre-back who was trying to mark him as tightly as possible and subjecting him to some fairly physical tackling. Micky Petersen used to do exactly the same for the South Melbourne youth team. Playing with stars like that, who were aware of the wider role of the NYL, was an inspiration for youngsters starting out on a soccer career and for this reason alone the competition deserved wider recognition than it received. Let’s hope the new version is as fruitful.