Captain Socceroo

As we gear up for the kick-off to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar in November, we pay tribute to Johnny Warren, the most pivotal figure in Australian football history. In this edited extract from his latest book, author Lucas Radbourne takes a look at the life and times of the legendary Socceroo and how his revolutionary passion provided Australia’s voice in the global game...

With a single utterance Johnny Warren encapsulated the agony and ecstasy; the moment that defines him is the moment that defines Australian football. He captained Australia to its first international trophy in 1967 and its first World Cup in 1974, and played in its first World Cup match. He won four New South Wales state championships, his final as the team's player and coach, and he even scored the winning goal in the grand final before substituting himself - but off the field he was one of the most influential footballing figures of the 20th century. He wasn't just a player, captain and coach but also a journalist, administrator, author, broadcaster, lobbyist and revolutionary. When asked what his defining legacy should be weeks before his death his response was: 'I told you so. The defining moments of every other great Aussie footballer are evidence he was correct.

This page: August 1968 Johnny Warren in action for St George Budapest (Photo: lan Collis);

Opposite page: Johnny - Australian captain at the 1974 FIFA World Cup in West Germany

THE FORMATIVE YEARS

Warren entered Australian football in the midst of a revolution and left in the midst of one. Born in 1943, he was the youngest of three boys in a sixth-generation, quintessentially Australian family that lived metres away from where Captain Cook's first fleet arrived in Botany Bay. As his ocker autobiography Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters makes clear Warren wasn't born into football like the European migrants who dominate Australian teams, but his love ran much deeper than Australia's cultural divide.