Lucas Neill’s ongoing financial woes in the UK is a great shame, but the fault may very well be on us as a football community.
How are we not rallying around Neill during a tough chapter in his life? Where are the kickstarters to pay administrator’s bills? Where are the tins around football grounds in the country?
The amount of money which would likely need to be raised is more than beyond the scope of the football community to provide, but beyond concrete efforts to help there is something very disturbing at play here – apathy.
It is well-known that Neill, a former captain of the Socceroos, is in trouble and aside from a few personally connected with him, the general action from the football community seems to have been to shrug its shoulders at the whole affair.
There are very few people even asking whether they can, or how they can help.
There is even less outpouring of compassion, and that is where the indictment of the football community lies.
POPULAR ARTICLES
Newcastle Jets confirm Martin Lee takeover
Perth Glory secure Diego Castro re-signing
On its face, it appears a very ugly stain on our collective soul – one that appears to have taken its toll on the man personally if the limited reporting on the situation is correct.
Sebastian Hassett interviewed Robbie Slater for the Sydney Morning Herald in May about the situation. According to Slater, Neill appeared withdrawn and determined not to engage with the former Socceroo – a man the defender would have known as a former colleague, if not a friend.
At the 2006 Socceroos reunion earlier this year, he was one of the few not to attend – reportedly in the middle east to see to business affairs.
It is easy to read into the situation without knowing the specifics, but left with little to go on, one could assume that the reason for his reticence to engage is simply heartbreak.
The way he left the Socceroos set-up was messy, to say the least.
He had been a member of the golden generation, a man to have earned a place in Australia’s footballing folklore, but by the end of his tenure he was an outcast, seen as everything that was plaguing the game.
Neill was seen as the figurehead of Pim Verbeek’s ugly side, and held up as the one example of Holger Osieck’s failure to rejuvenate the national squad.
He was a man who wanted to keep on playing, despite what the footballing public wanted. His desire to keep the captain’s armband would come to be read as a desire to reap the commercial spoils of being a Socceroo, rather than passion for the shirt.
It could very well have been that he was desperate to play every single last match he could for the national side, seeing it as a sacred duty.
He has never really told his side of the story, and in the absence of his account the footballing community has filled the void with all the cynicism it could muster.
‘Luca$h’, as he has come to be known, has been effectively ostracised from whatever footballing community there is.
His last moments in a Socceroos shirt included hearing the crowd booing him for nothing he did during that game. He was right to enquire why he was receiving this treatment.
A narrative was thrust upon him, and he was held up as the villain of the piece – and did he truly do anything to deserve it?
He merely spoke of his desire to keep on playing as long as he could, and the coaches kept on selecting him. His performances towards the end indicated that perhaps that he should not have been selected in a clutch of matches, but who among us has not raged against the dying of the light?
Who among us has not met an uncertain future with denial?
Neill is many things, but first and foremost he is a human being with all the flaws that comes with. Yet we continue to merely think of himself as a symbol of a dark period of Australian football, one where an uncertain future was challenged by holding onto glories of the past.
Why do we still hold him in this regard, years after the fact? Can we move on and remember the dashing and elegant defender he was? Can we remember the commanding performances in Germany and not the desperate dive in the box which would end the Socceroos’ campaign?
The truth is that we should remember all of it, but also remember that he is a human being.
More than that, he is one of us.
Every day we as a community meet the crisis of one of our own with apathy is another day we should look upon with shame.
What are your thoughts? Let us know by dropping a comment below via our Facebook comment box. Make sure you follow us on Twitter @Outside90 and like us on Facebook.
