Kenyan-born Arok Akoi Arok has nurtured some of the greatest African Australian soccer professionals at Nile United
Socceroos rising star Awer Mabil’s community football spirit has inspired Nile United, a club where African Australians can hone their skills and fast becoming a breeding ground for our most exciting professional talent.
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Arok Akoi Arok’s dream of creating the greatest community soccer club for Australians with African heritage, where Socceroos Awer Mabil and Thomas Deng gathered for a kick, is closer to being fully realised.
Kenyan-born Arok, 24, says Nile United — the name given to the new outfit — is about to become an incorporated club, applying to play its first season in the SA amateur soccer league next year.
Nile handed Western United’s Valentino Yuel, A-League trialist Gideon Arok and Central Coast Mariners’ Ruon Tongyik a place to play the game they love.
They sometimes played against Adelaide United’s Al Hassan Toure, Pacifique Niyongabire and Kusini Yengi, said Arok.
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“Nile United is named after the (6650km) river (which covers eleven of the 54 African countries). We’re just looking for a way to keep our heritage, a name that is open to everybody,” Arok said.
“It’s evolved over the years. When I first came over from Africa 13 years ago, there was a bunch of boys I used to train and play with at Campbelltown.
“We used to live around the area, we used to meet up and just play football. A lot of people used to go there.
“Over the years, it evolved from lots of people kicking a ball around, to lots of people getting kits and organising ourselves and playing other communities.”
Arok said Nile United is about giving players of African heritage affordable soccer.
He claimed the cost of playing in Football Federation SA’s user-pays talent programs and clubs is largely prohibitive for most of the community that are trying hard to establish themselves in Australia.
“I realised there is some potential here,” Arok said.
“Because when football has no context and they cannot really translate it to FFSA, there is a lot of kids out of the system that can’t get into clubs for whatever reason, most of it’s for financial reasons.
“It’s very expensive. It’s not only the money to register, it’s the cost of going to training, transport, kits, boots.
“I used to rely a lot on my teammates, for example, when I was playing for FFSA clubs.
“I could just pay the fees, but getting to training and to games was a major hassle.
“Most of these boys, they’re in and out of the FFSA clubs system because of this.”
Arok says Socceroo Mabil is an inspiration for players associated with Nile United after he was given a chance to flourish, first through community football. The FC Midtjylland of Denmark star does so much more than show his face when he has a chance during the off-seasons at Nile United.
“We’re good friends and Awer is a massive supporter,” Arok said.
“When he comes back from Europe he’ll come down and have a kick and he helps us out a lot. He donates lots of boots and equipment. He has been a massive help and he has been with us for a long time as part of the group.
“When we were growing up we weren’t that organised at that point when Awer was a regular. He became professional at around 2013 and we started to get really organised in 2014.”