Football Confidential: Wanderers fighting fires on and off the pitch
Pair of Western Sydney Wanderers fighting fires on and off the field, David Gallop’s crooked football farewell, club owners walking on egg shells - it’s all in Football Confidential.
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Football is many things, but it’s not actually a matter of life or death – just ask Erica Halloway and Caitlin Cooper.
The two Western Sydney Wanderers stars understand real pressure, as active employees of the Fand Rescue NSW. Both have watched colleagues deputed to tackle bush fires across NSW in recent days, and know it could be their turn at some point.
But equally neither would change their dual careers, and love the teamwork inherent in each.
“I wouldn’t say being in the fire service is stressful,” said Halloway who is based at the Orchard’s Hill station and has been on active duty since 2013.
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“It can be difficult but also rewarding at the same time. I love playing football too, so it’s not as if one is a release from the other.
“You’re very aware of what your colleagues are doing – while the fires are still burning up north, some of my crew are up there, they’re very much on the frontline.
‘It’s such a team environment, just like football, the camaraderie gets you through.”
Cooper, by contrast, is just weeks into her fire-fighting career, having just graduated from college to a position at the City of Sydney station.
“I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to pursue both avenues – I love the community aspect, helping people, that’s part of working in the fire service,” she said.
“We can be tasked to go anywhere, and a lot of my team have been up to Port Macquarie when needed. If you’re on shift you can be sent anywhere.”
On Friday the challenge is a very different one, taking on Newcastle Jets as part of a double-header at Bankwest Stadium that will also include the A-League team at home to Melbourne City.
But Halloway sees parallels in the preparation for both parts of her life. “Obviously you have to be in good shape for the fire-fighting job, and that complements the football,” she said.
“You need the cardio fitness to last the game, and the physical strength that the fire service needs.”
Appropriately there will be free admission at Bankwest Stadium tonight for fire service members - as there will at the Mariners game against Western United on Sunday - while the RBB having been raising thousands of dollars to help bushfire-affected communities, a sum the club will match.
GALLOP’S CROOKED FAREWELL
After seven years at the helm of the game, it seems David Gallop was almost left with an unwanted lasting memento of his time as Football Federation Australia CEO.
Having strained his finger putting on a pair of shoes, Gallop happened to mention it to Socceroos team doctor Mark Jones last week at the World Cup qualifier in Amman, only to be told that if it wasn’t braced immediately, it could be left permanently out of shape.
REID RETURNS
FFA director Heather Reid quietly returned to the board as of Thursday after being on leave of absence since the end of January to fight cancer, but not to her position as deputy chair.
But her absence has revealed an interesting fact about the directors, who it seems are just about the only people in football not covered by the game’s code of conduct.
In recent months a couple of key stakeholders had questioned why there was no discussion of whether her comments about former Matildas coach Alen Stajcic – for which she had to make a public apology – breached the code, having clearly brought the game into disrepute.
But an FFA spokesperson tells Confidential that it’s the board which determines compliance with the code of conduct, so its members clearly can’t fall foul of it.
AVOIDING CONTROVERSY
Old habits die hard, it seems. After years of automatically viewing the FFA’s board with deep suspicion, the club owners had to skulk in the corridors after Thursday’s FFA AGM to make sure there had been no dramatic change in the governing body’s leadership.
Originally published as Football Confidential: Wanderers fighting fires on and off the pitch