How inches make all the difference for Sterjovski
Socceroo Mile Sterjovski has never forgotten some important advice he was given, writes Will Swanton.
MILE Sterjovski had been off the field for only a couple of minutes but in the euphoria of Australia's crucial draw with Croatia at the World Cup, he grabbed his mobile phone, looked up the number of the man who had helped him climb the mountain, typed a text message and hit the send button. Seconds later, back in Sydney, Hayden Knowles's mobile phone lit up with the words: "Inches everywhere".
Knowles is the training co-ordinator for rugby league's Parramatta Eels. He had previously worked with Sterjovski, who played in three of Australia's four matches at the World Cup, when the Socceroos midfielder was plying his trade with the Parramatta Power, back before he was a bona fide international boasting a lucrative club contract in Switzerland.
Sterjovski credits Knowles with helping him find the vast distance between ignominy and stardom: the precious inches.
"I met Hayden when I played with the Parramatta Power about seven or eight years ago - we've kept in contact and he's given me some programs and drills over the internet to do and whenever I come back together we do a few sessions," Sterjovski says.
"I'm on a half-season break but need to keep fit, so he's helping me out. In soccer, the speed and the agility and the turning is crucial, similar to rugby league, without the strength side of it. In soccer it's more about the agility - having fast feet, having speed.
"I thought he might like that text. Hayden has been a huge influence in my career. That Croatia game was just one of those matches which made me think about all the work I'd done with Hayden and the thought just stuck in my mind of him telling me: 'Try to win inches everywhere'. That's what that game had been all about."
Sterjovski joined Eels flyer Timana Tahu in an hour-long session during the week. Parramatta's NRL rookie of the year, Jarryd Hayne, joined in. Sterjovski and Tahu were constantly talking about drills, exercises, movements and theories which applied to the most basic aspect of both sports, beating your opposite number. It wasn't all about the speed. It was about the ever-precious inches.
"Timana gets in a defensive situation where he might have to turn and beat someone to a ball to give his fullback just that extra second to get clear without the defender trapping him in-goal," Knowles says.
"There's stuff players do which people don't notice - plays which help other players. If Timana turns and can help our fullback get the ball soon enough so he can get out of the in-goal area by one inch, it's a massive play.
They're the little things you can improve on. You hear the quotes from coaches about the one per cent things. This is what they're talking about. It's the same in soccer as rugby league.
"Mile related it to having to turn and run someone off the ball to create space for someone else. They're big plays in both their sports."
Sterjovski says of Tahu: "Awesome. It was a privilege to be able to work with an elite athlete like him. He was telling me about the visualisation he does and how he trains. When he's doing the drills he'll pick one player and wait till that player is flat-footed on both feet and that's when he'll put on his sidestep and get past him. That's something I haven't really thought about in football, watching your opposite number like that. It's something I'll be doing in the future."
Knowles said raw speed wasn't Tahu's greatest asset, with his footwork, borne from all the hours of doing the types of drills and exercises he did with Sterjovski and Hayne, making him a sensational outside back rather than a run-of-the-mill one.
"Timana loves that type of training, he and Haynesy are students of the game in that area and Mile is the same," Knowles says.
"We didn't even really get too much training done. They just fed off each other. We'd do a drill and before you know it they'd be talking about their game and how it helps them in their game and what they do in certain situations. Just getting two athletes working like that - brilliant.
"They did a drill where Timana was working on some lateral-type movements in a play he would call an 'out ball'. That's where he gets the ball in mid-air when he's already moving laterally to beat an opponent before he even catches the ball. Mile just thrived on listening to Timana explain when he reads a play, when he has to cut on a player. Mile was saying, 'That's the same for me. I've got to beat someone as the ball is being passed'. They were just feeding off each other.
"Timana is naturally fast but the type of speed we were doing this week was more about the movement required in football. It's not so much about turning up and becoming a faster sprinter, but more improving the different little types of movements required. Some lateral movement here, turning there, getting from nought to five metres a bit quicker."
The inches.
"When we train, we talk about the little inches which you get in your turns," Knowles says. "It's about beating another player to the ball.
"For Mile to text me straight after the game [Australia's 2-2 draw with Croatia put them in the second round of the World Cup] was a really proud moment for me. It was a great moment because I know what he went through behind the scenes to make that squad. When [Socceroos coach] Guus Hiddink came in, Mile was kind of out of that squad. He used to be in it when Frank Farina was running it but instead of sulking, he worked so hard.
"Just to make the squad was a big buzz for him but to see him starting for the Socceroos in three of the four games, and perform as well as he did, it was one of those things, that text message, that got to me."
Sterjovski will return to FC Basel after Christmas but Tahu will keep scavenging around for the inches.
