Why I took a break from Australian football - Part 2: Enjoy your lunch

In part one, I talked about how I was drawn into football and my background. In part two, I feel it's important to tell you more about my relationship with Australian football and the one role model in our game who inspires me more than any other. This brief story is about how Ange Postecoglou became my modern-day Johnny Warren.

In case you didn't already pick it up from the surname "Marchetti", I am of Italian background on both my mother's and father's side. It's safe to say that being part Italian has brought with it all sorts of good and bad, but mostly good.

Most of the people in my close and extended family are extroverted personalities. If I can, I would describe them with words like boisterous, loud, and probably overly dramatic. But they are incredibly hard-working people who value family above all else and never forget what they were made from.

All four of my grandparents migrated to Australia in the 1950s as part of the migration boom that was occurring around this time. Through my parents, I've heard many stories about their difficulties in assimilating into the Australian lifestyle.

I'm sure these stories are similar for every young Australian whose grandparents or parents migrated from another country. Troubles finding work or fitting in at school, victims of casual racism, and difficulty figuring out how their previous lifestyle would work in Australia. Maybe now it's easier because multiculturalism is seen in a much different light. But back then, you could tell from just listening that it was tough.

Anyway, the point of this is not to spark some migration debate; it's simply to explain the set of values upon which I've been raised. From as young as I can remember, I was taught fundamental values like hard work, respect, and resilience, and taught to value the importance of family.

Ok, cool, so how does Ange factor into any of this? Well, that's pretty obvious from a migration standpoint, given he came to Australia from Greece at a very young age. However, his values, my values, and the values of every person who either is a migrant or descended from migrants are similar and applicable to how we view the history of Australian football. Again, that's all pretty obvious, considering the game here was essentially built, or at least popularised, by migrants.

 But it's not just about whether or not you are a migrant or descended from migrants. It's about how, in my view, Ange fully understands how talking, watching, or writing about Australian football means talking, watching, or writing about multiculturalism and what modern-day Australia is. We cannot forget this.

Suppose you knew someone from overseas who was visiting Australia for the first time, and they asked you to explain to them what Australia is like. I genuinely believe you could describe it through the prism of Australian football. That's so important. It's a differentiating factor. A uniqueness.

Ange is the full embodiment of it. I've seen people call him "aggressively Australian", which, although I think is spot-on, I'd even alter that slightly to say that he is "aggressively modern-Australian".

It probably wasn't until I watched the Football Belongs documentary on Optus Sport and Ange's famous speech to the Socceroos that I truly felt connected to him as an individual. In many respects, that speech changed my life. It changed my perspective and desire to realise a world where I can be at peace with the state of our game. Recently, it has helped remind me of where I came from and my values.

If you read part one, I mentioned how I've previously suffered from struggles with minor depression. These struggles resurfaced during my recent break from Australian football, which I again will feel comfortable opening up about in part three.

Over the past six years, in which I've felt on and off mental health challenges, I've had to do certain things to help keep me afloat and crucially stay on task with my university studies and what we do here at Front Page Football. One of those things was watching that speech whenever I felt like my life was spiralling, my actions weren't meeting my ambitions, or I thought I was ultimately worthless.

I used the speech as a motivational tool. I almost always burst into tears when I started going back and watching it regularly to boost my confidence and self-belief. There are a few spots in the speech where it's just instant waterworks for me. Over time, I started to use it whenever I felt I needed to cry due to the often emotional constipation I have around others.

I think it's because I'd put myself in the position of one of the players and listen to what Ange is saying to me. The tears are getting ready at "you think about the person in your life, as I've always said to you, it could be your mum, could be your dad, could be your brother, sister, uncle, grandfather, partner, friend, coach, somebody in your life that when you started believed in you more than anyone else", and as Ange is talking, all of these people in my life, I'm thinking about them, particularly my mother, father, sister, and close friends who provided an ear when I first went into therapy.

I also think about my grandfather, my mother's father, who came here when he was 14. Fourteen. I'm close to him, and I think about how he worked his ass off every day when he came to Australia. It eventually led to the much cosier life I can enjoy today. He spent days working in the crazy heat in South Australia's north, Coober Pedy to be exact, not knowing what his future had in store but just chipping away because he had no choice and because it was what he had to do for his family. Fucken hell, I'm holding back tears as I write this.

But I don't always know whether the tears are happy or sad. Maybe they're happy because Ange is describing our game through the prism of the people who made each of the Socceroos in that room. You realise that no matter what national team goes out there, you can be proud because it embodies Australia. Maybe it's when Ange talks about those who made us, and I reflect on how lucky I am to be surrounded by so many who believe in me.

Or maybe when Ange says, "the values that the game has given us", you remember why you truly love this game, because it helped teach you so many values. You remember precisely why you can never give up on it. It's here that sometimes I mutter "believe" to myself under my breath.

When Ange says, "Come Sunday mate, when we had to go to Middle Park, he was just a different bloke", about his father, I think the tears are happy because I don't just think about my father or all of the Italian-Australian men and women I know who have sacrificed time for our game. But I think of all the volunteers in our game who turn up every week with the same enthusiasm despite being involved in a sport where there's seemingly a ceiling on what they can achieve. But I think they're happy tears because you know deep down that this game will always live on, no matter what, because of such people.

Or maybe for me, sometimes they're sad tears because reluctant guilt reigns over as Ange talks. "So let them walk out with you tonight, so when the opposition are looking across at you, they're not just looking at you, they're looking at what made you, they're looking at the people who made you." I cry because I feel guilty about letting down those people, and I don't feel I'm truly embodying what they've instilled in me. Maybe recently, when I heard that line during my absence from Australian football, I felt guilty about letting the game down as someone who told himself he would never give up on it.

It's not always tears, though. Sometimes, the speech helps me focus. As I listen to it, I regather myself and remember my purpose and what I'm trying to do. That four-minute video has become so important to me that around a year ago, I changed my computer's desktop photo to be the video's thumbnail and did likewise for the lock screen on my phone. I'm telling you now so if you ever see it, I don't break down into a crying fit by having to explain it.

The final part I want to discuss from that speech is when Ange says, "I want to wake up tomorrow morning, and the papers are not talking about the next AFL player who fucken farted or the fucken NRL player who did something stupid or some fucken rugby union thing, I want them talking about our fucken game, I want them talking about us."

In this instance, and it's one of many things I love about Ange, he looks inward and puts the onus on the Socceroos to make their own headlines. We have to do it as a code. You have to make them notice you.

But watching this speech before I took my break from the game brought this question to my mind: Do we, as a football community, really know what success looks like for our game?

Many people seem to talk about wanting football to be the biggest code in Australia. Fair enough, I'm not trying to pour gasoline on that ambition. But is it possible that there can be a happy medium where it's big enough, or thriving enough, that WE are satisfied with it? Again, focus inward, not outward.

For example, the A-League was in a much better space in the mid-2010s than it is now. But I guarantee you that even then, many would have complained just as much as they are now.

Now, people are always going to complain; that's the society we live in. But I guess my point is, do we actually have a vision of what a successful Australian football is? I'm not necessarily talking about what Football Australia thinks or wants; I'm talking more about what our nationwide community genuinely envisions.

What are the metrics? How are we judging it? And not just a, let me change how I feel each week depending on one crowd figure, but an actual image of the game that you can map out years from now and test whether it is realised through targets that can be measured. Maybe it has something to do with crowds, or perhaps it's an infrastructure or viewership focus. Or maybe it's all of those things rolled into one.

Whatever it is, to me, it's not clear. For the past five years, through FPF and being more involved in how the game is discussed, it feels like endless complaining about many issues. A unity in bemoaning the game (which I openly admit I have been a part of) but not a genuine unity to move the game towards a common goal.

And it was probably this feeling that began my spiral into turning away from it for a bit.

Click here to read Part 1 of Why I took a break from Australian football.